College Football Thread

[thelakelander]

Lol, my UM season ended a long time ago. Glad there's no toilet bowl game embarrassment in line next month. I saw all I needed to see against Middle Tennessee State at home. Mario has his work cut out for him. Luckily, I can drown my sorrows in watching Dolphins games on Sundays.

[jaxlongtimer]

Iconic Notre Dame vs. Hot South Carolina in the Gator Bowl.  Should be the best game there in years with both teams ranked as well.

Update:  Went online and almost sold out of direct sale tix.  Most now available are resales.  Looks like a sell out.  Great for the GB.

[BridgeTroll]

Looks like a full stadium on TV...

[blizz01]

Did not disappoint.  Nice shots of downtown too.

[tufsu1]

Lol, my UM season ended a long time ago. Glad there's no toilet bowl game embarrassment in line next month. I saw all I needed to see against Middle Tennessee State at home. Mario has his work cut out for him. Luckily, I can drown my sorrows in watching Dolphins games on Sundays.

Update: UM has won exactly one bowl game since 2008. Also, watching Dolphins games since this post can't be helping drown the sorrows.

[thelakelander]

^It's a great time to watch UM BASKETBALL!!!!

[Ken_FSU]

Fucking DISGRACEFUL.

13-0.

ACC Champs.

Top 4 in the BCS, Coaches, AND AP polls.

Best defense in the nation.

And these idiots subjectively decided, "Naw, no thanks."

Why even bother playing the regular season?

Penalized for overcoming adversity.

Cool story, bro.

[thelakelander]

I'm not a FSU fan and knew some fan base would be passed today. The message I get is that it doesn't matter what a team does in the regular season if they aren't in the SEC or Big 10. It sucked as a UM fan when FSU lost to Miami and still played Oklahoma in the championship. Canes would have beat the breaks off the Sooners that year. But at least the teams both had one loss. I never expected to see a one loss team get in over an undefeated Power Five conference champ.

[Charles Hunter]

This is the last year of the 4-team CFP format. Next year will have a twelve team playoff.

The new 12-team College Football Playoff field will include the six highest-ranked conference champions, which will receive automatic bids. The top four teams will receive a first-round bye to the quarterfinals.

The six highest-ranked teams remaining will round out the 12-team format.

The article uses this year's rankings to illustrate how it would work.
It also gives the bowl games that will be involved for the 2024 and 2025 seasons - no Gator Bowl.

https://www.ncaa.com/news/football/article/2023-12-03/how-12-team-college-football-playoff-will-work-teams-schedule-bids

[jaxlongtimer]

FSU does have a case as made by Ken. 

But, playing devils advocate from an agnostic bystander... Alabama beat #1 Ga. and only lost to #3 Texas.  FSU didn't have a very strong schedule in the minds of many.  Reminds me of the NCAA basketball selection... sometimes strength of schedule counts more than the face value of a record.

Beat Georgia worse than Alabama and FSU fans will definitely have an "I told you so" case.

Won't be an issue next season... unless your team is on the "bubble" for the #12 selection.  I expect even more hand wringing next year as there are going to be a lot more teams in contention for the 12 spot than the 4 spot in most years.

[Steve]

What I don't get is what did Texas do to move from #7 to #3? They beat the pants off of an OkSt team that lost to UCF?

I mean, either conference championships matter or they don't.
- Georgia had a heck of a season and their only blemish was Alabama. This would seemingly indicate that conference championships matter.
- FSU clearly isn't the same team as they were with Travis, but they beat everyone they were asked to play and won their conference. This would seemingly indicate that conference championships don't matter.

It's pretty clear to me that they'd rather have big money programs. Alabama and Texas are head and shoulders over FSU in terms of merch sales and fanbase.

[thelakelander]

Yes, on field play does not matter in college football. Money does.

[Todd_Parker]

We wouldn't be in this predicament if Auburn DBs didn't let Alabama receivers get behind them on a 4th and goal from the 31(!) yard line.

[jaxlongtimer]

No secret, ESPN calls the shots in return for their billions, especially now with ESPN struggling to hold on to is subscriber base.

[thelakelander]

Michigan also got caught cheating....but that's okay.