College Football

[manonfire101]

Eh, I hate to do it but I have to side with Mantis a little on this one. I can't help but feel like if the bowl records were reversed right now, that ESPN would have written a least a few articles talking about how great a conference the SEC is and how weak the Big 10 is and how the selection committee made the right decision in picking Alabama.

And lets get it out of the way, ESPN is by far the most prominent sports media outlet, and they own the SEC Network. The SEC network has around I think 90 million subscribers at around $0.75 per subscriber and is worth about 5 billion dollars. It's in ESPN's best interest to promote the SEC and keep its network base happy. They pretty much use all of their resources to do it -- preaseason rankings, more articles are written about SEC schools on their website, more air time is allotted to SEC schools on their main channel and sister channels, their analysts have opinions and rankings that are slanted in favor of SEC teams, even their phrasing of headlines is biased.

For comparison, the Big 10 network is worth around 1 billion and the PAC 12 network is worth around 300 million. And neither network is owned by ESPN.

Now, there aren't any ESPN analysts on the playoff selection committee. But it's pretty naive to think that ESPN isn't influencing how those voters are voting.

Ohio State doesn't have the second worst fan base in college football, they have the worst fan base in college football. However, I said before bowl games started that Ohio St deserved to be in the top 4 more than Alabama. I essentially think Alabama got rewarded for playing Mercer and Ohio St got punished for playing Oklahoma, and I think that's wrong. So even throwing bowl records out, I think Ohio State should still be there. However, given that the college football non-conference is extremely short and that a lot of teams don't play anyone in the non-con anyway, I think it's pretty silly to put zero stock into bowl records, particularly when the Big 10 is 7-0 (8-0 if Michigan wins) and the SEC is 1-3.

The good news for SEC fans is that they have 5 teams playing on Monday, including Alabama. Alabama can kick the shit out of Clemson and it will pretty much shut up the OSU vs. Alabama/SEC bias talk. But if Alabama gets drilled then people will be even more vocal than they are right now about SEC bias.

[Mantis]

I've always thought the whole "this team has the worst fanbase" thing is ludicrous. Literally ALL major teams have annoying fans, and you can't arbitrarily put a percentage or a number on how many actual annoying fans there are compared to reasonable fans. If you're a fan of a major sports team and you think your fanbase has no faults, you're kidding yourself.

I know there are annoying Ohio State fans that are unrealistic and predict us to win every game 72-0 regardless of our opponent. I also know there are a lot more fans that have reasonable (even if they are high) expectations about the program. You can't deny that Ohio State is one of the top football programs in the country year in and year out. You can't deny it about teams like Alabama and now Clemson either. All these programs and even programs that AREN'T top tier have ridiculous amount of crazy, incompetent, annoying fans. Who decides arbitrarily which teams fans are actually worse? What is the metric used? It's just such a stupid argument.

[Sanosuke]

r/CFB is probably the most civilized sports subreddit or website ever.

I think the big ten is doing extremely well for themselves and the SEC is extremely top heavy, as it always has been. People love to love and love to hate the SEC because of recency bias and its successes as a conference that's had a lot of natties. Most people in our generation have only ever seen the SEC win the most NCs throughout their actual years where they can actually enjoy being a fan, specifically as a teenager into adulthood. The only thing I dislike is that every fan that isn't an SEC fan thinks the SEC is never deserving and their team or conference is constantly measured against the SEC. You don't get to have the hype of the SEC if you're not putting the same product on the field. The SEC hasn't always been glorious but there's no reason to take a dump on the SEC so consistently either.

I'm happy about two teams from my conference in the playoffs but I wouldn't have been mad if tOSU got in over Bama. Only time I was mad at tOSU getting in was with the Penn St getting snubbed thing.

At any rate, I hope Baker is fully healthy tomorrow. I don't want a possible but unlikely win tainted with "but Baker Mayfield was sick is the only reason why y'all won". The only way to stifle that would be to win the NC.

Also our entire DLine except the one senior is returning. That's fucking insane.

[Mantis]

Penn St didn't even get snubbed last year. Everyone knew their win over OSU was a special teams fluke, and when you take that away, their resume wasn't anything impressive at all. Even with that win, it wasn't that impressive. The difference between OSU last year and Bama this year is OSU had more quality wins than ANY team in the nation. Bama this year, not so much. Least impressive resume to make the playoff by a HUGE margin.

Hindsight is 20/20 so people just say that because OSU got obliterated last year by Clemson then that means they weren't deserving. The job of the committee shouldn't be to predict the future, it should be to analyze what the teams have actually done up to that point.

[Sanosuke]

Alabama didn't have any bad losses either.

[Sanosuke]

JT Barrett playing out of his mind against oenn state this year was also a fluke

[Mantis]

JT was streaky all year. That wasn't the only game he played really well in. He's inconsistent. I'm excited to see what our new QB brings to the offense next year. Coaches have 3 very capable QBs to choose from. My guess would be Haskins since he saw the field the most this year.

[manonfire101]

Michigan seems to be trying their hardest to lose this game.

[Mantis]

Michigan seems to be trying their hardest to lose this game.

Mission accomplished. Leave it to Michigan to ruin the B1G's perfect bowl season. Can we just kick them out of the conference?

I'm not mad though, it's kind of perfect.

[Mantis]

Fuck Bama and Ohio State, why was UCF not in the playoff??!?!?!? They're gonna beat a team that manhandled the only two decent teams in the SEC.

LOLOLOL