In no particular order:
- Bad losses matter. OSU's loss to an unranked Purdue was specifically cited as a factor in their placement
- Schedule matters. Likewise, OU was able to overcome their shaky (and that's being generous) defense because their loss was to a ranked team, at a neutral site, by a slim margin
- There was no doubt about Notre Dame at #3. Committee chair Rob Mullens made this very point when he commented that the committee 'breezed through the top three'. All this bullshit about whether we are 'unequivocally' better is just that, bullshit. An undefeated Notre Dame, with our more than competitive schedule, will make the playoff.
- ESPN talking heads - and most notably, Kirk Herbstreit - are of no consequence. Because they command the airwaves, what they say gets the most attention, but it shouldn't.
- The entire season matters, not just the last month. Mullens made multiple references to the 'full body of work', which would indicate late season wins are not more meaningful than those in September.
- 'Who's better' is a dead argument. See above. It is your full body of work, and your schedule, and not who may or may not be playing better on selection weekend.
Nothing earth shattering, other than it is apparent that this committee blocked out the noise and stayed close to the protocol. That's a good thing.
Ohio State played great against Michigan and very good against Northwestern but the week before Michigan they almost lost to Maryland. So what is the length of time for "right now"?
Wow. It was because the Committee judged ND to be unequivocally better, not comparable to, the teams below it that it didn't go to the Protocol in deciding where to rank ND vis-a-vis those teams, while it could not agree that one of Oklahoma, Ohio State or Georgia was unequivocally better than the other:
There was little debate about Alabama, Clemson and Notre Dame. There was a lot of debate about Oklahoma, Georgia and Ohio State. The debate was deep, detailed, and occasionally contentious. There was division.
I can report to you that different people in the room made a case for a variety of different outcomes. I don't think we left any combination off the field.
Some committee members believed Georgia should be No. 4, some believed Ohio State should be No. 4. Some believed Ohio State should be No. 5. Boy, did we debate it. As we considered three teams for the No. 4 slot, the committee did not believe that any one team was unequivocally better than the next. That meant we went to our protocol.
The protocol are guidelines given to the committee by the commissioners when they created the playoff. It's our rules of the road. It includes a variety of factors that we use to judge teams. No one factor is more important than another, and this year, the difference among 4, 5 and 6 was very close.
....
"ROB MULLENS: Well, again, once we determined that -- as we were talking about those three teams being Oklahoma, Georgia and Ohio State, once we determined no one was unequivocally better, we go to the protocol, and the protocol has several factors, and conference championship is one of them. It's very important. When you look at the history of the playoffs, look at the number of conference champions that are in the playoff. It's a large percentage, so it carries plenty of weight. But there's other factors, strength of schedule, et cetera, and as we went on in this debate, that conference championship was a key piece for Oklahoma, and it did make a bit of a difference, but those teams were so tightly together, in the end the committee thought that that put Oklahoma at 4...."
The critical "lesson" we learn here that benefits ND is that, according to Mullens, "No one factor is more important than another," i.e., conference championship does not trump the tie-breaking factors.
Link: College Football Playoff Media Conference transcript
My statement was directed at the argument that an undefeated ND might not be a lock and/or could need some help, based on the unequivocally standard. I just didn't think it was realistic to believe we would be lumped into the basket of those who on the bubble of playoff eligible. You are correct that it's positive for ND that the committee did not give disproportionate weight to any particular factor.
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The standard still stands based on the rules the committee has established for itself. Conference championships do matter and as long as ND doesn't have one, we are at a disadvantage. If all things are relatively equal, ND will still lose out to conference champs. Things weren't equal this year in re: the two conference champs that got left out.
First of all, ND was 12-0 which neither of the other 2 left out conference winners are.
It would be tough to argue that ND wasn't better than conference champ OSU given the 29 point loss to a 6-6 team and a one point win over a 5-7 team with an interim head coach. And OSU didn't really get any extra cred by easing past a 8-4 team which ND beat at NW. Had OSU played a better team in the title game, it might have been a different story.
One would have to be an idiot to try to argue that ND wasn't better than 10-3 Washington which lost to a 7-5 team and eased past Stanford by 4 at home, a team that ND handily beat by 21.
Georgia, Michigan and UCF get no extra oomph that the conference champions get so 12-0 trumps the two loss teams and a team that might be pretty good but didn't play or beat anyone of consequence
In all honesty, ND vs Oklahoma might be a coin flip but the 'unequivocally' better standard doesn't really come into play since both teams are in. I suspect the committee decided an Oklahoma semi would be good for the ratings and didn't want to get work up over a somewhat pointless discussion for them.
The most important thing the committee said was the whole year counted. It takes away those morons who would argue that early seasons games don't matter.... that, for example, Michigan was a better team at the end of the year and would beat ND if they played them again and got pretty much destroyed because they lost focus on what mattered.
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3,4 & 5? Did you miss that?
I saw a couple of reporters reference the 'breeze' comment on twitter, and it's also referenced in the article linked below. I think the 'breeze' comment was made during either a later segment or during an unaired segment.
Link: Breeze
Correct...they discussed teams 3,4 and 5 as if they were in the same group. Bama and Clemson clearly separated themselves from the pack and the next 3 teams were all in the same group with all 3 teams having an arguments for being in the top 4.
But I think that we all knew that.
Three undefeated teams this year made a big difference. And those with one loss were good teams.
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This year none really did
But, yeah, if ND beat top 15 FSU and top 15 USC this year in addition to beating UM and 'Cuse . . . good chance they'd be in even with a loss to, say, Pitt. Or with a loss to UM, and then 11 straight wins. Not a sure thing, though. But a good chance. That would be wins over 4 top 25 teams, a loss to a top 10 team, and a win over Stanford (which is just outside the top 25). If we lost to UM, though, and OSU rolled UM . . . it gets interesting. Especially with OSU beating NW more decisively than we did.
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They might be # 1. That would be the way ND could pull it off with a loss. Otherwise running the table, with UM and Stanford being highly ranked. ND would have a difficult time getting in the way OU did this year — a loss at neutral site to a team that finishes with four losses — without the benefit of a championship game. And ND won’t be in the discussion like OSU was with a humiliation loss at the hands of a Purdue type team.
Absolutely brilliant analysis.
It will probably be nearly impossible for ND to get in with one loss. The lack of that 13th game would probably kill us unless complete mayhem reigned in the conference championship games.
However, this year is an anomaly, in that it is the first year there are multiple undefeated Power 5 teams. Each year to date there has been exactly one. You never know how things will fall out.
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