Why should Georgia be penalized for losing the SEC championship game?

(10-25-2013 08:44 AM)curtis0620 Wrote:  Why should Georgia be penalized for losing the SEC championship game?

UGA had the bad loss and had 2 losses. They didn't have the quality of wins of Florida. Basically UGA beat Florida. That was about it.

(10-25-2013 08:44 AM)curtis0620 Wrote:  Why should Georgia be penalized for losing the SEC championship game?

Because audiences don't want rematches and those games serve as defacto quarterfinals. Sometimes the CCG settle controversies or create more tenuous situations because of division tie breakers (ie. 3 loss teams jumping one loss teams on occassion). The ideal thing would be to nullify that round and make that weekend an actual quarterfinal round. Never gonna happen though.

(10-25-2013 08:48 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 08:44 AM)curtis0620 Wrote:  Why should Georgia be penalized for losing the SEC championship game?

UGA had the bad loss and had 2 losses. They didn't have the quality of wins of Florida. Basically UGA beat Florida. That was about it.

So that would lead me to both not making it.

(10-25-2013 08:49 AM)RUScarlets Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 08:44 AM)curtis0620 Wrote:  Why should Georgia be penalized for losing the SEC championship game?

Because audiences don't want rematches and those games serve as defacto quarterfinals. Sometimes the CCG settle controversies or create more tenuous situations because of division tie breakers. The ideal thing would be to nullify that round and make that weekend an actual quarterfinal. Never gonna happen though.

You mean like LSU vs Alabama?

(10-25-2013 08:49 AM)curtis0620 Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 08:48 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 08:44 AM)curtis0620 Wrote:  Why should Georgia be penalized for losing the SEC championship game?

UGA had the bad loss and had 2 losses. They didn't have the quality of wins of Florida. Basically UGA beat Florida. That was about it.

So that would lead me to both not making it.

There was no team who didn't win a conference championship who had a better resume than Florida. There was no one who did win a conference championship who had more good wins. If you are going to let non-champs in, Florida had to be in. They had that simulated playoff selection group and Florida was the #3 team selected. KSU didn't make the top 8, showing that the group was more concerned about bad losses than accomplishments like conference championships. They picked Oregon as #4. They did do their selection before the final game of the season (they assumed the higher ranked team won the ccgs and season ending games).

(10-25-2013 08:50 AM)curtis0620 Wrote:  You mean like LSU vs Alabama?

Yeah, horrible regionalized ratings that led to the B1G/PAC presidents backing off on their anti-playoff sentiment. It barely outrated the NCAA title game the following year. And it was a horrible game to boot. 21-0.

Non-division winners should also not qualify. Florida was way over-rated last year, see Sugar Bowl result.

The only way non division winners won't qualify is if they go with 4 superconferences. Until then, non-CC's will continue to get in.

(10-25-2013 08:58 AM)RUScarlets Wrote:  

(10-25-2013 08:50 AM)curtis0620 Wrote:  You mean like LSU vs Alabama?

Yeah, horrible regionalized ratings that led to the B1G/PAC presidents backing off on their anti-playoff sentiment. It barely outrated the NCAA title game the following year. And it was a horrible game to boot. 21-0.

If LSU and Alabama's 2011 year had a sf where Alabama played Oklahoma St and LSU played Oregon- and Alabama and LSU had won their sf- the title game would have gotten a lot better ratings than the game with them just playing each other in the title game got.

Noone thought Ohio St. would beat Miami a few years back, but they did. I'm very opposed to "eyeball" tests. I believe in scoreboard. Florida did very good on the scoreboard, which is what ultimately counts. And they did tie for the division title and beat the team that beat UGA. But South Carolina also lost to LSU. UGA didn't play Alabama, LSU or A&M during the regular season.

If it was head to head with the same record, even though UGA had the easier schedule, UGA should have gotten it. But UGA had that 2nd loss and didn't have the quality of wins Florida had. With Stanford and Oregon it was different as they had similar quality wins and Stanford did get that conference title which UGA didn't. Note: I root for UGA in addition to Texas and don't like Florida, so if I have a bias, it is against Florida.

I think them powers that be made a mistake in a saying it would strictly be 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3. That sounds good on paper, but in reality, if teams #3 and #4 are close to even, you are going to want to make the match-ups as good as possible. In order, I think the priorities with a close #3 and #4 should be:

1. Avoid rematches, especially conference rematches
2. Save traditional bowl match-ups
3. Make the match-ups geographically friendly. Let's remember we are now talking about 2 bowl games for a national title team over a week and travel is going to be an issue for fanbases (games will still sell out for local interest, but let's help fans as much as possible).

Note: For both examples assume the difference between #3 and #4 is there, but not great.

Example 1:
Peach and Fiesta Bowl are semi-finals
Rankings: 1. USC 2. Georgia 3. Texas Tech 4. Florida State
Here straight pairing would give you USC vs. Florida State in the Fiesta and Georgia vs. Texas Tech in the Peach. Geographically and tradition wise, it makes more sense to have USC vs. Texas Tech in the Fiesta and Georgia vs. Florida State in the Peach.

Example 2:
Rose and Sugar Bowls are semi-finals
Rankings: 1. Alabama 2. Oregon 3. Wisconsin 4. LSU
To me personally, preserving the Rose Bowl would often be a big goal. Here is an example where my system would actually stop a natural Rose Bowl though. Since rematches ranked ahead of traditional match-ups, instead of using Alabama vs. LSU in the Sugar and Oregon vs. Wisconsin in the Rose, we get Alabama vs. Wisconsin in the Sugar and Oregon vs. LSU in the Rose.

(10-25-2013 08:59 AM)curtis0620 Wrote:  Non-division winners should also not qualify. Florida was way over-rated last year, see Sugar Bowl result.

It only looks that way in hindsight. Prior to the BCS games Florida only had one loss and arguably the best resume around with wins over LSU, Texas A&M, Florida State and South Carolina.