(01-02-2018, 02:44 PM)mikesez Wrote:

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

The human mind generally responds more positively to incentives.  UCF had a clear incentive of remaining perfect and finishing with an unblemished record.  What was Auburn's incentive?  A shiny peach bowl trophy?  Or to be the name that pops up when people 5 years from now can't remember who won the 2018 Peach Bowl and decide to google it?  It doesn't mean they weren't trying in the moment, but people in general get up for and prepare for events or tasks more so when they are incentivized to do so.  At any rate, going in this direction doesn't really interest me enough to continue so that will be the last I'll say on the subject of it being a meaningless game.  I'm happy to continue discussing the merits of hypothetical playoff systems, however.

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