2025 College Football Playoffs

[Bane]

Finally, the conference championships need to be addressed. If there is a reward for winning, there needs to be at least the potential for negative consequence for losing. Alabama getting jail sexed on national TV, looking completely helpless, while already being essentially a bubble team needs to have consequences. Had Alabama lost 31-28 or 21-17 or even made the game remotely competitive, I could be convinced they should have maybe only dropped a spot or something. BYU faced consequences. Why didn't Alabama?


3. Notre Dame is justified and probably correct to decline a bowl invitation.

Re: Conference title games, they've become totally meaningless and in the SECCG it was all risk for UGA (they didn't move up for winning but likely would have risked their bye by losing) and all reward for Alabama (probably would have taken UGA's bye and as we all know, didn't move down for losing). That is a perverse, political incentive structure. Laughably corrupt. Meanwhile every other CCG loser this weekend (and last year, and every other year of the playoffs with one other exception being TCU a few years ago) got "punished" for "failing their extra credit."

Re: declining the bowl, the bowls have lost all meaning now. For better or worse, they're just glorified exhibitions that exist to make money for the organizers and ESPN. That is why you see all of the concern trolling and bloviating from ESPN talking heads about ND "taking their ball and going home," their network loses money not this year from our lack of participation, but it threatens the entire bowl structure which is a cashcow for them.

 

[BleedBlueGold]

This is an incredible piece highlighting everything that happened.

I will warn you it is long, but absolutely worth the read. If the author is on IE, props to you.

Can you post the direct link please? I don't have twitter. No socials, boys. It's the chicken soup for the soul.

 

[Rasputin]

Re: Conference title games, they've become totally meaningless and in the SECCG it was all risk for UGA (they didn't move up for winning but likely would have risked their bye by losing) and all reward for Alabama (probably would have taken UGA's bye and as we all know, didn't move down for losing). That is a perverse, political incentive structure. Laughably corrupt. Meanwhile every other CCG loser this weekend (and last year, and every other year of the playoffs with one other exception being TCU a few years ago) got "punished" for "failing their extra credit."

Re: declining the bowl, the bowls have lost all meaning now. For better or worse, they're just glorified exhibitions that exist to make money for the organizers and ESPN. That is why you see all of the concern trolling and bloviating from ESPN talking heads about ND "taking their ball and going home," their network loses money not this year from our lack of participation, but it threatens the entire bowl structure which is a cashcow for them.

Exactly. It was only a few short years ago these same talking heads were going off on a few players opting out of meaningless bowl games to focus on getting ready for the NFL draft. It was whittling away at ESPN's product value because the best players weren't playing.

Now that it's entire teams opting out, and it's a national brand like Notre Dame, of course ESPN is upset again. This is hurting ESPN's content and bottom line. They are lashing out because their bowl cash cow is going to collapse. Good.

 

[KPENN]

Herbstreit’s son just posted on the On3 ND board. Half tempted to ask if he’s stopped shilling for Bama yet

 

[irish2104]

What did he say?

 

[KPENN]

What did he say?

Tough day for the Irish yesterday, especially when this team seemed to be playing their best ball late in the season. But want to hear thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

 

[Jiggafini19Deux]

Alabama got a FIFA Peace Prize yesterday. Just a nepo baby spot in a playoff they won't win.

Best case scenario is Tulane, JMU, Miami and Alabama all lose. If it's handily that's even better.

 

[KPENN]

Herbstreit’s son just posted on the On3 ND board. Half tempted to ask if he’s stopped shilling for Bama yet

I did it guys

 

[NorthDakota]

Exactly. It was only a few short years ago these same talking heads were going off on a few players opting out of meaningless bowl games to focus on getting ready for the NFL draft. It was whittling away at ESPN's product value because the best players weren't playing.

Now that it's entire teams opting out, and it's a national brand like Notre Dame, of course ESPN is upset again. This is hurting ESPN's content and bottom line. They are lashing out because their bowl cash cow is going to collapse. Good.

Yep. It's McCaffrey refusing to play but one of the biggest brands doing it as a team (along with several other programs too). I'd actually be fine with ND straight up burning the boats and bringing back the old "no bowls" policy. The kids will not care and ND fans will not care.

 

[Dale]

Herbstreit’s son just posted on the On3 ND board. Half tempted to ask if he’s stopped shilling for Bama yet

Why?

Ask if he still has his dad’s Twitter password

 

[IrishLax]

Herbstreit’s son just posted on the On3 ND board. Half tempted to ask if he’s stopped shilling for Bama yet

DO IT

 

[bumpdaddy]

It’s one of the criteria for how they decide the rankings. It’s on their website.
Miami having a better scoring margin against common opponents was not good for us.

We can agree to disagree on how much it mattered, but it was a metric we could have done better on.

Sorry, just getting around to seeing this. I don't want to rehash an argument that died down, but I think we should put to rest your line of thinking here.

As others have pointed out, you were wrong in the broader sense - the committee was going to shaft ND even if they had blown teams out by bigger margins. But you are also wrong on substance, and your attachment makes that pretty clear.

The 3rd bullet point, the one I'm sure you were referring to, says this:

​

'For comparable teams, the committee will consider... comparative outcomes of common opponents (without incenting margin of victory)"​

The bolded part is what you got wrong. Margin of victory is not only NOT supposed to be a big factor when comparing outcomes against common opponents (it can be considered, but only to a certain extent), but the committee is also instructed to make sure they don't incentivize margin of victory. Which means, if anything, the committee should have given ND credit for blowing out common opponents without running up the score by pulling starters once the games were out of hand, and should have penalized Miami (or at least criticized them) for doing the opposite; keeping starters in, calling time-outs in the final minutes of blowouts, etc.

I just wanted to make this clear because other people share your opinion, so I wanted to set the record straight. If the committee actually was blindly looking at margin of victory of common opponents, they were violating their own rule.

Which goes back to the broader point - it didn't matter what ND did. The committee was going to shaft them regardless.

 

[KPENN]

DO IT

My post.

Has your dad stopped shilling for Bama yet? Did you have second hand embarrassment listening to him?

 

[burmafrd1944]

ESPN front page for NCAAF is full of whining about Notre Dame giving the system the finger

the fun thing is that they INCREASE the interest in Notre Dame doing this

 

[NorthDakota]

ESPN front page for NCAAF is full of whining about Notre Dame giving the system the finger

the fun thing is that they INCREASE the interest in Notre Dame doing this

Are they whining about the other teams declining as well?

 

[RDU Irish]

Tough day for the Irish yesterday, especially when this team seemed to be playing their best ball late in the season. But want to hear thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

How about - I feel like your dad has no soul. I think he is a glorified prostitute. In my opinion, its impressive he can talk with so many SEC cocks in his mouth.

 

[FightingIrishLover7]

My post.

Has your dad stopped shilling for Bama yet? Did you have second hand embarrassment listening to him?

Did you ask him if his dad puts peanut butter on his taint for his dogs to tickle it?

 

[MacIrish75]

Did you ask him if his dad puts peanut butter on his taint for his dogs to tickle it?

Even if he did, per Road Trip, that would not constitute cheating on his spouse.

 

[RDU Irish]

Are they whining about the other teams declining as well?

Hilarious if anyone is whining about Iowa State and K-State forcing FSU and Auburn to play "NOT-IT!"

 

[pumpdog20]

I'm baffled why other fan bases even care if we play in an exhibition or not. I thought we were irrelevant.

 

[NorthDakota]

Hilarious if anyone is whining about Iowa State and K-State forcing FSU and Auburn to play "NOT-IT!"

I've posited this question to some online CFB fans I follow for non-CFB reasons and its been crickets.

People will absolutely freeze up like a deer in the headlights if you ask them why they are upset with Notre Dame doing or not doing something that someone else has also said they intend to do or already done. Per usual, its about animosity toward Notre Dame rather than any principles whatsoever. You'd think ND forfeited a regular season game due to injuries or something lmao

 

[RudyVerse]

I like how they pinned Oklahoma and Alabama, the two most undeserving against each other so at least one of them is a “see, we called it right”.

 

[IrishSteelhead]

This is an incredible piece highlighting everything that happened.

I will warn you it is long, but absolutely worth the read. If the author is on IE, props to you.

“Ghosted machine”


Hmmmm

There was a poster here years ago that went by Ghost in the Machine.

Think it might have been the same guy who went by Johnny Cando here at one point too, and something before that I forgot.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[maineman]

California kid who fell in love with Carl Yastrzemski and never left the Sox even in the down years. I locked everyone out of my dorm in '85 because I was sick of the people in my face after the Buckner play. BTW....I still blame Bob Stanley more!

Just in case no one has mentioned, yet, that was 1986! Don’t remind me!

 

[RDU Irish]

I like how they pinned Oklahoma and Alabama, the two most undeserving against each other so at least one of them is a “see, we called it right”.

And sent to slaughter against a far superior #1 seed. Two teams that don't belong get to fly under the radar.

Can we ship some players to Tulane in the portal quick? Would love to see them find a way to beat a rudderless Ole Miss.

 

[Jiggafini19Deux]

They continued to rank Notre Dame ahead of Miami for weeks and then didn't in the end.

Forget get data points and H2H and all of it. They should have just had Miami ahead of ND from the get go. They fucked around with everyone and misled people for their stupid weekly ranking segment. Which, honestly, if people were tuning into every week likely have way too much free time.

 

[NorthDakota]

They continued to rank Notre Dame ahead of Miami for weeks and then didn't in the end.

Forget get data points and H2H and all of it. They should have just had Miami ahead of ND from the get go. They fucked around with everyone and misled people for their stupid weekly ranking segment. Which, honestly, if people were tuning into every week likely have way too much free time.

Every groupchat I'm in I've asked "what changed between Tuesday and [Sunday]" and no one has given a good answer. The key to these discussions needs to be "what changed from Tuesday to Sunday" and after about five minutes people will concede this is not an acceptable way for the committee to operate because once they put themselves in the position of Notre Dame they immediately understand the anger.

Had Miami been ahead all along, or even after last week...the frustration wouldn't be there. 95% of the anger as it pertains to Miami jumping is that *NOTHING* happened to change that.

 

[Bane]

And sent to slaughter against a far superior #1 seed. Two teams that don't belong get to fly under the radar.

Can we ship some players to Tulane in the portal quick? Would love to see them find a way to beat a rudderless Ole Miss.

The setting up of Ole Miss in the 6 seed and pairing Bama and OU together ensures that probably the 3 weakest P4 teams in the field have 2 teams advance. At the time, moving Ole Miss up to the 6 seed after they lose their coach made no sense, but they were likely anticipating a situation like this and were trying to protect a SEC brand. Keeping Bama at 9 ensures that they'll be matched up with another shitty SEC team with no offense and OU will probably win like 7-0 on a pick six.

Also, keeping UGA at 3 means we have a likely SEC on SEC match up, a rematch of OM and UGA. That locks in the SEC with a one of the final four spots.

It's just a cartel to protect the P2 brands and make everyone a pile of money.

 

[Riddickulous]

They continued to rank Notre Dame ahead of Miami for weeks and then didn't in the end.

Forget get data points and H2H and all of it. They should have just had Miami ahead of ND from the get go. They fucked around with everyone and misled people for their stupid weekly ranking segment. Which, honestly, if people were tuning into every week likely have way too much free time.

Yep. Would've avoided the whole controversy.

 

[Bane]

Every groupchat I'm in I've asked "what changed between Tuesday and [Sunday]" and no one has given a good answer. The key to these discussions needs to be "what changed from Tuesday to Sunday" and after about five minutes people will concede this is not an acceptable way for the committee to operate because once they put themselves in the position of Notre Dame they immediately understand the anger.

Had Miami been ahead all along, or even after last week...the frustration wouldn't be there. 95% of the anger as it pertains to Miami jumping is that *NOTHING* happened to change that.

The initial rankings of us at 10 and Miami at 18 were totally justified based on Miami's play right before the first rankings. Really, the time to flip Miami in front of us was once they entered into our "tier" 2 weeks ago, which would have been frustrating but at least somewhat understandable based off of the committee's stated manner in which they compare teams.

However, they left us ahead for 2 consecutive rankings despite Miami being in our "tier" and even had the fucking balls to say multiple times, "Notre Dame is a better team than Miami," all the way up until they felt compelled to give the ACC a charity spot in the tournament and of course had to protect the Kingpin of the SEC.

The networks and the conferences colluded against us, bottom line.