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You know, while they've obviously got their hands full and SHOULD be the underdogs Ohio State has got to be encouraged in terms of believing they can win after what's happened to teams from the SEC West over the past couple of days. Kind of makes how Alabama looked within the SEC appear not quite so impressive.

JohnStOnge wrote:You know, while they've obviously got their hands full and SHOULD be the underdogs Ohio State has got to be encouraged in terms of believing they can win after what's happened to teams from the SEC West over the past couple of days. Kind of makes how Alabama looked within the SEC appear not quite so impressive.

Yup...
As soon as FBS moved to a playoff system you knew the SEC would get an introduction to the rest of college football and they SHRUNK at the challenge

Frankly I'm not surprised
The SEC's reputation is a product of over-hype

You know, I do think the SEC is over time the toughest conference with the most talent per team. If you look at NFL player production per team in each conference the SEC is going to come out #1. But I also think SEC fans over estimate how good the SEC is relative to other leagues.

Another thing: If we'd been under the old BCS system I think the "national championship" game would've been Alabama and Florida State. Even this LITTLE bit of a playoff shows how much of a difference a playoff can make.

Meanwhile watch out for Ohio State for the future. As I wrote in another thread that school is in a GREAT place for developing an extremely high talent level. With Meyer there the outlook for the future is EXTREMELY bright.

They beat Alabama tonight with the quarterback that going into summer/fall practice was #3 on their depth chart. And they beat Alabama in spite of being on the short end of the giveaway/takeaway stat.

JohnStOnge wrote:You know, I do think the SEC is over time the toughest conference with the most talent per team. If you look at NFL player production per team in each conference the SEC is going to come out #1. But I also think SEC fans over estimate how good the SEC is relative to other leagues.

Another thing: If we'd been under the old BCS system I think the "national championship" game would've been Alabama and Florida State. Even this LITTLE bit of a playoff shows how much of a difference a playoff can make.

Meanwhile watch out for Ohio State for the future. As I wrote in another thread that school is in a GREAT place for developing an extremely high talent level. With Meyer there the outlook for the future is EXTREMELY bright.

They beat Alabama tonight with the quarterback that going into summer/fall practice was #3 on their depth chart. And they beat Alabama in spite of being on the short end of the giveaway/takeaway stat.

It would have been even better with TCU, Baylor, etc in.

It would have been even better with TCU, Baylor, etc in.

Oh yeah, if it were up to me they'd have a format like FCS does. There are 10 FBS conferences so 10 automatic bids then 14 at large berths. So plenty of room to let every FBS conference champ have an automatic bid regardless of what people think of their conferences and at the same time have a very high probability of including every team that's not a conference champ but has a reasonable shot at winning the title in.

Only difference is, shockingly, I would select a good power rating system everybody agrees on and say the at large bids go to the highest rated 14 teams that didn't win conference championships. No human opinions other than a pre existing opinion as to what the best power rating system to use is. Everybody knows before the season starts how it's going to work then at the end its automatic.

If you'd have done that this year this is how it would've turned out if Sagarin Ratings as of December 6 were used to select the at large teams (except I'm including Georgia Southern even though they probably wouldn't have been eligible since they were the real Sun Belt champ):

Champions

Memphis
Florida State
Baylor
Ohio State
Marshall
Northern Illinois
Boise State
Oregon
Alabama
Georgia Southern

At Large

TCU
Ole Miss
Mississippi State
Georgia
Auburn
Michigan State
LSU
Kansas State
Arkansas
Oklahoma
Missouri
UCLA
Georgia Tech
USC

Would've been great. You could quibble about some of the at large teams but I don't think there are any teams that would have a realstic shot of getting through the tournament left out. And there would've been some cool matchups.

This is how the first round bracket would have looked if you went strictly at seeding according to Sagarin except adjusting to avoid two teams form the same conference playing in the first round:

Northern Illinois at Auburn
Georgia Southern at Michigan State
Memphis at LSU
Boise State at Kansas State
Marshall at Arkansas
USC at Oklahoma
Georgia Tech at Missouri*
UCLA at Florida State

*Without the conference adjustment it's be Georgia Tech at Florida State and UCLA at Missouri.

Would've been a highly interesting tournament.

JohnStOnge wrote:

It would have been even better with TCU, Baylor, etc in.

Oh yeah, if it were up to me they'd have a format like FCS does. There are 10 FBS conferences so 10 automatic bids then 14 at large berths. So plenty of room to let every FBS conference champ have an automatic bid regardless of what people think of their conferences and at the same time have a very high probability of including every team that's not a conference champ but has a reasonable shot at winning the title in.

Only difference is, shockingly, I would select a good power rating system everybody agrees on and say the at large bids go to the highest rated 14 teams that didn't win conference championships. No human opinions other than a pre existing opinion as to what the best power rating system to use is. Everybody knows before the season starts how it's going to work then at the end its automatic.

If you'd have done that this year this is how it would've turned out if Sagarin Ratings as of December 6 were used to select the at large teams (except I'm including Georgia Southern even though they probably wouldn't have been eligible since they were the real Sun Belt champ):

Champions

Memphis
Florida State
Baylor
Ohio State
Marshall
Northern Illinois
Boise State
Oregon
Alabama
Georgia Southern

At Large

TCU
Ole Miss
Mississippi State
Georgia
Auburn
Michigan State
LSU
Kansas State
Arkansas
Oklahoma
Missouri
UCLA
Georgia Tech
USC

Would've been great. You could quibble about some of the at large teams but I don't think there are any teams that would have a realstic shot of getting through the tournament left out. And there would've been some cool matchups.

This is how the first round bracket would have looked if you went strictly at seeding according to Sagarin except adjusting to avoid two teams form the same conference playing in the first round:

Northern Illinois at Auburn
Georgia Southern at Michigan State
Memphis at LSU
Boise State at Kansas State
Marshall at Arkansas
USC at Oklahoma
Georgia Tech at Missouri*
UCLA at Florida State

*Without the conference adjustment it's be Georgia Tech at Florida State and UCLA at Missouri.

Would've been a highly interesting tournament.

Gag me with a fucking spoon. At MOST they need 16 teams in....probably better with 8.

Pac 12 Champ
Big 10 Champ
Big 12 Champ
ACC Champ
SEC Champ
Best Little 5 Team (most likely Boise )
At Large (most likely Notre Dame, unless they suck)
At Large

Whether or not the SEC is still the #1 league is debatable I guess, but what is no longer debatable is whatever "gap" existed between the SEC & the rest of college football has disappeared.

Personally I've thought the Pac-12 was just as good as the SEC this year.

bluehenbillk wrote:Whether or not the SEC is still the #1 league is debatable I guess, but what is no longer debatable is whatever "gap" existed between the SEC & the rest of college football has disappeared.

Personally I've thought the Pac-12 was just as good as the SEC this year.

One thing that has not been debatable is that the SEC produces more NFL caliber players than any other league.

Also, on a secondary level, the SEC would still be rated the toughest conference this year by Sagarin's conference strength ratings. Right now it goes like this:

1 SEC-WEST (A) = 88.56 88.72 ( 1) 7 88.67 ( 1)
2 PAC-12(SOUTH) (A) = 80.47 79.05 ( 2) 6 79.70 ( 2)
3 SEC-EAST (A) = 79.45 78.69 ( 3) 7 79.25 ( 3)
4 BIG 12 (A) = 76.17 76.57 ( 6) 10 76.28 ( 5)
5 BIG TEN-EAST (A) = 75.79 77.59 ( 4) 7 77.98 ( 4)
6 PAC-12(NORTH) (A) = 75.29 76.81 ( 5) 6 75.73 ( 6)
7 ACC-ATLANTIC (A) = 74.88 74.22 ( 8) 7 74.68 ( 7)
8 ACC-COASTAL (A) = 74.43 74.86 ( 7) 7 74.62 ( 8)
9 BIG TEN-WEST (A) = 72.94 72.94 ( 9) 7 72.94 ( 9)

And when you look at the SEC losses against other Big 5 conferences in bowl games, it looks like this:

Auburn, 4-4 in the SEC, lost on a last play field goal to Wisconsin, 7 - 1 in the Big 10
Mississippi, 5-3, in the SEC, got blown out by TCU, 8-1 n the Big 12
Alabama, 7-1 in the SEC, lost by a touchdown to Ohio State, 8-0 in the Big 10
Mississippi State, 6-2 in the SEC, lost by 15 to Georgia Tech, 6-2 in the ACC

Their wins against other Big 5 conferences went like this:

Arkansas, 2-6 in the SEC, beat Texas, 5-4 in the Big 12, by 24
Texas A&M, 3-5 in the SEC, beat West Virginia, 5-4 in the Big 12, by 9
Missouri, which finished 7-1 in the SEC, beat Minnesota, which finished 5-3 in the Big 10, by 16
Georgia, which finished 6-2 in the SEC, beat Louisville, which finished 5-3 in the ACC, by 23
Tennessee, which finished 3-5 in the SEC, beat Iowa, which finished 4-4 in the Big 10, by 17
South Carolina, which finished 3-5 in the SEC, beat Miami, which finished 3-5 in the ACC, by 3

When you consider how the teams in each matchup fared in their own conferences it's not a bad performance. Sure, they'd like to have done better. But when you consider how the matchups went with respect to how teams finished in their respective conferences it wasn't bad.