College Football Playoff 101: Explaining the new system
My picks for the College Football Playoff and the other major bowls are coming separately (and soon!). This post is dedicated to the basics of the new system for fans who have paid little (or no) attention to this point …
*** Six bowls are involved in the rotation. This season, the Rose and Sugar will host the semifinals. Next season, the Cotton and Orange get their shot, then the Fiesta and Peach. In 2017, the rotation starts over.
The championship game, played on a Monday — this year, it's Jan. 12 at Cowboys Stadium — is not part of the rotation. It's a separate entity with a bid process all its own.
*** The rotation bowls that aren't involved in the semifinals in a given year will host major matchups on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, combining with the semis to form back-to-back triple-headers.
I'd argue that the reclaiming of Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 for the major bowls is the best part of the CFP system. Those 48 hours will be phenomenal.
*** The selection committee will create the pairings not only for the semifinals (based on its final rankings) but also the other four rotation bowls, with an emphasis on competitive matchups and the geography.
College Football Playoff, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl
Stanford football: Examining the BCS scenarios
Three underlying assumptions as we outline Stanford's postseason options:
1. At this point, there are too many bowls, too many teams and too many permutations involved to know Stanford's fate with even a remote degree of certainty. Everything you're about to read could be moot by the close of business Saturday.
2. Not every scenario is examined below, including the potential ramifications of the Jameis Winston situation on Florida State's landing spot.
3. With three consecutive BCS appearances, two losses and no Andrew Luck, the Cardinal is not as valued a commodity within BCS circles as it was two and three years ago.
Okay, here we go …
*** We know the National Championship Game is out of reach.
*** We also know the road to the Rose Bowl requires an Oregon loss this week (at Arizona) or next (vs. Oregon State).
That might seem improbable — the Ducks are favored by 20 in Tucson and have run the Beavers off the field the past three years — but it's clearly the path of least resistance into the BCS for the Cardinal.
Even if Stanford beats Cal and Notre Dame, finishes 10-2 and is ranked in the No. 6-8 range, a BCS at-large berth seems highly unlikely at this point.
*** Keep in mind: There are four at-large spots available, and two of them will almost assuredly be allocated to replacements for the title game participants.
For example: If Alabama plays Florida State for the title, then Sugar would grab a team from the SEC to replace the Crimson Tide and the Orange would take Clemson (the No. 2 from the ACC) to replace the Seminoles.
If Ohio State jumps into the title game, then the Rose Bowl will replace the Buckeyes with a team from the Big Ten.
If Baylor plays for the title, the Fiesta would take a team from the Big 12 to replace the Bears.
Because the eat-your-own Pac-12 is on the outskirts of the NCG race — Oregon's chances are slim, at best — the conference doesn't have the easy at-large access provided by a replacement selection.
Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Pac-12 football, Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl
College football 2013: Bowl Championship Series projections
* Third in a series previewing the season …
The season is just beginning, yet a controversial ending is already easy to spot:
Let's say Alabama or Ohio State goes undefeated. Would an undefeated Louisville, the dominant team in the second-rate American Athletic Conference, warrant the second spot in the national title game ahead of a one-loss team from the SEC, Pac-12 or Big Ten?
That scenario would be a fitting conclusion for the BCS, which – for all its faults — has helped make college football the second most-popular sport in the country and usher in the playoff era.
Without the BCS and its antecedents (the Alliance and Coalition), we wouldn't have a four-team playoff. The conference commissioners and school presidents would never have gone from the old bowl system straight to a playoff.
While reading the projections below, and watching the season unfold, remember:
* Teams are eligible for at-large selection if they have nine wins and are in the top 14 of the final BCS standings.
Alabama football, BCS championship, BCS football, Fiesta Bowl, Nebraska football, Ohio State football, Orange Bowl, Oregon football, Pac-12 football, Rose Bowl, Stanford football, Sugar Bowl, Texas football
College Football Playoff: Facts, notes and thoughts on the new system (read this, then get back to the NFL Draft)
Posted on April 25, 2013 by Jon Wilner
The conference commissioners wrapped up their meetings Thursday after finalizing all but one important detail of the College Football Playoff, which kicks in after the 2014 regular season.
The unfinished business is the makeup of, and criteria used by, the selection committee that will determine the playoff teams and matchups (in much the same fashion the men's basketball committee picks and seeds the March Madness field).
Look for the committee-related issue to be resolved later this year or early in '14.
Here's a quick recap of the major developments on the playoff front:
*** First, let's tackle the topic on so many minds.
During a briefing with reporters Thursday, Executive Director Bill Hancock addressed the matter of going to eight (or more) teams prior to the expiration of the 12-year agreement:
"We know people are going to want eight (teams), and some are going to want 16, or 32. But it's going to be four, for 12 years."
BCS football, Bowl Championship Series, College Football Playoff, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl
BCS projections: Notre Dame vs. Alabama for the title, Oregon to the Fiesta, plus Boise State's status
If you thought Boise State was out of the Bowl Championship Series picture following the Nov. 3 loss to San Diego State, well, it's BSU, this is BCS, and here's the deal:
If a team from a non-Automatic Qualifier conference finishes in the top 16 of the final BCS standings and is ahead of a champion from one of the six AQ leagues, it receives an automatic bid.
Both No. 17 Kent State (MAC) and No. 20 Boise State (Mountain West) are positioned to take advantage of the Big East's lack of power at the top.
The league's top-ranked team is … actually, it doesn't have a team in the top 25 — to the delight of the MAC and MWC (not to mention all those who believe the Big East has no business receiving an automatic berth).
I happen to think Northern Illinois will beat Kent State, eliminating the Golden Flashes. But Boise State will beat Nevada — yes, even in Reno — to remain in contention.
The question then becomes: How high will the Broncos climb? Could they get to 16? Well, since you asked …
No. 16 UCLA visits Stanford.
No. 17 Kent State plays Northern Illinois (11-1) on a neutral field.
No. 18 Texas visits Kansas State.
Alabama football, Boise State football, Fiesta Bowl, Florida football, Nebraska football, Notre Dame football, Oklahoma football, Orange Bowl, Oregon football, Rose Bowl, Stanford football, Sugar Bowl, Wisconsin football
BCS projections: LSU vs. Oklahoma for the national title
The Bowl Championship Series has two years left.
If you love it, enjoy it. If you hate it, then the semifinal format that takes effect with the 2014 regular season cannot come soon enough.
But do not, under any circumstances, expect it to go down quietly.
Given the chaos it has delivered over the past 14 years, the BCS is bound to cause more controversy, frustration, anxiety and outright outrage before going the way of the Bowl Coalition, the Bowl Alliance, and the Dodo.
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College football: Winners and losers from the bowl season
Posted on January 11, 2012 by Jon Wilner
Picking the biggest winner is almost as easy as identifying the biggest loser from the month-long, 35-game bowl season.
Biggest winner: The SEC, which not only captured its sixth consecutive national championship but also won six of its nine bowl games in 2011-12.
Biggest loser: The Big Ten.
The conference had such a rough time of it, even the Wall Street Journal addressed the situation.
If you're scoring at home, the Little Ten was 2-4 in January bowls.
That comes on the heels of a 1-5 performance in games in Jan. '11, when the lone victory was courtesy of players who should have been ineligible for the Sugar Bowl.
More problematic is how often the Slow Ten gets thumped by its AQ brethren (and by that we basically mean the SEC). In those 12 January games over the past two seasons, it has five losses by 10 points or more.
Heck, the SMALL is 2-8 in the Rose Bowl since the turn of the century.
Andrew Luck, Big Ten football, Michigan football, Notre Dame football, Oregon football, Pac-12 football, Penn State football, SEC football, Sugar Bowl, Washington football, winners and losers
College football picks of the week (bowl edition)
One bigger-picture BCS thought before we get to the picks:
The final Associated Press top-25 ballots are due to the AP the night of the BCS National Championship Game.
Unlike the USA Today/Coaches poll, which is contractually bound to crown the NCG winner as its champion, the AP is free to act independently of BCS results — it names its own champion and has been doing so since 1936.
(That's one reason why the AP poll has more credibility than the Harris or Coaches, in my admittedly biased opinion. Another is the AP's season-long transparency.)
Could we see a split championship if Alabama wins unimpressively — let's say it's 13-10 — and Oklahoma State demolishes Stanford?
The Cowboys are only 18 points behind Bama in the AP poll, after all.
Alabama football, Associated Press top-25 poll, BCS championship, LSU football, Michigan football, Notre Dame football, Picks of the week, point spread, sports betting, Sugar Bowl
BCS and Pac-12 bowl projections (and Stanford's nightmare scenario)
In the interest of calling my shot ahead of time, here are the Hotline's BCS and Pac-12 projections. (Granted, it doesn't exactly require a long walk out on the limb. This year, more than most years, the situation seems fairly clear cut.)
A few things to remember about the process:
* Bowls only replace their partner league's champion.
If LSU wins the SEC title, then the Sugar would have first pick of the at-large teams to replace LSU.
It would not, however, have two picks in succession; it would only be replacing LSU — not LSU and Alabama.
* If Georgia beats LSU, then the Dawgs would head to the Sugar and no anchors would need to be replaced. Bama and LSU would meet in the NCG as at-large teams (assuming LSU doesn't fall below No. 2 in that scenario).
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Bowl Championship Series projections: Oklahoma and Alabama to the NCG, Boise State to the Fiesta, Stanford to the Sugar
* The post featuring my AP preseason ballot has been updated to include a comment on each team and the AP rankings. I feel good about every team's ranking except for LSU; the events of the past week make me question the Tigers' ability to handle a brutal September schedule …
Before we get to my BCS projections, one important note on the selection procedure:
In past years, the bowl hosting the National Championship Game had the last pick of the AQ and at-large teams. This year, that's not the case: The Sugar will pick second even though it hosts the NCG.
(The change is a result of bowl officials wanting to create a more equitable selection sequence.)
To the projections …
*** AQ-CONFERENCE SELECTIONS
SEC champ: Alabama
Big 12 champ: Oklahoma
Big Ten champ: Nebraska
Pac-12 champ: Oregon
ACC champ: Florida State
Big East champ: West Virginia
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