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College Football Playoff Projections and Committee Rankings

Started by jbcarol, October 26, 2014, 07:24:14 am

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jbcarol

National Title Odds

1. Alabama 5-1
5. LSU 14-1
8. Tennessee 17-1
13. Ole Miss 26-1
14. Georgia 33-1
14. Auburn 33-1
22. Florida 55-1
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 Brett McMurphy ‏@McMurphyESPN Feb 1

.@LVSuperBook odds to win @CFBPlayoff title: Bama 6-1 Clem/OU 7-1 OhSt 10-1 Bay/Mich 12-1 FSU/LSU/ND/Tenn 15-1 MichSt/OleMiss/Stan 25-1

UF: 50-1
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jbcarol

 Jane McManus ‏@janesports 24h24 hours ago

Condoleezza Rice starts remarks after Goodell's introduction saying she gets asked a lot if she wants to be NFL commissioner.
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AL.com sports ‏@aldotcomSports 9m9 minutes ago

Dick's Sporting Goods will donate unused Clemson championship merchandise to countries in need http://ow.ly/Y4SIX

QuoteStores such as Dick's Sporting Goods and Academy Sports were stocked with both Alabama and Clemson merchandise ahead of the National Championship game. The next morning, Dick's Sporting Goods sent its Clemson items to World Vision, a Washington-based Christian organization that provides assistance in more than 90 countries.

"Through our long-standing partnership with humanitarian organization, World Vision, Dick's Sporting Goods will donate Clemson unused championship merchandise to countries in need," Brian Johnson, Dick's Sporting Goods community marketing manager, told GoUpstate.com last month.

The items go to World Vision's global distribution center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Once there, the donations are counted and sorted based on size, gender and destination, meaning a t-shirt may go to a place with a warm climate while a sweatshirt will go somewhere colder. Once sorted, the items are sent to impoverished countries or areas dealing with natural disasters.

Academy Sports said its items were sent back to vendors...
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Heather Dinich ‏@CFBHeather 4h4 hours ago

Ooh, sorry @ClemsonFB ... you got bumped from No. 1 after NSD by @Mark_Schlabach. Check out his latest top 25: http://es.pn/1nV4V5s

1. Bama

6. LSU

12. Vols

13. OM

19. UGa

24. UF
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AL.com sports ‏@aldotcomSports 2h2 hours ago

Weeks later, Michigan State players recall what happened in their 38-0 loss to #Alabama in the Cotton Bowl: http://ow.ly/Ydsqj

QuoteReceiver Aaron Burbridge, offensive lineman Jack Allen and defensive lineman Lawrence Thomas shared their perspective of what went wrong that night in Arlington. That 38-0 semifinal beating wasn't something they saw coming, that was clear. In the same breath, the three Spartans credited the Crimson Tide for handing their business on New Year's Eve.

"Oh definitely surprised me," said Burbridge, the Spartans' top receiver who was limited to five catches and 39 yards. "But I have to tip my hat to the Alabama guys. They came out to play."

The Spartans, champions of the Big Ten who handed defending champion Ohio State its only loss, kept it close early. Neither team scored in the opening quarter.

Burbridge said Alabama mostly played zone in the secondary. A safety was always "cheating over to my side a little bit," he said. The longest catch of his night covered 18 yards. Burbridge was impressed with Alabama cornerback Cyrus Jones.

"(Marlon) Humphrey was physical too," he said. "He's going to be a good player."

If there was a positive Michigan State could take back to East Lansing, it was the defense of Derrick Henry. Fresh off the Heisman Trophy ceremony, Alabama's single-season rushing king was held to 75 yards on 20 carries.

"We harp on stopping the run," said Thomas, the defensive end. "Us guys up front got it done by holding the Heisman winner to 75 yards. That was a big step right there."

After the game, Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin said they were expecting Michigan State to pack the box. Thomas said that was the plan.
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AL.com sports ‏@aldotcomSports 11h11 hours ago

In the first year of the CFB Playoff and @SECNetwork, the #SEC pulled in a whopping $500 million: http://ow.ly/Yi86L

QuoteSoutheastern Conference generated $527.4 million in revenue in the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31, according to a report Tuesday by USA Today.

The fiscal year ending in August coincided with the first year of the College Football Playoff and the first full year of the SEC Network, which launched in August of 2014. Alabama earned a spot in the 4-team playoff in 2014, while the SEC also placed Ole Miss and Mississippi State in New Year's Six bowls, which are run by the College Football Playoff.

In addition, SEC commissioner Mike Slive earned more than $3.6 million in 2014.
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Dave Briggs ‏@DBriggsBlade 19m19 minutes ago

So much for 16 lost starters eroding Vegas' confidence in Ohio State. Per @BovadaLV, OSU (6-1) the new favorite to win 2016 national title.
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AL.com sports ‏@aldotcomSports 4m4 minutes ago

Oklahoma's president says the Big 12 will make a decision on expansion 'this summer' http://ow.ly/Yr0Bz 



QuoteOklahoma president David Boren told The Oklahoman on Tuesday that Big 12 presidents have agreed that they need to make a decision on a number of issues, including conference expansion.

Boren also said the conference presidents are batting around ideas about a football championship game and a conference network.

"We're in a fact-finding mode, we're in a data-gathering mode," Boren told The Oklahoman. "In other words, what will it mean to the stability of the conference? What will it mean financially to the conference?

"We've sort of said to ourselves, come this summer, we're going to have to finally make a decision about what we do. We cannot indefinitely postpone decisions. That's what I had gotten frustrated about. I thought we were spinning our wheels."

University of Cincinnati, it has been reported, has been actively positioning for a shot at the Big 12. Boren also appears to be for the idea.

Cincinnati released emails and travel records to The Enquirer last week shedding light on the Bearcats' attempt to join a Power 5 conference.

According to the report, Cincinnati president Santa Ono has led a "quiet and diligent effort" to position his school for a bid to the Big 12 Conference.


Santa Ono
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Michael Carvell ‏@Carvell_AJC 2h2 hours ago

College Football Playoff tweaks semifinal schedule, will remain on New Year's Eve http://sec.news/1R0BQwk



QuoteThe College Football Playoff will still hold its semifinals on New Year's Eve, with one minor change.

The semifinals will start an hour earlier than they did in 2015 with the Fiesta Bowl kicking off at 3 p.m. ET followed by the Peach Bowl at 7 p.m. ET, according to USA Today's George Schroeder. The Orange Bowl was also bumped back from a noon kickoff on Dec. 31 to primetime on Dec. 30.

These slight modifications come after television ratings were down 40 percent from the 2014 semifinals.

There was a lot of excitement in '14.
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Dennis Dodd ‏@dennisdoddcbs Mar 7

It's become clear, the Big 12 has to do SOMETHING ... http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/dennis-dodd/25507811/the-big-12-has-to-do-something-soon--or-else-seven-things-to-know ...

QuoteKANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The evidence is mounting. The signs are there for the Big 12. The conference has to do something to address its future.

While there remains a slow, deliberate pace among Big 12 members considering expansion and/or a conference championship game, the league's clock is ticking.

"The last time they went through this [expansion] admittedly it was a fire drill," commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. "They were down to eight members and they were scrambling. But it wasn't a very thorough process."

This will be. No more knee-jerk West Virginia expansion when, in hindsight, Louisville would have been the better choice.

Meanwhile, no school is leaving. Not in the near future. It's more about shoring up a future that, without some kind of change, looks uncertain. This is about the Big 12 continuing to exist into a distant future.

Bowlsby summed it up this way when asked the financial gap between his league and the SEC, a number that currently stands at about $9 million per year in rights fee revenue.

"If we do nothing, 12 years from now, we'll be $20 million per school behind the SEC and the Big Ten," he said.
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Brett McMurphy ‏@McMurphyESPN Mar 7

.@CFBPlayoff semifinals (Fiesta, Peach) moved up an hour to 3 p.m. & 7 p.m. ET this year, but remain on New Year's Eve

It was fun while it lasted: BattleFrog Fiesta Bowl is no more. Fiesta Bowl currently w/out naming rights sponsor


Was going to be difficult to commercialize the sponsorship.
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The day after Selection Sunday, Kentucky Director of Athletics Mitch Barnhart provided a variation on the annual theme of Coach John Calipari being unhappy with seeding or sites or opponents or path to the Final Four or accommodations or scent of hotel soap or something.

Barnhart suggested ways the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee can better do its job.

"It should consider following the lead of the College Football Playoff Committee and release updates prior to Selection Sunday," Barnhart said in a news release.


Quote"You get a whole week to analyze it, digest it and talk about it," said former Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese, who also served on the basketball committee and has been asked to help raise the profile of SEC basketball.

By contrast, basketball's frenzy of games come at a daily clip. Any update might radically change within 48 hours.

The basketball committee must decide 37 at-large bids from a pool of 90-plus teams, seed them, place them in brackets, send them to one of nine initial sites (counting the First Four in Dayton) that lead to four sites and then lead to the Final Four.

In football, there are only four bids and, say, 10 contending teams. "And," Tranghese said, "you know ultimately all those teams are going to be playing in a (league) championship game."

In other words, the league championship games do a lot of the work for the football committee.

Bill Hancock, the Executive Director of the College Football Playoff, has worked with both committees. He made those vaunted weekly updates in football sound like a marketing ploy.

"It adds pizzazz to the regular season ... ," he said. "It has made fans in the SEC pay attention to what's happening in the Pac 12 every week."

And, Hancock added, "If we didn't do the rankings, then other rankings would be perceived as real."

The football committee typically meets from 1 p.m. on a Monday to noon on Tuesday.

"If the basketball committee does that, there are 30 games on Monday night that probably couldn't be included in the (updated) rankings," Tranghese said.
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Dan Wolken ‏@DanWolken 21h21 hours ago

Oklahoma is going to go to the Final Four in football and hoops and its president is the one complaining about the Big 12. Interesting.
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Zach Barnett
‏@zach_barnett

How many schools have ever closed their basketball season and opened the following FB season in the same stadium? OU about to in Houston

Cecil Hurt ‏@CecilHurt Mar 26

Cecil Hurt Retweeted Zach Barnett

Alabama in 2008 
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Paul Finebaum ‏@finebaum 14h14 hours ago

At least, OU now has the distinction of being the first school to get blown out of the Final Four in both football and basketball.
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Matt Jones ‏@KySportsRadio 15h15 hours ago

If TNT wants its Oklahoma Team Stream to be authentic, the announcers need to start talking Spring Football
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Curated SEC Infotainment and aggregated college sports updates where it just means more on Hogville.net

jbcarol

Stewart Mandel ‏@slmandel 15h15 hours ago

Bill Hancock, speaking after today's CFP meetings in Dallas, said "the topic of New Year's Eve came up" in a presentation from ESPN today.

[College football semis replaced weak imitations of Kneivel; went up against Seacrest.]

Hancock on NYE: "They (ESPN) raised it, we mostly listened. We will continue to review this matter."

Hancock: "There's no timetable for us to make a decision about New Year's Eve. We don't have to the next two years."

[It's not about what you "have" to do. It's what's best for business.]

There will again be six sets of CFP rankings, culminating on Sunday 12/4. Texas Tech AD Kirby Hocutt succeeds Jeff Long as committee chair.
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Stewart Mandel ‏@slmandel 22h22 hours ago

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said he does not expect conference to make a decision on championship game until after their June meetings.
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Jon Solomon ‏@JonSolomonCBS Apr 30

NFL draft picks since 2012: SEC 259, ACC 176, Big Ten 173, Pac-12 163, Big 12 116. Big 12's biggest issue isn't title game, it's talent.
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Quote from: jbcarol on May 02, 2016, 08:51:15 am
Jon Solomon ‏@JonSolomonCBS Apr 30

NFL draft picks since 2012: SEC 259, ACC 176, Big Ten 173, Pac-12 163, Big 12 116. Big 12's biggest issue isn't title game, it's talent.


Brett McMurphy ‏@McMurphyESPN May 2

Bob Bowlsby said data from Big 12's consulting firm shows 12-team league w/8-game league sked & champ game best model to reach CFBPlayoff
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College football roundtable: Sleeper playoff contenders

QuoteSEC: Ole Miss

No Laremy Tunsil, Laquon Treadwell or Robert Nkemdiche ... no problem? Not when you start the season in Orlando against Florida State and face both Alabama and Georgia in the month of September...
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https://twitter.com/BrentZwerneman/status/738736957824503808

QuoteThe mean ol' Longhorns - public bullies despite fielding a 5-7 football team last year - appeared to shoot a hole through UH's expansion heart with just a few words Wednesday.

"The prudent thing for us to do as a conference is stay where we are," said Perrin, an apparent isolationist.

Then Patterson's replacement said something even more idiotic.

"Certainly we're in the Houston market," Perrin said. "The Longhorn Network is there."

Um, Mike? Can we talk for a minute?

Must-not-see TV

Now, I don't want to speak for everyone living in the fourth-largest city in America. But let me put it this way: I've never watched the Longhorn Network. I have a pretty good feeling I will never watch your school's stupid TV station. And I honestly wouldn't even know what channel to find it on if I did want to see Mack Brown interviewing a cow or the grainy rebroadcast of a football game from 1969.

Actually, let me speak for the vast majority of this city's sports-obsessed residents: Saying the Longhorns and the Big 12 are "in" Houston because of a network only a few misguided souls dare to watch is like declaring 11-14 under Strong a promising start.

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jbcarol

George Schroeder ‏@GeorgeSchroeder 4h4 hours ago

BREAKING: Big 12 will have conference championship game beginning with 2017 season.

Bowlsby: Big 12 "in all likelihood" will go to divisions. Has looked at models with 5-team divisions and still full 9-game round-robin.

Combo of revenue news and general vibe today from Big 12-land leads to this opinion: Expansion is highly unlikely.
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https://twitter.com/Carvell_AJC/status/742851655952158720

QuoteElite pass rush
With Jonathan Allen, Tim Williams and Ryan Anderson all coming back for their senior seasons, Alabama returns 28.5 of its nation-leading 52 sacks from last season.

VegasInsider.com had Alabama at 7/1 odds to win the 2016 national championship. Clemson and Ohio State are the next two teams at 15/2.

Saban's best recruiting job didn't happen on National Signing Day. It was when he got guys like Allen, Williams, Anderson, Eddie Jackson, Reuben Foster and Howard to return for their senior seasons.
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https://twitter.com/aldotcomSports/status/745481713287999493

Moral victory:
QuoteClemson coach Dabo Swinney has always had a soft spot in his heart for the Alabama Crimson Tide.

However, he told Sports Illustrated his team's 'brand won" when his Tigers led into the fourth quarter before Alabama won the national title game, 45-40. 

Swinney: "Everything in life is how you respond to it. If everything went perfect all the time—you never lost a game, you got to the championship every time, you always won, you always got the top recruit, you always made the A—you really wouldn't truly appreciate all that goes into it. Our guys have responded well. As I've said many times, it's one thing to dream about something, it's another thing to experience it. It's one thing to think you're good enough, it's another thing to know you're good enough. We didn't win the game obviously, but I think our brand won. I don't know how to explain that other than Alabama has been kind of the standard. When you consider we out-rushed, out-passed, out-gained, out-sacked, out-tackled-for-loss them, we really played great, outside of four plays defensively. Physically, we matched up. We had a lot of things validated for our program."

Swinney went on to explain quarterback Deshaun Watson "has improved a ton."

Former Clemson receiver Charone Peake told AL.com during Senior Bowl week in Mobile, Alabama, he felt the Tigers dominated the title game.
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Phil Steele predicts two SEC West teams in College Football Playoff

QuoteCollege Football Playoff committee have made it a point to stress the importance a conference championship game when deciding the sport's top 4 teams every year.

Just ask TCU and Baylor during the inaugural playoff.

If you believe Phil Steele, 2016 could be the year a Power 5 team joins its conference champion in the playoff as an at-large.

"I went out of the box," Steele told The Opening Kickoff on WNSP-FM 105.5 in Mobile, Alabama, on Thursday. "This is the third year of the playoffs. Everyone just assumes it will be one team per conference. But I think this year, Alabama and LSU are so loaded that the SEC can get two teams into the playoffs."

Steele predicted three of the four teams correctly for the playoffs in the first year, while picking only one of last year's participants.

"I think the Pac-12 might beat itself up. The Big Ten may beat itself up and create an opening there. LSU is the type of team that can step right in there."
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OddsShark list of championship odds:

QuoteOhio State +700

Alabama +700

...

Tennessee +1400

LSU +1400

...

Ole Miss +2500

Georgia +2500

...

Auburn +5000

Florida +5000

...

A&M +7500

Utah +7500

Arkansas +7500

Texas +7500
...

Missouri +30000

South Carolina +30000

Mississippi State +30000

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https://twitter.com/KevinScarbinsky/status/748171517146570752

QuoteScarblog: Coastal Carolina is going to play Arizona for the Division I baseball national championship at the College World Series.

Not North Carolina, South Carolina, East Carolina or North Carolina State.

Coastal Carolina.

This is Coastal Carolina, which plays in the Big South, at least until its move to the Sun Belt becomes official on Friday.

This is Coastal Carolina, where basketball coach Cliff Ellis continues to demonstrate that good coaches can be found in the darndest places.

Because this playoff is the exclusive province of the big boys in the Power 5. Teams in the Group of Five need not apply.

It sounds good to suggest in June that a Houston could run the table and reach the College Football Playoff this season. After all, the Cougars did take care of Florida State last year in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.

But do you really think the playoff committee is going to emerge from its deliberations, snub not one but two Power 5 conference champions and place a team from outside the Power 5 into its final four?

That would be more shocking than Coastal Carolina winning the College World Series.
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Curated SEC Infotainment and aggregated college sports updates where it just means more on Hogville.net

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Curated SEC Infotainment and aggregated college sports updates where it just means more on Hogville.net

jbcarol

Brett McMurphy ‏@McMurphyESPN 19h19 hours ago

Since Jan. 12, biggest @LVSuperBook title odd drops: Baylor from 12-1 to 40-1, Auburn 30-1 to 80-1, OkSt 40-1 to 100-1, Oregon 40-1 to 80-1
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Ross Dellenger ‏@RossDellenger 13h13 hours ago

From @ByLukeJohnson, #CFP's Bill Hancock on semifinal scheduling: 'We don't feel any rush to make a decision now'

http://bit.ly/29IEYmg

QuoteHOOVER, Ala. — Perhaps to the chagrin of advertisers and TV producers, the new year once again will be brought in with a pair of College Football Playoff games.

The Peach Bowl and Fiesta Bowl will kick off at 2 and 6 p.m. Central time New Year's Eve, a date that seemed to be detrimental for the CFP semifinals' TV ratings last season.

What's uncertain is how long the semifinals will stay locked in a dance with the New Year's holiday.

"We pledged after this year's games (that) we will be looking at the semifinal schedule and will continue to do that," CFP executive director Bill Hancock said Monday at SEC media days. "We don't feel any rush to make a decision now, tomorrow or any time in the relatively near future."

Last year's semifinals were the first to be scheduled for New Year's Eve, leading many to speculate that ratings would take a dip as people went to celebrate the holiday. That was confirmed when the ratings came back, showing viewership declined by more than a third in just the second year of the CFP.

"The issues are what day is the best to allow the most number of people to watch the games and, yes, we were disappointed with the viewership," Hancock said. "We may have had a bit of a sophomore slump with New Year's Eve, I don't know. But certainly the date was a factor."

Hancock wasn't buying that the ratings drop was entirely because of the date. Some of the novelty had worn off in the second year of the playoff, and the semifinals weren't as competitive, either.

"All the talk about what happened is speculative," he said. "But it's a first-world problem. Any other event would love to have the viewership we had."
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Dennis Dodd Verified account
‏@dennisdoddcbs

Headline: B12 unanimously approves moving ahead with expansion exploration.
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https://twitter.com/Carvell_AJC/status/756162214319558656

QuoteWilliam Hill sports books give the Wolverines the third best odds to win the College Football Playoff at 13-to-2 behind Alabama and Ohio State. They're 7-to-1 at the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook, the second betting choice behind the Crimson Tide.

Per ESPN's David Purdum, 10 percent of William Hill's total national championship bets have come in on Michigan, the most of any team. That's driven Harbaugh's group down from its opening odds of 15-to-1. They've also attracted the most money at Westgate and MGM.

The Golden Nugget listed Ohio State as a 3-point favorite over Michigan in its "Game of the Year" lines, released in early July. According to Purdum, Ohio State opened as 6.5-point favorites at South Point, but the line has been bet down to -5 with 88 percent of bets coming in on Michigan.
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Paul Finebaum ‏@finebaum 5h5 hours ago

.@philsteele042 says Oklahoma has the clearest path to the @CFBPlayoff
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Paul Finebaum ‏@finebaum 4h4 hours ago

"The teams that the Big12 are going to attract will not be as glamorous to the fans & media as the ones they've lost" - @ESPN_CoachMack Brown
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AL.com sports ‏@aldotcomSports 2h2 hours ago

College Football Playoff semifinals moving off New Year's Eve most years beginning in 2018 🎉http://trib.al/8lucAid

QuoteCollege Football Playoff semifinal games will no longer be played on New Year's Eve when that day falls during the work week, it was announced Thursday.

Beginning in 2018, the semifinals will be played most years on either Jan. 1 or the previous Saturday. The semifinals will only be played on Dec. 31 when it falls on a Friday or Saturday (such as in 2017).

The move was made after poor television ratings for this past season's semifinals, which took place on New Year's Eve, which was a Thursday and thus a work day for many viewers. Ratings plummeted 23 percent from the previous year, when the semifinals took place on New Year's Day, a federal holiday.

"We had healthy discussions with a lot of people who love college football and we concluded that making these changes would be the right thing to do for our fans." College Football Playoff Executive Director Bill Hancock said. "We tried to do something special with New Year's Eve, even when it fell on a weekday. But after studying this to see if it worked, we think we can do better.

"These adjustments will allow more people to experience the games they enjoy so much. For these four years, our previous call is reversed."

Here are the updated dates for the CFP semifinals through 2026:

2016-17 — Saturday, December 31 (Fiesta and Peach Bowls)

2017-18 — Monday, January 1 (Rose and Sugar)

2018-19 — Saturday, December 29 (Cotton and Orange)

2019-20 — Saturday, December 28 (Fiesta and Peach)

2020-21 — Friday, January 1 (Rose and Sugar)

2021-22 — Friday, December 31 (Orange and bowl TBD)

2022-23 — Saturday, December 31 (Bowls TBD)

2023-24 — Monday, January 1 (Rose and Sugar)

2024-25 — Saturday, December 28 (Orange and bowl TBD)

2025-26 — Saturday, December 27 (Bowls TBD)
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Stewart Mandel ‏@slmandel 17h17 hours ago

One notable impact of the new CFP schedule: There will be years when it's as many as 16 days between semis & champ.
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jbcarol

https://twitter.com/slmandel/status/758772513937555456

QuoteAfter a failed one-year experiment that saw a 36 percent drop in TV ratings and mass public backlash, the CFP announced Thursday it will no longer try to reinvent the national tradition that is New Year's Eve. Semifinal games over the remaining 10 years of its contract will either be played on Saturdays or a holiday, which still includes three Dec. 31 doubleheaders and three Jan. 1 Rose and Sugar semis but shifts four other years' games to as early as Dec. 27.

Publicly, executive director Bill Hancock spent the first week of January spinning those embarrassing TV numbers ("One year does not make a trend," he said roughly a billion times), but privately, I'm told, discussions about changes began in earnest as soon as the day of the Alabama-Clemson title game. It's a given that ESPN, with its $7.3 billion investment, wanted to try different dates — in fact, it had proposed a year earlier moving the 2015 semis to Jan. 2 —

After scouring the new schedule, here are my biggest takeaways:

— The Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC and Big 12 got their way. All parties were insistent that their respective conference bowls, the Rose and Sugar, would not surrender their coveted New Year's Day timeslots for the betterment of the playoff. This model is simply a more sensible workaround than the original plan.

It will be interesting to see the effect on the Jan. 1 bowls when the semis are played several days in advance. As the AP's Ralph Russo tweeted, it will be like "Pearl Jam as an opening act." There's no question last year's Fiesta (Ohio State-Notre Dame), Citrus (Michigan-Florida), Outback (Northwestern-Tennessee), Rose (Iowa-Stanford) and Sugar (Ole Miss-Oklahoma State) bowls had a next-day hangover feel, and the ratings reflected it.
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jbcarol

Outgoing CFP members finally detail how Ohio State reached 2014 playoff

Quote"I think Ohio State took us off the hook," said former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese. "If Ohio State hadn't beaten Wisconsin, or let's say hadn't won convincingly, we would've had a very, very difficult decision to make. I don't know how other people would have voted, but my sense was we were really split on it.

"Ohio State made it clear who the fourth team is. We take them and they end up playing magnificently and running the table. And I didn't think there was much mystery in last year. When Ohio State lost to Michigan State, that probably cleared it up a little bit."

Former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne admitted not having a championship game hurt the Big 12 in 2014.

Tranghese has been hired to make SEC basketball better.
Curated SEC Infotainment and aggregated college sports updates where it just means more on Hogville.net

jbcarol

FootballScoop Staff
‏@FootballScoop

Current #Natty odds at the Wynn.



Curated SEC Infotainment and aggregated college sports updates where it just means more on Hogville.net

jbcarol

https://twitter.com/slmandel/status/761230171684732928

Quote...And while we've always known there will be a day when the committee takes two teams from one conference, the possibility of them doing it twice in the same year is very remote given the emphasis placed on conference championships. The other Power 5 leagues would have to produce a bunch of 9-3 champions.

But if it did happen, we'd see a level of backlash that would make even the BCS blush -- ESPECIALLY if two of the four are LSU and Alabama.

Within the sport, I sense less momentum for expanding the playoff today than I did two years ago. Four has gone very well so far. It feels right. It's barely impacted the regular season. Eight, on the other hand, completely redefines the sport, likely requires a complete separation from the bowl system and, while inevitable, is not going to happen anytime soon. Initially, I said it would come halfway through the 12-year contract. I no longer see that as a possibility.

But I've also long maintained that the driving impetus for playoff expansion will not be money or TV ratings like so many assume, but rather the inherent discomfort that comes with five conferences playing for four spots. Someone is always going to be the unlucky loser. The Big 12's exclusion in 2014 has sent that conference into an existential crisis that's still playing out today. The Pac-12 was much more accepting of last year's result, but imagine the outcry from its fans if it happens two years in a row.

So, if you're one of those clamoring for this thing to go to eight – and for the record, I am most definitely not – you should root for the two-teams-from-one conference scenario to start occurring regularly...


Back in June, Alabama defensive back Maurice Smith announced he would seek to play somewhere else in 2016 as a graduate transfer. However, reports are now saying that Alabama is being uncooperative and refuses to give Smith a release to Georgia, despite the fact that he's now a graduate of the school. Are graduate transfers really subject to obtaining the same releases from their schools as undergraduate transfers, and does Smith have any recourse?

While grad transfers are eligible to play immediately, they do still have to follow the same process as undergrad transfers. If denied, their only recourse is to appeal within the school. Conferences don't render these decisions.

But regardless of the rule, it's deplorable how Nick Saban is reportedly handling Smith's situation. If he thinks Smith should not be allowed to play for Georgia this season, then why earlier this offseason did he give another grad transfer, receiver Chris Black, his full release to play at Missouri? Because Black was an expendable backup receiver, while Smith was in line to be the Tide's starting nickel back. And, of course, because Smith would be following his former coach, Kirby Smart, to another school.
Curated SEC Infotainment and aggregated college sports updates where it just means more on Hogville.net

jbcarol

Bama will be joined in the College Football Playoff by Clemson, Michigan and Oklahoma

QuoteTide will struggle at quarterback early, might even lose to Ole Miss again, and then they'll figure it out and start rolling. By the end of the regular season, Alabama's running game will be punishing people and its defense will be stuffing everyone.

Alabama coach Nick Saban will win his fifth national title in 10 years in Tuscaloosa and his sixth overall (he won one at LSU)...
Curated SEC Infotainment and aggregated college sports updates where it just means more on Hogville.net

jbcarol

https://twitter.com/CFBHeather/status/763005894661640192

QuoteOnly two teams have won a national championship with two or more losses: Minnesota in 1960 and LSU in 2007. Expect the College Football Playoff era to produce more such champions -- and soon.

All signs point to this season being the one in which a two-loss conference champion finally makes the playoff...
Curated SEC Infotainment and aggregated college sports updates where it just means more on Hogville.net

jbcarol

https://www.seccountry.com/sec/updated-vegas-odds-sec-leads-for-national-championship-heisman-trophy

Bovada released odds on Wednesday:

Bama 6/1
LSU    7/1
Vols  12/1
UG   33/1
UF   40/1
OM   40/1
AU   50/1
A&M 66/1
Ark 100/1
Curated SEC Infotainment and aggregated college sports updates where it just means more on Hogville.net

jbcarol

Curated SEC Infotainment and aggregated college sports updates where it just means more on Hogville.net