....but I am still glad that we have it instead of the championship game being determined by politics, the press, and a bunch of coaches who could quite easily rig this sort of thing to benefit their pals. Lessor known teams or more minor conferences would never get a chance in that sort of setup and it needed an overhaul for sure.
The 4 team championship quickly expanded and now we have a 12 team championship bracket that takes place over a long period of time. The first round is nearly complete with all the teams you would expect to move forward doing so. One thing that doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me though, is the inclusion of James Madison University in the playoffs and the halftime score of 34-6 vs Oregon kind of shows that they do not in fact, belong there.
What the heck actually is James Madison University? Well, it is in fact a rather large school in Harrisonburg, Virginia and that's all fine and dandy but that isn't how rankings work. They are in a lessor known conference called the Sun Belt Conference and if you have never heard of that, there is a good reason for that. The schools in this conference normally don't have very high aspirations as far as the post-season is concerned. Yes, JMU had a very good winning season with only 1 loss the entire way, but they also have a bunch of wins over teams that honestly, I never really hear about. Coastal Carolina? Texas State (seriously)? Louisiana Rajin Cajuns ? (That's seriously the official name of the team) Georgia State? Georgia Southern? Liberty? These are real schools right? You aren't just pulling my leg?
In fact the only schools that I immediately recognized on their roster was Louisville, who beat them, and Marshall, a West Virginia team that hasn't been good in a while.
I went searching for why it is that JMU ended up in the CFP brackets when they managed a mere 24th seed nationwide. When there are just 12 teams invited, why would a 24 seed get an invite. It has something to do with the ACC not having any truly worth teams or something. Something about UVA and Duke, who were being considered, not being "good enough" to get into the playoffs. But JMU WAS good enough? Other teams were passed over such as Notre Dame and USC as well.
I don't know what is going on here but look, the Vegas lines had JMU as a 38.5 point underdog... in the playoffs. this doesn't happen. Something isn't right.
Did they want Oregon to have an easy way through? Were they hoping for some sort of Gonzaga style Cinderella story? Well that is not what we are getting. I turned off the game because when you are 30 point ahead at the half you can put your 2nd string in for the rest of the game and still win by 30.
As I say this JMU just threw for a near 50 yard TD pass and good for them. They only need to do that 4 more times and victory will be theirs!
I guess there are some good games to be had, this just isn't one of them and I think it is odd that so many other good teams would be passed over for JMU. JMU got "jumped" up to have a 12 next to their name but it really should read "24"
They aren't the only ones. Tulane is actually ranked 20th, not 11th and you can already see what Ole Miss did to them.
I guess it is still better than having the final game decided by the press and coaches but I can see that the decision isn't completely objective still. I think if we had left it up to mathematical models that JMU would not be in there.
I guess it isn't so simple when you take into account that there are 773 college football teams in the USA and 136 of them are technically eligible for the playoffs.
I guess it doesn't really matter since I think it is pretty much understood by everyone that Indiana is going to be playing Ohio State in the final barring some sort of miracle along the way. James Madison is not that miracle.