Rockne's Roundtable

Good post. In regards to controlling our own schedule, it's time to make it a more manageable one.

You ain't lying my friend. Kelly needs to put the women and children to bed and go hunting for dinner

No one knows what the formula is yet. We still don't know the weighting of a conference champion or strength of schedule or how they are calculating the SOS. We also don't know how the other conferences are going to react, or do. Notre Dame has not won anything yet.

I thought the selection was by committee. If so, then I don't know why it matters what any formula says. Even if the committee is supposed to "rely" on a formula, similar to RPI in basketball, I don't think it truly matters how much emphasis is placed on each of those criteria.

If they wanted to go strictly by a formula, there would be no need for a committee. The inclusion of a committee implies that there will be some subjectivity involved. So, I think the "emphasis" on conference champs is more of a facade. This year is a perfect example: there is no way a committee keeps Bama out of a playoff despite not winning their conference. I could, however, see how a committee would've selected Oregon over Stanford, because Oregon was the conference champ and won head-to-head. I have no basis, but I presume that is how the "conf champ" criteria will be used.

I just cannot envision a scenario where there is a team, which is clearly one of the 4 best, being left out by any unbiased committee.

I don't think my first post was very clear. The point I was trying to make (though I got admittedly side-tracked) was that there is no way to guess how anyone will make any decisions, much less one as complicated as the scenario illustrated above.

Any time human nature (and therefore, subjectivity) is involved all cards go out the window. In your scenario I could see someone justifying that Alabama should not qualify since they lost their conference championship. By the same token Oregon is eliminated. Leaving LSU, USC, Michigan, and ND. The same amount of conference champions as you suggested.

In this turn of events, being in a conference hurt Bama and Oregon. A legitimate argument can be made for either of our scenarios. Frankly, this will inevitably happen at some point during the 12 year effective period. Some teams will feel jilted to have been excluded.

I don't think this system was designed so that no one gets upset with the outcome. That result would be impossible. I think the purpose was to derive a more accurate and effective way to determine the champion. I think this took a big step in that direction.

Now, back to the heart of your concern: the "decision-making" formula. I actually would like to see them implement a transparent formula (i.e. RPI) that provides a reference for the decision-makers. That said, these decision makers would ultimately be responsible; so, they would have the final call. There is no guarantee that they would put much if any value into such formula. The perfect example is RPI. It is hardly the end-all be-all for the NCAA tourney.

The conference championship games are going to eliminate some teams from the Final Four. They have set it up to function like the NCAA basketball tourney with a selection committee. You won't know what the exact process is as they will be picked by a group of men in a hotel. You won't know exactly why they picked who they did. The BCS did that and people hated it, so this is what you get. But, rest assured, just like in basketball you're going to have people crying because they didn't get selected no matter if you have 4 teams, 8 teams, 16 teams, 32 teams. The complaining will never stop and you are always going to have clamoring for more. The NCAA tourney is exploring going to 96 teams now for crying out loud.

ND will always make it into the final 4 if it can be justified. A 12-0 or 11-1 Irish team would would have no problems getting in most of the time. Another thing they would have in their favor is $$$$. Us fans travel well and spend big money when we do.

What about it? That was never going to happen, IMO. Just message board rumors.

These were just hypothetical situations. I don't think anyone is actually discounting the Big XII.

I think you could muddy the waters even further if you add an 11-1 Oklahoma State (Big XII Champ) and 12-1 FSU (ACC champ). Then you have 8 teams (5 big conf champs) that all have only one loss. Undoubtedly, the committee would need some sort of rating system to attempt to choose four from this group. [IC, I'm now seeing that this is what you were trying to illustrate in your example, above.]

That is where I was going. I would not count out the Big 12 and ACC. I say make the playoff include all big conference champions plus wild cards.