Agree, Alabama was not good enough to win the SEC, but they were good enough to win a four team playoff. A four team playoff is a joke, there are a lot of teams that could win the national title under this format, imo.
Georgia's SEC East is much much easier than Alabama's SEC West. Put Alabama in the SEC East (Georgia in the West) and Bama most likely makes it to the SEC Championship game.
IMO conference championships are a playoff game. The problem is in a 4 team playoff the CFP committee can’t treat them as such since there are 5 power conferences. So there is a built in need for subjective criteria. Make the playoff 6 with the P5 champs plus an at large so that the committees sole responsibility is to place the wild card.
The problem with this is that what you say is true now, but won't always be true. Just like when Nebraska won 3 out of 4 NC in the 90s, the Big 12 North was the superior division, but that shifted in the 2000s to the south with Oklahoma and Texas. Nothing is perfect, obviously, and we will always wonder who was more deserving at times like this.
Don't forget to mention Alabama didn't even win their division.
Good point, I did forget to mention that! So Auburn is the division winner, Georgia is the conference winner, but Bama is the NC winner... I wonder how often we will see something like this... Probably not very often, at this point... if they expand the playoffs, it will happen more I suppose.
It would add more games though. Not simple.
It's already happened. And, no, I didn't think we belonged in the 2002 Rose Bowl at the time. I realize we didn't win, but even if we had, that title should have had an asterisk beside it.
I’m not discounting that they were the best team this year. It’s just weird to not call them SEC champions, not even SEC West Division Champions, but call them National Champions. I would venture to guess it won’t happen very often. Ohio State, Alabama, Clemson all were conference champions, and I suspect most of the time the NC winners will also be conference champions.
Nah, Alabama had no argument for being in the playoffs. For crying out loud, they weren't even able to win their division in the SEC.
It’s not forgotten. I know we backed in as well. Didn’t mean it was the right call then... it was HEAVILY criticized then, but now it’s ok. Is it because it’s Bama?
. Someone else posted something about us not deserving to play in the game and totally backing in. No one here would have complained. Or say a split NC counts as a finn NC.
Lol. Exactly. Want to revisit 2001
The UCF NC has got to stop. They wouldn’t win 5 games in the Big 12.
Who in his thread is saying UCF should have been there? I haven’t seen a single post even hinting that!Lol. Exactly. Want to revisit 2001
The UCF NC has got to stop. They wouldn’t win 5 games in the Big 12.
Who else goes in ahead of Nebraska that year?
Winning your state means nothing unless you're in the same conference. You're right about winning conference or division, but you can't ignore that the SEC West is much more difficult than the SEC East. Doesn't matter though as Alabama proved they deserved to be in the playoffs by winning it all and they were the only team in question for this years playoffs.
Very true and this would change year to year depending on how strong each conference/division is on each given year. If Alabama was in a weak division like Georgia or a weak conference like the PAC12 then I wouldn't change my stance on Alabama deserving to be in the playoffs.
Odd for sure.
My argument is there is too small of a sample size of regular season matchups. 130 FBS teams, and each team only plays 12-13 other teams (10%). Each conference has a method of determining a champion. If you can't win your conference, you shouldn't be in a playoff that is limited to 4 teams (a hair over 3% of FBS). If the playoff is expanded, I have no problem with teams who don't win their conference being included as long as the conference champs are in the playoff. (Obviously this brings into question how large the expansion should be, and if only the P5 conference champs are automatic qualifiers, anti-trust issues, etc.).
