College Football 2012 VI: The Coaching Carousel and Bowl Prep

[Baitac]

Congratulations to Louisville. You kicked our asses fair and square. Charlie, you are the man. We miss you! The pain. The pain. :bawl:

[sperry]

I want to want the Kool Aid but just don't. I've been more than a bit strident about it all year, but a lot of my frustration over the SEC love came from the fact that neither LSU nor Florida nor Georgia really passed the 'eyeball' test in my book. Bama does. I didn't see enough of aTm to have a strong opinion there, but will still hope for Oklahoma Friday night.

The problem I see is that Alabama and Oregon were the class of the division IMO and ND belongs somewhere between Stanford and USC among teams I watched a lot of. Yeah, they squeaked by Stanford, but Stanford squeaked by Oregon and I don't really think the Cardinal were nearly as good as the Ducks - I think if you play that game ten times Oregon wins eight.

What about Alabama makes you think they're so great? They breezed through their SEC cakewalk schedule, and put a beating on an awful Michigan team, but they aren't even close to the team they were last year, and they were beatable last year. They shoudl have lost to LSU this year, and did lose to aTm. Alabama did luck out big time dodging Oregon. Oregon beats this years Bama team by about 3 touchdowns.

Notre Dame can also beat anyone in the country, though. They have the best front 7 in the country, and it's not close. I'm an Oklahoma fan, and we have a very good offensive line (not as good as Bama's, but still very strong), and Notre Dame just pushed us around all night in that game. Neither team is going to score much at all, and I expect a 17-14 type game, and it's honestly a coin flip in my opinion.

[Black Wolf Smith]

Notre Dame can also beat anyone in the country, though. They have the best front 7 in the country, and it's not close. I'm an Oklahoma fan, and we have a very good offensive line (not as good as Bama's, but still very strong), and Notre Dame just pushed us around all night in that game. Neither team is going to score much at all, and I expect a 17-14 type game, and it's honestly a coin flip in my opinion.

A team with at least 1 game they only won because of a bad call (Stanford), and having won because Pitt miss a FG in triple OT ( Pitt who had to win their last 2 games to climbed back to .500) I really don't ND is all that good.

The front 7 are pretty good, but the back 5 are average at best, and 'bama can throw the ball.

While ND may keep 'bama from scoring more then 21, I really don't see ND's Off scoring anything. They might get a Def or ST TD, or FG off a turn over.

[BLU-RAY]

I dunno. If Golston plays confidently, I'm not clear how well-equipped Alabama is to deal with a running QB (not that Alabama will roll over or anything, but I imagine that ND will score a few offensive points). The real problem is that Alabama's secondary is better than ND's wideouts, so Eiffert is going to have to carry the passcatching load for them.

It'll be a fun game, but IDK, we shall see. I think Alabama's a better team, but I've been wrong about more bowl games than I've been correct on so far.

Also, I guess we can just declare that the Big 12 was the best conference this year? Ick. I still think Oregon handles KSU, but the upper-echelon teams of the top-heavy SEC haven't looked stellar, and the PAC-12 has not looked good in their bowls, so you almost have to think it goes to the Big 12 by process-of-elimination.

[Black Wolf Smith]

I forgot why I came on this thread, glad to see UF got spanked.

[Howdyphillip]

Tonight's Sugarbowl is exactly the reason that we don't need a playoff system in college football. Louisville wouldn't have sniffed an 8 team playoff system, and even if you were to get crazy and jump it to 16, they wouldn't have made that either, but they just beat #3.

College football is, and always will have an arbitrary system for ranking teams because of how many teams play versus the low number of games that can be played in the sport. The way that the season ends for half of all of the winning teams in the league is on a win. Why in the hell should we spoil this?

[MisterOJ]

Tonight's Sugarbowl is exactly the reason that we don't need a playoff system in college football. Louisville wouldn't have sniffed an 8 team playoff system, and even if you were to get crazy and jump it to 16, they wouldn't have made that either, but they just beat #3.

College football is, and always will have an arbitrary system for ranking teams because of how many teams play versus the low number of games that can be played in the sport. The way that the season ends for half of all of the winning teams in the league is on a win. Why in the hell should we spoil this?

Sure they would have made the playoffs in an 8- or 16-team playoff format. They won their league and would have gotten the automatic bid.

[Howdyphillip]

Sure they would have made the playoffs in an 8- or 16-team playoff format. They won their league and would have gotten the automatic bid.

Any playoff system that would have put #21 Louisville in it is a joke at best, and even if they made it, there would have been a plethora of other teams between 3 and 21 that aren't in a BCS bowl that could have done the same thing.

The fact of the matter is that you can not have a fair selection for playoff teams in FBS. What will happen is you end up crowning a champion that other teams will be able to say that they could beat. You do this at the expense of the college regular season, how the fans root for college football, and then give a majority of good teams a bad ending to their season. College playoffs is a dumb idea...

[MisterOJ]

Any playoff system that would have put #21 Louisville in it is a joke at best, and even if they made it, there would have been a plethora of other teams between 3 and 21 that aren't in a BCS bowl that could have done the same thing.

The fact of the matter is that you can not have a fair selection for playoff teams in FBS. What will happen is you end up crowning a champion that other teams will be able to say that they could beat. You do this at the expense of the college regular season, how the fans root for college football, and then give a majority of good teams a bad ending to their season. College playoffs is a dumb idea...

They've been doing it for years and years in FCS and the folks that play at that level don't think it's a dumb idea. I've been to several FCS playoff games over the years, since I lived in Bowling Green and Western Kentucky was a power in FCS (then Division I-AA) at the time. It can and does work just fine with a 16-team playoff. It would for FBS as well.

[Ferrum Aeternum]

Any playoff system that would have put #21 Louisville in it is a joke at best, and even if they made it, there would have been a plethora of other teams between 3 and 21 that aren't in a BCS bowl that could have done the same thing.

If a team wins its conference*, it belongs in the discussion, because there are too few games played between teams in different conferences during the regular season to empirically determine which is best. The fairest way to determine a champion is therefore to let those conference champions (plus a few other very successful teams) duke it out until one comes out on top. If a playoff works in every other division 1 sport, and in every other level of football, why not the FBS?

As to that plethora of other teams, they will need to make sure that they either win their conference or make enough of an impression to prove they deserve one of the at-large spots. It wouldn't be a perfect system obviously, and of course there would be bubble teams and controversy surrounding that every year. But it would still be more fair and equitable than a completely arbitrary system such as you propose.

Personally I'm less concerned with a bubble team's gripe about being left out of the 8 team playoff than I am an obvious top-5 team having no shot of winning a title.

*by "conference," I mean (as they currently stand) the SEC, ACC, B1G, Big 12 and Pac 12.

What will happen is you end up crowning a champion that other teams will be able to say that they could beat.

So what? I'm fairly certain that's the case in every championship system in every sport around the world. It's still more fair than arbitrarily picking a champion among several teams that deserve consideration.

You do this at the expense of the college regular season, how the fans root for college football, and then give a majority of good teams a bad ending to their season.

There's no reason to eliminate the bowls as a consolation prize to teams that don't make the playoff, especially if the playoff is limited to only 8 teams. Given the current bowl structure, that would still leave 60 teams with a chance at finishing the regular season with a win (too many in my opinion, but that's a discussion for another day).

[Ken Stone]

Any playoff system that would have put #21 Louisville in it is a joke at best, and even if they made it, there would have been a plethora of other teams between 3 and 21 that aren't in a BCS bowl that could have done the same thing.

The fact of the matter is that you can not have a fair selection for playoff teams in FBS. What will happen is you end up crowning a champion that other teams will be able to say that they could beat. You do this at the expense of the college regular season, how the fans root for college football, and then give a majority of good teams a bad ending to their season. College playoffs is a dumb idea...

Here's how I look at this. Let's pretend for a second there were no FBS post season. There were no bowl games, no playoff, nothing. Someone comes up with the idea that there should be a post season and a champion should be crowned. Everyone agree's it's a great idea. In that world, would the "okay we'll use a lot of computers to determine who is the best, but also use human polls because computers aren't perfect and oh yeah, we need special rules for ND and lets not forget that an SEC team should always play for the championship and...." system ever get off the ground? Of course not. Why? BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING RETARDED!

Instead there would be a playoff. Because a champion is determined on the fucking field, not in a hard drive or a voters imagination. Don't give me this "FBS is special" nonsense. The kid who picks his scabs and eats them and gets recess in High School is special. FBS is a Sport and should be treated like one.

[Ken Stone]

It just occured to me. I'm pushing 40 and I may die in a world where:

1) There are still people doing time for smoking Marijuanna

2) Gay people are still not allowed to marry a person they love

and

3) FBS champions are still partially determined BY FUCKING POLLS!

If you would have told 19 year old Ken that he would have just killed himself.

[Bronn Stone]

The Bowl Structure with its history (good and bad) would make a perfectly fine foundation for an eight team tournament of champions. I have laid out my whole scenario in the past and I still think it a good one. And it makes use of the Rose, Orange, Fiesta and Sugar Bowls as the first round (though part of me would like to see the Cotton and its longer great history replace the parvenu Fiesta).

I'd MUCH rather have the participants in such a tournament be decided by winning leagues than by a beauty contest. And yes, in my scenario a pretty good team would have lost a slot to a lesser team this year. I'm not sure how it would have shaken out. But assuming (safely I think) the ten teams that played/play in BCS bowls would be reduced to eight. Six of my eight slots are reserved for league champions. A seventh goes to a league champion or an independent (this year ND is a no-brainer) and the eighth would have gone to Oregon, Florida or whichever team didn't take the 6th slot out of NI or Louisville.

My feelings are that if you want to be champion, win your league. If you want your league champion to be decided on the field, play more league games. If you refuse to play more league games so that businesses in your small town have more chances to sell trinkets to wahoos, understand that this will sometimes cost you a chance to earn a spot in the tournament. If you don't like it, suck sand. Wild Cards should be kept at a minimum when there are more than enough leagues to fill the tournament. I don't think Div 1 football can ever reach the level of awesomeness we get in basketball, where EVERY team starts the season with a real chance of winning it all, but this is about as close as you can get.

[MisterOJ]

So Joker Phillips served as WR coach for Florida last night.

Yep. That means he lost twice this year to Louisville - while coaching two different teams. That has to be some sort of record, doesn't it?

Anyway, Phillips and Charlie Strong were hired the same year at UK and Louisville respectively.

Phillips was a done deal as he had been named head coach in waiting a couple years prior. When Joker Phillips was named head coach in waiting. I thought it was stupid then, and it looks even stupider now.

It was the hip thing to do at the time, though. That year alone, Oregon, Texas, Maryland, Kentucky, Purdue and Florida State all named head coaches in waiting.

Two of the coaches took other jobs, rather than wait for their bosses to quit (Muschamp and Franklin) and two have now been fired for losing too much (Phillips and Hope) and that leaves just Chip Kelly and Jimbo Fisher. Chip Kelly has been a huge success. No question about that. Jimbo has had great recruiting success at FSU, but his teams have also seemed to underachieve a bit. At least by my estimation.

There was also the big HCIW fiasco at West Virginia.

Is the consensus now that naming a HCIW is a pretty dumb thing to do? I wonder what would have happened if UK had not been obligated to hire Joker Phillips three years ago and instead had an open coaching search? I wonder what UK fans would be talking about today if that had happened and AD Mitch Barnhart had hired, say... Charlie Strong, instead of Joker Phillips?

[Ken Stone]

The Bowl Structure with its history (good and bad) would make a perfectly fine foundation for an eight team tournament of champions. I have laid out my whole scenario in the past and I still think it a good one. And it makes use of the Rose, Orange, Fiesta and Sugar Bowls as the first round (though part of me would like to see the Cotton and its longer great history replace the parvenu Fiesta).

I'd MUCH rather have the participants in such a tournament be decided by winning leagues than by a beauty contest. And yes, in my scenario a pretty good team would have lost a slot to a lesser team this year. I'm not sure how it would have shaken out. But assuming (safely I think) the ten teams that played/play in BCS bowls would be reduced to eight. Six of my eight slots are reserved for league champions. A seventh goes to a league champion or an independent (this year ND is a no-brainer) and the eighth would have gone to Oregon, Florida or whichever team didn't take the 6th slot out of NI or Louisville.

My feelings are that if you want to be champion, win your league. If you want your league champion to be decided on the field, play more league games. If you refuse to play more league games so that businesses in your small town have more chances to sell trinkets to wahoos, understand that this will sometimes cost you a chance to earn a spot in the tournament. If you don't like it, suck sand. Wild Cards should be kept at a minimum when there are more than enough leagues to fill the tournament. I don't think Div 1 football can ever reach the level of awesomeness we get in basketball, where EVERY team starts the season with a real chance of winning it all, but this is about as close as you can get.

I think your scenario is about the best that we can realistically hope for.

[Rhom]

So Joker Phillips served as WR coach for Florida last night.

Yep. That means he lost twice this year to Louisville - while coaching two different teams. That has to be some sort of record, doesn't it?

Anyway, Phillips and Charlie Strong were hired the same year at UK and Louisville respectively.

Phillips was a done deal as he had been named head coach in waiting a couple years prior. When Joker Phillips was named head coach in waiting. I thought it was stupid then, and it looks even stupider now.

It was the hip thing to do at the time, though. That year alone, Oregon, Texas, Maryland, Kentucky, Purdue and Florida State all named head coaches in waiting.

Two of the coaches took other jobs, rather than wait for their bosses to quit (Muschamp and Franklin) and two have now been fired for losing too much (Phillips and Hope) and that leaves just Chip Kelly and Jimbo Fisher. Chip Kelly has been a huge success. No question about that. Jimbo has had great recruiting success at FSU, but his teams have also seemed to underachieve a bit. At least by my estimation.

There was also the big HCIW fiasco at West Virginia.

Is the consensus now that naming a HCIW is a pretty dumb thing to do? I wonder what would have happened if UK had not been obligated to hire Joker Phillips three years ago and instead had an open coaching search? I wonder what UK fans would be talking about today if that had happened and AD Mitch Barnhart had hired, say... Charlie Strong, instead of Joker Phillips?

That whole process was an abomination and I'm hopeful that we've seen the end of it.

[Bronn Stone]

The regular season would still be hugely meaningful to the point where your first loss was dreaded.

If you have an eight team playoff and six or seven slots are reserved for league champions, one non-conference loss means almost nothing. Play a USC schedule (most years they play ND and someone else good and their third games are usually at least decent) or play a Bill Snyder schedule and it is pretty much the same. Lose three or four and you start being at risk of not being in the top 7 champions, but one or two don't derail you. Unless the games you lose are in-conference and they cause you to lose your league in which case, well, losing is bad. It leads to non-championships.

[Kalbear]

My ideal universe would have winning your conference as the way to get into the playoffs and your OOC schedule as your way for determining your seeding and home field advantage in the playoffs. Encourage both.

[MisterOJ]

My ideal universe would have winning your conference as the way to get into the playoffs and your OOC schedule as your way for determining your seeding and home field advantage in the playoffs. Encourage both.

Best way to do that is with a 16-team playoff.

If more people followed both FCS and FBS, there would be a lot more people calling for a 16-team playoff in FBS. The FCS playoffs are cool and entertaining and just well done. But, since it's a lot of smaller schools and no one really cares enough to follow FCS, no one really knows just how well their system works.

[Kalbear]

I mostly have a problem with the proposed 16-team playoff that has 5 (now, really, 6) shitty champions as autobids. It's idiotic to get the MAC an autobid most years, as an example. Or the Sun Beast or whatever they're calling it. Unlike the FCS which doesn't actually do it this way. Some autobids are fine, but until the conferences are significantly closer in power level and are consistently balanced - something that can't happen in CFB - it's a bad, bad idea.

Point of fact: how often do you really want to see a game like Northern Illinois vs. Florida State?