Updated dirtygary Playoff Matchups:

Sugar Bowl: #1 Alabama vs NR Marshall
Orange Bowl: #4 Miss St vs #5 TCU

Rose Bowl: #2 Oregon vs #6 Ohio St
Fiesta Bowl: #3 Florida St vs #7 Baylor

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?

This 4-team format won't last the 12 years it's set for. No chance. As we'll see, there will always be one conference in the Power5, and more often two conferences, that is/are royally pissed off their conference champ doesn't get in because polls/committees omit them in favor of a 2nd team from a conference perceived to be stronger.

There is simply no way in which this system will retain a sufficient level of popularity when the magnitude of outrage will be rather high every year. The SEC will love it, but every other conference will be worrying about whether their conference champ will even be invited to the national championship tournament. That's no way to live. Once they moved to a "Power-5" alignment, they were obligated to adopt a system that recognizes each conference's champion and provides access to the national championship, not an invitation held ransom by some committee's opinion, but an automatic pass-through extended to each conference's champion to the national tournament. The Committee should be there to seed the teams for the tournament, not play gate-keeper.

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?

Throw in the natural conference bowl tie-ins and I think we have the winning system...

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?

Updated dirtygary Playoff Matchups:


Sugar Bowl: #1 Alabama vs #22 BoiseSt
Orange Bowl: #4 FloridaSt vs #6 Baylor

Fiesta Bowl: #3 TCU vs #7 Arizona
Rose Bowl: #2 Oregon vs #5 OhioSt

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?

I don't think winning the conference should be a guarantee of a playoff spot, even in an eight team playoff. You could wind up with a three, or even four loss, conference champion. Should preference be given to conference champions? Sure, but not a guaranteed spot.

I don't like the polls being the first layer of determining participants. The polls can be wrong, too. Every basketball conference champion receives an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, then the committee allots at-large bids and seeds the tournament. A system like that would work really well for football and the wild-cards ensure that the #1 and #2 teams by polls/power rankings are in the tournament, too.

It should be up to each Power 5 conference and the Group of 5 conferences to determine how their champion is identified and receives the automatic bid to the college football playoff.

The real problem will be the spot to a lower-ranked Group of 5 team, but there absolutely must be a pathway to the championship for all teams in D-1 to preserve credibility of the system.

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?

The Committee is going to hate this job.

How do you exclude two of the following teams:

TCU 11-1
Baylor 11-1
Ohio St 12-1

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?

WOW - TCU and Baylor shut out, and Ohio St is shipped to the Sugar instead of going to the Rose Bowl.

So the Big12 officially hates the CFP. That was the 3rd strongest conference with two worthy teams; for both to get shut out is a travesty. If their name was Oklahoma, I bet they're in.

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?

Based on the Committee's final ranking, the dirtgary college football playoff matchups would be:

Sugar: #1 Alabama vs #21 Boise St
Orange: #5 TCU vs #6 Baylor

Rose: #2 Oregon vs #4 Ohio St
Fiesta: #3 Florida St vs #7 (probably either MichiganSt/MississippiSt)

Semifinal 1: Sugar Bowl Winner vs Orange Bowl Winner
Semifinal 2: Rose Bowl Winner vs Fiesta Bowl Winner

The big complainers will be whoever finishes 8th, but that's a 2- or 3-loss team with blemishes and the complaints will fall on deaf ears. This would be an outstanding College Football Playoff, just as the system would have yielded nearly every single year of the BCS.

All the conferences need to do is allow 2 teams to play 1 extra game and 2 teams 2 extra games, and the system works for everybody. The Conferences decide who their champion is; the Committee decides on 2 at-large teams and the seedings of the teams in the tournament. Not nearly as traumatic as denying the Big10 champion a spot in the Rose Bowl or killing 2 deserving teams like this year.

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?

The committee is telling the Big 12 they need a conference championship game. A league with no clear cut winner and a controversy as to who its best team is (the whole Baylor/TCU thing) was easier to ignore than include. Also Oklahoma's loss to an underwhelming Oklahoma State team pretty much deflated both team's strength of schedule.

I think the committee got it right. Ohio State had an early season loss when they were adjusting to a backup quarterback but have proven worthy since, including two wins over AP Top 25 teams (Michigan State and Wisconsin, the one at MSU on the road). Baylor also has two Top 25 wins (TCU and Kansas State, both at home) and TCU has one win (Kansas State) and one loss (Baylor). I think that makes it easier to rule out TCU, so it comes down to Baylor vs. Ohio State. I don't think there's much separating them. Both of them lost to average teams, VA Tech finished 6-6, West Virginia 7-5. In hindsight I think you can make more of a case for OSU's loss (early in the season, adjusting to a new quarterback) than you can for Baylor's mid-season loss. If there's a Big 12 Championship game and Baylor beats TCU (or even vice versa) I think you can make more of a case for their league champion being represented.

I think the committee is saying a lot more than that. I think they were extremely put-off by the Big12 commissioner playing games with the conference champion. Also, the Big10 and ACC were trash this year. Nobody was saying a 1-loss FSU team would have been included, so why a 1-loss Big10 team? I thought the Big12 was much closer to the Pac12 than the bottom 2 conferences, and had 2 worthy teams.

Neither of the 3 (TCU/Baylor/OhioSt) had wins to distinguish themselves, but TCU sure has the "best" loss,,, much easier to justify a loss at the #6 team than to average teams, regardless of the situation.

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?

Also - how pissed are the tourism industries in Dallas and Phoenix??? Neither the Baylor nor the Arizona fans are going to fill up hotel rooms and spend money in those regions; they're simply driving up for the game and driving home afterwards. The Committee really screwed those towns.

And with the Cotton Bowl site hosting the title game, they could have taken on the lower-profile matchup of Arizona/Boise St while sending Baylor/MichiganSt to Tempe for the more prestigious Fiesta Bowl.

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?

TCU may have had the "best loss," but outside of K-State, they didn't have any great wins. Oklahoma's lack of a quality win on their schedule, plus an ugly loss to Oklahoma St killed TCU and Baylor's strength of schedule. Florida State beat a Top 10 Georgia Tech team and two Top 20 teams in Clemson and Louisville. Plus they did something no other team managed to do--go undefeated (for two straight seasons). The won the opportunity to defend their championship.

I agree that Florida St earned the right to defend their title. They made it through 2 calendar years without losing a game. They won their bowl game in 2013 and then the whole regular season, and did the same this season. Can't take the opportunity to win the title on the field away from them simply because the wins didn't all come with sufficient style points.

I think Ohio St was the suspect #4. I could have seen either TCU or Baylor ahead of Ohio St - but what I think wound up happening was that 65% of the people voted for the Big12 teams and 35% for Ohio St; just the Big12 votes were split between Baylor and TCU, and neither had more than OhioSt's 35%.

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?

Right, I think it was easier for the committee to default to Ohio than to be forced to choose between Baylor/TCU

Why should the committee choose between Baylor or TCU as a representative when the Big 12 conference couldn't even decide which one of them should be the league champion?

That sentiment might have led to a large majority going with Ohio St and the committee's confident response following the announcement - not that they believed OhioSt to be that much more of a superior team but the confidence reinforced by the high percentage of committee members that shared a similar view.

I still don't think we see Ohio St in the Playoffs if it were the Longhorns or Sooners with the same resume as TCU/Baylor.

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?

Using the automatic bowl tie-ins as the format specifies (Big10/Pac12=Rose; Big12/SEC=Sugar; ACC=Orange) and including the highest ranked G5 conference champ + wild-cards would give us the following match-ups:

Sugar: #1 Alabama vs #6 Baylor
Fiesta: #5 TCU vs #7 Miss St

Rose: #2 Oregon vs #4 Ohio St
Orange: #3 Florida St vs #21 Boise St

Not your ideal format - the automatic tie-ins for the Big12 and ACC really make it difficult to get a well-balanced bracket by seeding. But if the Big12 was shifted to a Fiesta Bowl tie-in, there would be much better flexibility.

Sugar: #1 Alabama vs #20 BoiseSt
Fiesta: #5 TCU vs #6 Baylor

Rose: #2 Oregon vs #4 Ohio St
Orange: #3 Florida St vs #7 Miss St

That is a really good bracket if each conference is to maintain an automatic placement in a specific Bowl.

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What can we say about the Diamondbacks Franchise that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?