Watching the college playoff games

[scarletred]

I'm a Gopher fan. I want a 32 team football playoff...basketball style...no byes, no home field. Give 32 teams a chance to keep their season meaningful.

Just ridiculous..32 teams.🙄

 

[9and4]

You are assuming that the games will be tough. Generally speaking, 1vs 32 would not be tough for 1 very often at all. Heck 1vs 16/17 may not be tough 1/2 of the time.

Agreed.

In the FCS playoffs, the NCAA (the CFP will do this in the 12-team FBS playoff) seeds only the top 8 teams and gives them byes in the first round, home games in the second round.

After the first round reduced the field to 16, the only nationally seeded team to lose was No. 6 Montana State, which lost 35-34 to unseeded North Dakota State, so not really a shocking defeat other than the missed PAT at the end of OT.

In the quarterfinals, at home sites, No. 5 SUNY-Albany won at No. 4 Idaho, and unseeded NDSU defeated No. 3 South Dakota. Had they seeded all 12 teams, NDSU would have been No. 11 advancing to the semis.

In the semis, No. 1 South Dakota State and No. 2 Montana won home games, the Griz beating NDSU in one of the greatest games of the year, regardless the level.

So just like the CFP this year, the FCS finals saw the top two teams clash. Neither game was close in the end, but the FCS playoffs had at least a dozen thrillers in the 23 total games. Only the CFP semifinals provided much drama in that tournament.

Bottom line, even though the highest seeds still will have the best chance to advance to the championship, there will be a lot more drama in December and January next year than there was this year.

 

[the vulcan]

I watched the two playoff games and thought they were great examples of why college football is so much fun. But it also left me depressed. I was depressed as I watched the quality of the athletes all the teams had on the field and the programs that made their appearance in the playoffs possible. It depressed me because we once had that many, many years ago.

It led to a question that has been rattling around in my head for months now. Given the nature of modern day college football is it even possible for a team with the geography and demographics of Nebraska to reach that level of play again? And let's be real here and not just spout the usual "si se puede" bullshit. Every team that is in the playoff comes from a part of the country that is rich in recruits. There are probably more D1 caliber players in Seattle alone than in the entire state of Nebraska in any given year. Of course, that did not stop Devaney or Osborne from getting recruits but that was a different era of college football. Callahan I guess proved that you could recruit to Lincoln, but he was at Nebraska when the Nebraska brand still meant a lot.

Can we do it? I am pessimistic. We have great facilities. We have great fans. We have money for NIL. We are in the premier conference. But in a conference with Washington, Oregon, USC, OSU, Michigan and PSU, how in the hell do we avoid being a perennial middle of the pack team in the B1G? How do we compete against that kind of recruiting firepower?

We were lucky that Raiola was a legacy recruit. For once we got a break. But had he not been a legacy guy he would not be coming here and we would be looking down the barrel of another year of shit QB play. Here is to hoping that our luck in landing him pans out...

Green Bay was nowhere and a joke in the NFL until Vince Lombardi. Nebraska was a has-been lost cause since before WWII, then came the one-two punch of Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne. Bill Snyder, Bear Bryant, Nick Saban and many others have proven that coaching outweighs all else (location, weather, fans, populace, etc.) but talent, and talent seeks good coaching like a moth to the light. No top coach, no top talent.

For every hire we've had since TO retired, I wished for them all to succeed, but no cigar. Still, it can happen here again. NU's dedicated fans deserve it, and I so wish for Rhule to succeed, but we have to wait and see once again...but so far, so good. It happened before, it can happen again. Bama, OU, UT, Michigan, OSU, FSU and other great programs had their down time and made a return. NU is no different. We played on the same field with the current national champ. Yep, it wasn't close, but it won't always be that way. NU is NOT a trash program, too much class, will and history for that to be true. Our time WILL come.