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Bama is ranked higher than us. We have the same record with a better resume an we beat them head to head. I don’t care how much we lost USC by we still should be ranked higher than them. Makes zero sense. :bird:

Not only did we beat them, we absolutely smoked the only other team to beat them in their house.

Bama’s best win is…what, Texas? And they would have lost that one had Ewers not gotten hurt.

Makes no sense. Going into yesterday UT had beaten 2 top 10 playoff poll teams...beat Bama head to head and we had played the No.1 team in UGA and Bama had not.

It come down to a beauty contest that ESPN and others are pushing. Some being.....

Bama name over UT name
Saban name over Heupel name
QB Young over QB Milton

Just watch: if TCU or USC slip up next week, they’re going to put bammer or OSU in and all hell is going to break loose.

Watch USC and TCU both lose and they both slide in.

What is the hold up on expanding the playoffs? I don't think we would do particularly well without Hooker, but curious.

https://www.si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq/ncaa-football/college-football-playoff-expansion-rose-bowl-negotiations

Thanks. Not sure I understand from either side why a 2pm kickoff pst would be a big deal.

It’s always the rose bowl that holds these things up. And I’m sorry, but they’re just…not that special. Drop them from the CFP rotation and replace them with Vegas for all I care. :bird:

Agree...I don't understand it. But I think the president's have to be all in. The PAC 12 president's are holding things up too.

I get it if the playoff committee puts us below Bama. We would have a tough time hanging with the Tide without Hooker IMHO.

But that is not the criteria the committee is supposed to be judging us on. Because it's speculative, and the playoff criteria isn't supposed to be speculative. We beat Vanderbilt worse than Alabama did WITHOUT Hooker. Meanwhile, if the criteria the committee is supposed to weigh most heavily is considered and everything else is removed from the equation, we beat Alabama in every single category.

That's not quite accurate - Bama's losses are much better than ours, obviously.  Our wins are better, but not dramatically, just significantly better.  Head to head just doesn't mean much when you are ranking all the teams.

FWIW, here are the Massey composite rankings which combine every rating system known to man.  We are just barely ahead of Bama in the avg - almost essentially tied.

https://masseyratings.com/cf/compare.htm (https://masseyratings.com/cf/compare.htm)

I dunno what the playoff committee guidelines are, but the playoff teams should be the best teams, period, IMO.  We are certainly not as good a team without Hooker.

Sure it is. The playoff committee's criteria isn't a mystery.

I think that we lost our argument for the CFP at Columbia - due to both the loss and the Hendon injury. Had we lost in a more respectable manner, I think that we would have been in a much better position but that didn't happen. 

In my view UGA, UM, and TCU should all make the playoff now even if they lose in their conference championship games. I think that USC should be in if they win their game next weekend.

Should USC lose then someone is getting in through the back door. Who should that be? I think arguments can be made for Bama, OSU, USC, and Tennessee - although I think that it will be either Bama or OSU.

I, for one, am really looking forward to expansion of the playoff system. I know that there will still be arguments for the 13th spot in the new system but at least every team will have an absolute avenue to the CFP by winning their conference championship. That isn't true under the current system. Any team that doesn't make it will have their own play during their conference season to blame if they are excluded.

I would agree that UGA, Michigan and TCU should all be a lock at this point. If USC loses, Ohio State should get in. A 2-loss team shouldn't get in above a 1-loss team unless the 1-loss team has an incredibly weak schedule. However, there's more at stake than just the CFP when it comes to these rankings. Bowl berths are also at stake. The Sugar Bowl will take the highest-ranked team...which is currently Alabama unless something changed in the committee's minds this week. Now, theoretically, we're going to go to the Orange Bowl to face Clemson, which I think is actually a more intriguing matchup than the Sugar Bowl. So it's not all bad. But it's more about the principle than anything else.

How do we beat Bama “in every single category”, when clearly their 2 losses are far better than ours?

The committee doesn't consider the "quality" of losses. It isn't one of the categories. (Head-to-head IS one of the categories, however.)

But just for the sake of argument, Alabama's losses were to the current #7 and #11 teams. Tennessee's losses were to the current #1 and #20 teams. I'm not sure why you're insisting that Alabama's losses are far better than Tennessee's. That's almost no difference at all. In fact, if we're really going to nitpick we could make an argument that, based on current rankings, only one of Tennessee's losses was to a team the Vols "should" have beaten and both of Alabama's losses were to teams the Tide "should" have beaten.

Reminds me of religion. :crazy: :crazy:

For reference:

Rankings criteria

College Football Playoff selectors create Top 25 rankings based on their evaluation of teams’ performance on the field. The committee employs several metrics to select the best teams.

Strength of schedule
Head-to-head game results
Results vs. teams in Top 25 rankings
Results vs. common opponents
Conference championships





https://www.si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq/ncaa-football-rankings/college-football-playoff-rankings-top-25-how-cfp-process-works

"Selectors are allowed to use a variety of advanced analytics to gauge teams' performance, but those numbers don't play a formal role in determining Top 25 rankings, which is a decision made by selectors' own judgement."

I'll admit that I'm not quite sure what the above statement actually means, but my guess is that this statement is included to give the members the freedom to divert from the 5 basic descriptors that BDV listed above. Even though it has been published that "style points" aren't a factor, doesn't the above statement give them a way to circumvent the criteria? I would guess that it does.

Our loss to USCe was terrible and imo Kirby went vanilla in the second half against us. I think that he felt that he likely had enough points at the half to get the W, and he wasn't going to risk turnovers unless necessary. Those two factors, to me, makes our losses look worse that Bama's. That is, however, just my opinion.

I think it's downright silly to think losses vs unranked teams don't count.  I don't believe that is what these guidelines are implying.

ESPN's Peter Burns:


Who wants to be the one to tell him how silly he is for saying that Tennessee ranks ahead of Alabama in every single category?

And for the “but Hooker’s out” crowd: Yes, he is. And Young and Gibbs, among others, will almost certainly opt out of bammer’s bowl game. Where would bammer be without those two this year? 6-6, at best?

Bama's losses are better - it's a fizzleing no brainer.  No need to be pig headed about it.  I would love to have the big orange ranked ahead of Bammer, no doubt, and I can see how we could be.  But I can also see how Bammer could be ranked ahead of us. 

I get your point, but the only way they are ahead of us is by going off the "official" selection criteria.

I am not surprised, they do it all the time, seemingly.

But .... let's see where we end up tonight.  All the projections are just speculation.  We may well be ahead of bammer.

Okay, our two losses are to teams that bama didn’t play. So what if they had? Would they even get within 3 TDs of UGA? I doubt it. Would they have beaten USC in Columbia? Early on, sure. But the past two weeks? Not likely. Clearly Beamer has recently figured SOMETHING out over there.

But that’s all we can do on that front- deal in hypotheticals. Common opponents and (even moreso) head to head are the only concrete comparisons we can make, and we come out on top in both.