NCAA Football 2023-2024

[Valmy]

Notre Dame is in the ACC. Their independence is just for show and for football only.

Notre dame is an associate member of the Big Ten for hockey and has a different Grant of Rights than the other ACC members.  Conference alignment is about football.

True. They are aligned with the ACC is football though. Their bowl affiliation is tied to the ACC and they are contractually obligated to play a certain number of ACC teams.

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Awesome move by JJ McCarthy

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Maybe it's time to resurrect this thread. 

Texas-OkState is quite the defensive battle... not.  28 points in the first quarter.  Ewers looks completely unstoppable.

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To continue the discussion from the OT thread, the CFP Selection Committee will be facing a delicious dilemma if all the conference games go chalk except Alabama-Georgia.  The committee will be forced to choose between its own declared selection policies and its loyalty to the SEC in that case; their stated policy is that, if there are two teams with equal records competing for one slot,
1. A conference champ gets in over a non-champ;
2. The winner of a head-to-head gets in over the loser
3. If both teams are champs and there is no head to head, then (and only then) is the committee going to look at each team's resume.

The only exception to this is if the committee considers that a team that would otherwise go is too damaged by late-season injuries to realistically compete (keeping in mind, though, that Ohio State won a national championship with their third-string quarterback).

The CFP rules pretty clearly indicate that Texas should get in before Alabama, because of the head-to-head win.  However, ESPN has the TV rights to the CFP games, and clearly wants to have a team from their partner conference, the SEC, in the playoffs.  Justice says Texas, money says Alabama.

I'm sorta hoping that FSU loses so there's a chance that Michigan plays Texas (they've, somewhat astonishingly, only met once before, a barnburner 38-37 Texas win in the 2005 Rose Bowl).  But I'm also kinda hoping that the CFP committee shows itself for the fraud that it is by choosing Alabama after an FSU win.  Next year will be a new era for the CFP and it would be nice to see a more honest selection committee at the top.

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Part of my anticipated nostalgia for this year in college football is that it marks the end of the Big Ten as much as it does the end of the Pac 12.  In particular, it means the end of that delightful entity known as the Big Ten West.  Only in the Big Ten West could a team that boasts four of the five lowest over/under scores in NCAA football  sportsbook history (all in the last 2 years, and all of them paying on the under) win a division crown going away.  Only in the Big Ten West could a team win the division while averaging more net punt yardage than total offense yardage.  Bry_Mac on MGoBlog had a great eulogy (warning:  only for the CFB enthusiast):

PUNT
By Bryan MacKenzie
@Bry_Mac

Today, we lose something beautiful. Something pure. Something unsullied by outside world and the excesses of modernity. A testament to a bygone era, when men wore flannel and donned massive mustaches, coffee was black, modems said BeeeeebBaBoopBabDingDingDingEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHHHH, and punting was winning.

Before the clock strikes midnight tonight, the Big Ten West will cease to exist.

The addition of Washington, Oregon, USC and UCLA gave the conference no choice but to abandon the concept of divisions, and to instead adopt a "whatever dogpile arrangement yields the biggest television ratings" structure. Likewise, the structure of the conference championship game will fundamentally change. Everyone will be thrown in the same pot of Hormel chili, with the expectation that the best two teams will emerge by the end of the season and play in Indianapolis (or Chicago or Vegas or Qatar or the deck of the U.S.S. Nimitz or the moon).

Sure, there are problems with that structure, such as "these teams are going to have wildly unbalanced conference schedule strengths" and "Michigan and Ohio State might play twice in 8 days" and "have y'all considered what will happen if, like, three teams go undefeated or four teams end up with the same record?" But the biggest problem, in this author's humble opinion, is that it ruins the ecosystems that have developed in the two halves of the conference.

The East is... well, the East has been 'better' in all material respects for the ten years of this divisional arrangement. When the lines were drawn, Penn State was still in "will they ever recover?" mode, and people expected Nebraska and Wisconsin to be the counterbalances to a middling Michigan, a solid Michigan State, and Ohio State. It, uh, did not work out that way. Penn State came back, Michigan came back, and Nebraska is riding the nation's longest Power 5 bowl-less streak. As a result, the East is 9-0 in Big Ten Championship games, most of which have not been particularly competitive, and their representative in today's game is a three-touchdown favorite.

But the Big Ten West never flinched. At no point did they look in the mirror and say, "I need to be someone else." Because the Ancient Gods of the Big Ten West do not look kindly on such things. Nebraska isn't bad because of bad luck or a couple of bad hires. No, they are bad because they eschewed the option offense and tried to be, [derisive air quotes here] "Modern." Wisconsin was doing great for DECADES until they had the audacity to recruit a blue-chip quarterback and tried to throw the football (other than throws to the flat to guys wearing neck rolls. The Ancient Ones grudgingly accept such things). Then, instead of admitting the error of their ways, they brought in an AIR RAID guy. The hell were they thinking?

But then there's Iowa. Good ol' Iowa.

There has never been a more Big Ten West team than 2023 Iowa. Iowa finished last in the Big Ten West (and #124 in the nation) in scoring offense. They're last in the West in yards per play. They're last in the West in yards per pass attempt. They're second-to-last in the West in yards per carry. They're last in the West in first downs per game. They're last in the West in converting third downs. They're last in the West in red zone touchdown percentage. They were, by almost any objective measure, the worst offense in the Big Ten West, the worst offense in the Big Ten, and probably the worst offense in the Power 5.

And they ran away with the West division crown.

Some would say this reflected the degeneracy of the West. They'll argue it shows the need to destroy this last bastion of waggle-based warfare. I argue the opposite. It shows the power of believing in your inner beauty, no matter how ugly your outer self might be. Iowa was Iowa to the very end, regardless of the booing and the Drive to 325 jokes and the I'm Here For The Punting shirts and the overall national scorn.

I will unironically miss the Big Ten West. Sure, they played some aesthetically challenging football games. But that's part of what makes college football fun. The football in the NFL is better, but it can never hold a candle to the weird beauty of college football. College football matches wildly different styles and philosophies and skill levels. It reminds me of the Roman gladiatorial battles of old, where rich, bored Romans would say "I dunno, give that dude a full suit of armor, and give that one a fishing net and a trident, and let's see what happens." It's a chance to live out "would you rather fight a hundred duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck." These isolated environments have fostered this kind of entertainment. The death of the West is one more step towards homogeneity. There is a place in this world for stupid beauty, and Iowa City has been its spiritual home for a while now.   

I don't think it's any coincidence that, in solidarity with Brian Ferentz, every single Big Ten West team refused to score 25 points per game this season. While they are usually hated rivals, they nevertheless recognized that in this time of upheaval, Iowa is the staunchest defender of their way of life. And in this, the West's swan swan song, I believe Iowa will make this their pièce de résistance. Their magnum opus. Their Charge of the Punt Brigade. They will not win, because that is not the way of the West. But they will make sure everyone remembers the West, not as it died, but as it lived. Michigan 3, Iowa 2.

https://mgoblog.com/content/punt-counterpunt-big-ten-championship-2023#read-more

[Valmy]

Maybe it's time to resurrect this thread. 

Texas-OkState is quite the defensive battle... not.  28 points in the first quarter.  Ewers looks completely unstoppable.

Well it was a Big 12 title game. 35-14 at the half was about what we should have expected.

[Valmy]

Bama wins. So this should be fun.

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LFG

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All right, I guess I have to root for Louisville just to get that Michigan-Texas game.

[Valmy]

All right, I guess I have to root for Louisville just to get that Michigan-Texas game.

Oh its brutal so far. Florida State's injured QB must be amazing because the rest of their offense is awful.

[PDH]

At least Wyoming finished with an 8-4 record and the head coach is (finally) at .500 for his record, Craig Bohl is now 60-60.  That is something indeed, since the last coach at Laramie with a winning record was in the 90s.

I am not sure what to think, against the really good teams Wyoming played well, but lost.  Against anyone coming to Laramie they played really well, and against pansies the team won.  I guess, given the fact that when I returned to grad school there the Cowboys won 5 games in 3 years, I will take this as a golden age.

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First half for Iowa:  net 231 yards punting, 61 yards total offense.

Just another Saturday for Iowa.

[Valmy]

Congrats to Michigan! Grumber, you got the exact result you wanted. Maybe the SEC gets shut out.

We'll see. Nothing to do but see what the committee does now.

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I don't see FSU making the playoffs after that game.

Michigan-Washington-Texas-Alabama.

I like the chances of a Texas-Michigan game with that setup.

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It's killing me that my feed ended before the presentation of the Big Ten championship trophy and none of the YouTube channels have that ceremony yet.

I really am hoping the Jim Harbaugh ripped the trophy out of Teeny Petit's hands, or that TP played the Covid card and pussied out of presenting it.  I guess I have to wait to see.

I can't wait for Michigan to get out of this chickenshit conference.