Game Thread Rose Bowl, Ducks vs Ohio State 1/1/2025

AFLAC!

 

A
F_cking
L
A
Clunker

 

All of Knights money and all of Knights dreams couldn't bring Phil a championship team.

 

I remember when the national champion was the team which was #1 in the polls. No championship game, no playoff. Of course we’re finally #1 when there’s a 12 team playoff.

 

Oregon was the best team in CFB this year

Not a duck fan, but you call em as you see em

Disappointing game

 

Unbelievable play by ND to end 1st half and start 2nd half.

 

But 34-0…

 

In the current College Football Playoff Bracket, it kind of sucks to be seeded #1 or #2. Both #1 Oregon and #2 Georgia lost.

The best seeding could actually be the 5th and 6th seed.

If you are the 5th or 6th seed, you start your playoffs with a game at home against a lower-ranked opponent.

Then, in the quarterfinals, you play the conference winners of a lesser conference at a neutral site. A team whose ranking might not be close to their seeding.

I'm not sure it's better to be the 7th and 8th seed over the 1st and 2nd seed, but you also get a warm-up game at home before playing a high-ranked opponent that has been sitting around for a few weeks, at a neutral site.

Take a look at the quarterfinal results of this bracket.

I think it effectively made it meaningless to be ranked #1 or #2 (and maybe a detriment) because of the above reasons.

Who's going to care that Oregon was ranked #1 at the end of the regular season anyway? Is there any advantage?

 

Not one team that sat 3 1/2 weeks won a game. That pretty much tells the story In my humble opinion.

 

Yep. Gotta be something to it. Oh well. Try again next season.

 

Well in hindsight this one year sure - but many years the 5th-8th seed will lose and their season will end Dec20th without a bowl game. Seems that being guaranteed to play new years day and one of final 8 teams is a big advantage?

Think we'll need at least a few years to judge the new format. Top4 seeds all losing was just a fluke IMO.

Although all the CFP teams are super strong so we might not see higher seeds advance much more often than lower seeds. Top4 seeds needing 3 wins vs others needing 4 wins is a huge advantage though.

 

No team that missed an extra highly televised home game and moved directly to a bowl game had any advantage either on the field or monetarily. You may call that a fluke but there is no way you can deny that simple fact.

 

yeah...I'm not going to try and find the video, but Nick Saban, a former coach who may happen to be an expert on college football had a interesting take on this situation. I'll just paraphrase from my flawed memory:

he said 'that there was always a loss of execution during a long lay-off after a season; especially on defense. The biggest deficit was always in tackling; players failing to wrap-up was part of it but also players taking wrong angles, filling wrong gaps, making wrong reads. This was also true for the offense; receivers not having the same route precision; slow read progression for the QB; RB's not seeing holes quick enough

basically, after a long rest reactions aren't as quick, and reaction is critical for defenders; and important for offensive linemen. Good teams that show up a half second and half yard slower in reaction time are no longer good teams

but in the old formats that didn't matter because both teams in a post-season game were arriving after the same time off; the same rest period. Both teams were dealing with the same issues of rest vs rust. Saban essentially said this new format was fucked and gave the teams that won in the 1st round a huge advantage over the teams with byes. He implied that there would need to be changes'

now, as a Duck fan I'm not going to retreat behind those excuses. They might explain Oregon falling behind 14-0 or 17-3. But 34-0 means there was a lot more going on than rest vs rust. Duck butts were kicked hard for the first 28 minutes, and OSU coasted after that

I'm not sure what the changes should be. Probably eliminate the 1st round byes, but that would mean either an 8 team playoff (which conferences, media, and bowl committees would not support); or a 16 team playoff with the standard #1 vs #16; #2 vs #15; etc.; and the top 8 seeds having 1st round games at home. After years of a 4 team BCS, 16 teams seems excessive, but the media, conferences, and bowl committees would love it

 

16 teams seems to be the best solution, IMO.

 

I never thought the final game of football was much better played than game 1, if anything seemed the opposite.

Would think there's a way to practice or drills and keep all that timing.

 

according to Saban, there's not. He mentioned that the majority of football injuries are ground contact. So, teams avoid that potential hazard in bowl preparation. He said at Alabama they worked hard at "thud" tackling without taking players to the ground. Doing the contact and wrap-up but stopping there. But he said that leaves some skills to regress