bohumm
Posts: 5705
Joined: 10/28/2007
From: Altadena, CA
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quote:
ORIGINAL: djskillz quote:
ORIGINAL: McMurfy On one hand you argue about 7 of the past 8 years by 4 different teams, then you go on to argue that you cannot compare this year's FSU team to last years, because they are two different teams. Come on man, you can do better than that. But I'm not arguing for those individual teams. I'm not saying "Florida should be in the playoff; they're awesome." Or LSU. I'm arguing the strength and depth of the conference over the last 10 years. No other conference is close in matching that. Should the Seahawks get an automatic playoff bid because they won the Super Bowl last year? This is a pretty good take too, especially the bolded part. He's right: 1. Alabama 2. Oregon 3. Mississippi State and 4. Florida State. Baylor will be fifth and TCU will be sixth with Ohio State in seventh place. (There's some possibility Ohio State jumps TCU once the Buckeyes are official Big Ten champs). There probably wouldn't be that much debate over the top three teams -- I'm assuming that the committee wouldn't have the guts to drop undefeated FSU out of the playoff -- and 12-1 Oregon and Alabama would be easy decisions. So what about the fourth team? When you compare resumes it's pretty easy to see it would be 11-1 Mississippi State. Mississippi State has the best collection of wins of any of the one-loss teams other than Alabama and Oregon -- I'm assuming that both of these teams will finish 12-1 -- and has by far the best loss. Let's examine these resumes more closely like we were on the committee. Let's start with the losses: Of TCU, Baylor, Mississippi State, and Ohio State only Mississippi State and TCU lost to currently ranked teams. TCU's loss is to Baylor, a team that has to be ranked above them. Baylor lost by 14 to an unranked West Virginia team, but Ohio State has the worst loss of any of the top six one loss teams, a 14 point home loss to an awful Virginia Tech team. Mississippi State lost by five on the road at Alabama, who may be the top ranked team in the country when the new committee poll comes out Tuesday. Even Oregon, the committee's present number two team doesn't have as good of a loss as Mississippi State, having lost at home to Arizona. So of the one loss teams, Mississippi State has the "best loss," by a pretty substantial margin. TCU has the second best loss, Baylor the third best loss, and Ohio State has the worst loss of all. What about best wins? Ohio State and Mississippi State both have one top 25 win -- Texas A&M, LSU, and Minnesota fell out of the poll this week -- and with the return of Oklahoma to the poll Baylor and TCU each have two top 25 wins. The best win of this group is Baylor over TCU. As I'll discuss below the non-conference schedule is insubstantial for all of these teams so it has no real impact on this decision. Mississippi State is the only team with a game left against a present top ten opponent while Baylor still has #12 Kansas State the last week of the season. Ohio State will probably get Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game, but unfortunately Wisconsin has already lost to LSU, the sixth ranked team in the SEC West. (It's worth noting that unranked LSU has more top 14 victories, two, than any team in the country.) So that Ohio State win over Wisconsin, if it happens, will be undercut by the fact that the sixth place team in the SEC West also beat them. (Let me also take a moment to say that I believe the committee should be using the Las Vegas top 25 instead of the actual top 25 to consider wins. Arkansas, for instance, beat top 20 LSU this weekend, but the unranked Razorbacks were favored to win that game. According to Vegas 5-5 Arkansas is a top 25 team. Indeed, the Razorbacks are just two point underdogs to top ten Ole Miss. Arkansas would be favored to beat every ACC team on a neutral field except for FSU, and that game would be tight. Southern Cal just snuck back into the top 25, but they've been a Vegas top 25 team all season. If UCLA beats Southern Cal this weekend, USC will fall out of the top 25, but Southern Cal will still be one of the 25 best teams in the country. The Vegas top 25 is more accurate than the actual top 25.) Right now the objective rankings of these four teams has to be: 1. Mississippi State 2. Baylor 3. TCU 4. Ohio State and the only possible team you can argue should be ranked above Mississippi State is Baylor. That's why when you consider all the data, 11-1 Mississippi State would be in the playoff. Ohio State also has a better win, though. Who has Baylor or TCU beaten that you think could beat Mich State?
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