(01-02-2018, 02:31 PM)Jaguarmeister Wrote:

(01-02-2018, 01:50 PM)mikesez Wrote: I see it a little differently.  I think the Power Five teams see themselves as a closed club, and they only want to play non Power Five teams to get an easy win.  If a smaller team is required to get two power conference games on its schedule, suddenly the power conference teams will clam up and getting them to schedule you, if there is any chance you might be good, will become mission impossible.  The Power Five will never schedule the required games unless the fans and sports networks hold their feet to the fire and make them.
Also, I don't think undefeated-ness should be the be-all and end-all for smaller conference teams.  The 2015 Houston Cougars played two Power Five teams in the regular season, and beat both of them, but had one in-conference loss.  Yet they showed they should have been in the playoffs by demolishing FSU in the Peach Bowl that year.  So that "one loss" should have been viewed as a "quality loss" to the extent that such things even exist.
The fans need to understand that since all teams will play a majority of their games against opponents in their conference, talking about "strength of schedule" relies mostly on unprovable assumptions.  In other words, they shouldn't be sure that any one conference is better than any other conference.
Once they understand that, the fans will demand not only an 8 team playoff (at a minimum) but also a rigorous requirement for the top teams in one conference to schedule one or two games with the top teams in other conferences, based only on the previous year's result, like the NFL.

The power 5 teams absolutely see themselves as a private club and you would too if you were spending the amount of money on your football program that most of them do that smaller conference schools generally couldn't dream of doing.  However, I never said one loss would exclude a smaller conference team, they just wouldn't get the automatic bid.  They'd be evaluated against all other potential wildcard candidates.  It would obviously be harder for them to be included with one loss because they likely wouldn't be in the top 10, but if they're not a top 10 team already (I'm being generous here by not saying top 8 team) even with the one loss they don't deserve to be in the playoff.  You're never going to get the power 5 conferences to agree to sharing the prestige and money that goes along with their current status by keeping the door open for and granting equal opportunity to small conference teams.  But the system I've outlined does allow a small conference team to open the door for themselves if they take care of their business.  And the power 5 can rest assured that undefeated small conference teams don't happen all that regularly.  

Secondly, most power 5 teams already schedule 2 or 3 small conference teams per year.  You can't tell me Duke or some other power 5 school where football isn't the main focus is going to look at a potential small conference opponent and say "ah, nope... can't have you making the playoff off our backs, sorry sucka."  It isn't and wouldn't be hard for a small conference school to get two power 5 teams on their schedule.  I haven't looked at everyone's schedule, but I'd venture a guess that any respectable small conference program already does.  I mean, who are the power 5 going to schedule in place of the small conferences they have on their schedule now if they decided to blackball the smaller conferences?  More power 5 teams?  That would likely result in more losses and less likelihood of them making the playoffs as well.

At any rate, UCF deserved to play in a hypothetical expanded playoff this year.  I would have liked to see them get that GT game under their belt though.  Maybe they would have been creamed by another playoff team that actually was playing for something instead of playing in a meaningless exhibition game, but they earned the right to be properly tested and the fans deserved to see it as well.

The human mind can be made into quite a remarkable fountain of excuses.  Now you're going to say Auburn wasn't trying.  I don't know.  The fans leaving the stadium looked pretty upset to lose.  I didn't get close enough to the players to see.  But I have to think that the players and coaches strongly wanted to end their season with a win and preserve the reputation of the SEC.

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(01-02-2018, 02:02 PM)Perkolater Wrote: When you only play one decent team all year you can't expect to be in the playoff.     They play a cream puff schedule.  Does anyone really believe they would have been undefeated playing an SEC schedule?

That's not the right question to ask.  None of the SEC teams were undefeated.  The better question to ask is if they could have ended up with one loss in the SEC, as Georgia and Alabama did.  And, based on the Auburn game result, the answer is clearly, "Yes, probably."

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