I sent this email to Kirby this morning. I'd be interested to hear what other posters think about the upcoming decision.

Kirby-

I hope this email finds you well. As you and the committee make the final decisions on the college football playoff participants today, I wanted to add my "two cents worth" to the discussion. To all but the most loyal die hard fans of a particular team, a conference championship is extremely important. Additionally beating a team head to head indicates that one team is better than the other unless of course the records of the teams are vastly different. With that in mind, Penn State, the Big 10 champion and winner of their game with Ohio State, should be one of the four teams in the playoff.

Your choices today won't please everyone. However, I honestly feel that placing a team that didn't even compete in its conference championship in the playoffs will either lead to a greater push for the inclusion of eight teams or to borrow from the latest presidential election, cultivate additional criticism that the system is rigged.

One last note. If a team from one of the "lesser" conferences has to win their league title to be considered for inclusion in the Cotton Bowl game this year, why shouldn't the same standard be applied to the final four teams?

Thanks and good luck with today's task.

Sincerely,

Alan Swank

I agree about the computer polls. The human factor can have just as many flaws in deciding. Ultimately, if the rankings stand as-is, all P5 teams with 1 loss or fewer will get in.

Fans always talk about head-to-head. The trouble is Ohio St. and Penn St. don't exist in a vacuum. Michigan is also being evaluated and Penn St. got completely destroyed by them. By that argument Michigan goes. But then Ohio St. beat them and they go again. The committee's job is to consider the resume of 128 teams. It isn't to rank Ohio St. vs. Penn State in a vacuum. They might evaluate Ohio State vs. Clemson and Washington and say Ohio St. is clearly better and evaluate Penn St. against Clemson and Washington and find that they are clearly worse. What about evaluating Oklahoma against Penn St. (both two losses and a conference title - maybe Oklahoma is ahead because they didn't lose to a team like Pitt) and Ohio St. vs. Oklahoma (If H2H is the end all be all Ohio St. destroyed them.) Anyone who has actually had to sit in on an hours long debate where all teams need to be evaluated against all others knows that trying to apply H2H as something more than a tiebreaker is extremely problematic and basically impossible and often becomes an emotional appeal of fan bases who are able to focus in on who their team has defeated and mentally block out their own losses.

We have seen A LOT of shuffling at the top in the last weeks ranking. It is apparent that conference titles matter A LOT. This doesn't mean as Herbstreit says that Michigan might jump Washington. I think the opposite will happen. Clemson, Washington, Oklahoma and Penn St. will move up with respect to other teams. I think the upshot of that is Penn St will jump a Michigan team who destroyed them, would be favored to beat them, and has a higher strength of record due to Colorado OOC because the conference title will override that. I doubt they will jump Ohio St. because other than the title Ohio State's resume is much, much better. The argument, if there is one, is probably down to Ohio St and Penn St. If OSU is not #4 this week there was probably little argument for inclusion. We'll see if the title is enough for PSU to make up A TON of ground in a few minutes.

Fans in Ohio believe what they want to believe, regardless of the truth.




#electionsOSUMACtitlegame

What's the weight of recency, of most recent wins/losses vs. those earlier in the year?

The B1G title was enough to jump the Michigan team that beat them h2h. It wasn't enough to bridge the chasm that otherwise existed between them and OSU as I think we could have guessed. But we really had not seen a similar scenario yet and didn't know for sure if conference titles were pretty much everything.

Considering OSU only fell behind Clemson I'd guess that PSU passing Washington, who was 3 spots ahead and beat a similarly ranked opponent and won a similarly ranked Conference, was not really all that much of a debate.

It's very clear where he was going with this. He simply wanted to know if winning your last nine games including beating a team that got into the final four and winning your conference championship last night was more important than an early season loss. Now go back into your hole until next year, homer.

Excellent letter, Alan. I made all of these points in discussions I've had with family members after Penn State's win over Wisconsin.

I'd go easy on bcat2. He's a very valuable counterweight to our complainer-in-chief.

I do agree. No problem with this at all, just seem a revelation on Monroe's part given his thousands of posts hanging losses going back years around the Ohio coaches necks.

They need to use a BCS-style ranking system, that includes some computers (or at least something that is beyond of room of people charged with populating games to make the most money). I have no problem with the playoff or NY6 idea, but change how the teams are picked.

Only goal was what we could control. Firm believer in the KISS method. Goal never went farther than the next game.

It does mean something, and so does having the most wins against the top 10 and the toughest schedule in the country. Don't loose to an unbranded Pitt and PSU is in the Playoffs.

It's all just so stupid. It turns football into figure skating & gymnastics, with the fate of teams being decided by rankings and committees. I just get so tired of it and don't understand why it can't just be a tournament of conference champions so we can burn the rankings to the ground and every team control their own destiny and know exactly what they need to do.