Well sports fans, the result of the CFB committee’s first stab at playoff expansion is a bit like Ebby Calvin “Nuke” Laloosh’s coital exploits…and pitching….”sorta all over the place!”
We can argue the merits of a 12-team versus a 16-team structure, or whether conference championships should be used in determining bracket seedings, or whether any conference is so preternaturally gifted as to deserve automatic playoff inclusion (looking at you SEC). None of the tops seeds, those conference champions given automatic passage to the QF rounds and first-round byes, survived their QF games. So, there’s plenty to fix.
Having said that, this iteration of the playoff has delivered a hugely entertaining post-season and the extra competition has weeded out some pretenders and allowed some truly great underdogs to advance. The Semifinal matchups are actually compelling and should be competitive games!
Most importantly, it’s impossible to know where this thing’s gonna go!
Our experiment with the point spread for the non-playoff games has succeeded in interjecting a small amount of chaos into the system. While there have not been wild swings in the results, the field has remained tight up to the end with one Push and four favored teams failing to cover, which either negated points for all or shifted a few points to the losers. And the remaining points available for the Semis and Championship could still swing the challenge in unexpected ways. We have NO IDEA what’s about to unfold.
As it stands now, Chad is leading all prognosticators with 30 points and Pete and Schafer are just off the lead with 29 points. Well done!!! There’s no time to gloat, though, since the semifinal games are worth 4 points each and the championship game is worth 8 points.
With Georgia’s loss in the quarters, will the eventual champion emerge from somewhere back in the pack?
Stay tuned, MEAT!