Someone buy Art Briles a map...and, a clue.

The selection committee needs more Southerners? Does he realize that two of the four schools in the playoff - Alabama and Florida State - are squarely in the deep south?

I always hated when BCS conference schools complained about the BCS because they signed up for the con! Baylor, TCU, and everyone else in the 10 team Big 12 went all in on the ridiculous "One True Champion" gambit, so they shouldn't complain.

Big 12 got what it bargained for: two "One True Champions" and a shut out from the playoff by a committee who understands that a Big 12 schedule isn't all that rigorous now that OU and Texas have watered down the league for the sake of money and power.

Plus, and this is surely figured in, Baylor couldn't even sell it's allotment of tickets to one BCS game last year and, so, had to return thousands of tickets to the Fiesta Bowl. How in the world could anyone have expected that their fan base, who won't pony up for even one marquee bowl game, would suddenly pony up for possibly two?

Half of the Baylor alumni are probably gearing up for Women's Basketball and aren't even aware of what is happening on the football field anyway.

 

Baylor has no one but themselves to blame. Their out of confference schedule was horrible. And I do think OU playing badly the last half of the season hurt both them and TCU. I hate the Big 12(-2-2+2) conference so the announcement that left out all the Big 12 teams didn't exactly bring a tear to my eye. BTW, is there any way Badge could bring us some of the melt down threads from the TCU and Baylor boards when they learned they weren't in the playoffs?

 

The CCG is much ado about little. We play every team in the conference. How much more do we need to do than that? What else is to be proved.? The other conferences who for the longest time did not have a CCG have now apparently "hallelujah! Seen the Light". All they do is play an unbalanced schedule and make up for it at the end with another game. Big Deal.

While I agree the Baylor non-conf schedule was weak the fact remains that Baylor has a better win than any win of Ohio St. and Ohio St has a worse loss than Baylor. Despite the weak non-conf Baylor still had a better SOS than Ohio St. Baylor's was 17th and Ohio St was 38th. So there IMO there is no good reason to put Ohio St in ahead of Baylor. The whole thing smells of politics and television viewership.

 

Gee, you didn't figure that one out during the conference realignments in 2010 and 2011?

Central Freaking Florida ran roughshod over Baylor last year in a half-empty Fiesta Bowl. Do yo think the playoff committee wanted that scenario again?

The rednecks of Ohio will take out second mortgages on their homes to see one and possibly two playoff games. The Baylor fans won't even spring for one.

Art Briles - and Baylor's mouthy athletic director - need to understand that they are lucky to have been included with the Big Boys many years ago. And, because of that, they need to go ahead and act like Big Boys when they win. That means their fans getting off of their Central Texas coondogs and buying tickets.

The problem with Baylor is that they freeloaded for so long, they are still in the freeloading mentality. They are now in an arena where money matters. They can't just sit around and have stuff handed to them anymore.

Ohio State fans will travel and spend money for football. Baylor fans will get jacked up about Women's Basketball, but watch the bowl games on TV.

 

Yes but the Committee is supposed (should) be above all of that. Good sense would dictate that they be less obvious. All of which is exactly why the idea of playoffs, at least as NCAA Football is currently structured, is a cruel joke. The thing is if they can do this to Baylor they can do it to OU also. If Div I college football wants a playoff the whole system needs to be dismantled and be designed with one that has objective standards. I seriously doubt it is even possible in college sports. Any system that comes down to an eye test by some group of bureaucrats is by definition flawed.

 

Of course, they should be "above all that." But, this isn't utopia. If the power schools/conferences were "above all that" then we would never have had the BCS or a Playoff Committee in the first place.

If they were all "above all that," they'd put all the conference champions into a playoff like they do in basketball. But, we are not living in that world at this level of football and never have at any point in time in the past!

You have to accept reality. And, reality is, nationally, no one give's a rat's fat back what Baylor and TCU did in a conference littered with the likes of Kansas, Iowa State, Texas Tech, Baylor, and TCU with Texas and OU as also-rans. That's simply the reality of it.

They see that OU and Texas are down and that is it.

There is no cache in Baylor, TCU, or their coaches. Okay? Ohio State has Urban Meyer. Love him or hate him, he's won big everywhere and built up clout along the way.

Patterson is a heck of a coach, but he's stayed at TCU, whereas Meyer dumped Utah and jumped to a bigger school and proved his mettle there. Now, he's pulled Ohio State's cart out of its temporary ditch. That means something to the national people.

That is going to be more of a national sell than Patterson's Horned Frogs beating up the WAC/C-USA/MWC, then having two losing seasons to begin Big 12 play, then beating OU and Texas in down years for those respective schools. Patterson doesn't have the same cache as Meyer. And, neither does that whiny Art Briles.

Briles jumped from Houston to...Baylor. He didn't jump from Houston to Michigan, or Houston to USC, or Houston to Miami, or Houston to any other school with historic football credibility and bring them back to national prominence.

Therefore, no one - outside of Waco - really cares about his story. And, so, he's not going to be given the same breaks Meyer is going to get.

We already know Meyer can do it at the highest level with national powers. We have no idea whether Briles can or not because he wet the bed against Central Florida when he was finally on the big stage.

Whether that's fair or not isn't the issue because it's reality. But, we shouldn't be complaining about it because we singed up for it! We have agreed to be a apart of it all along. Okay?

It's a little disingenuous to gripe after the fact. If our commissioner and coaches, athletic directors and presidents don't have the foresight to accept reality of what they signed up for, that isn't the Playoff Committee's fault.

 

No, you DO NOT have to accept reality in the sense you just shrug your shoulders and walk away. I don't give a flying flip about the cache of Baylor, TCU or any other program. What you do on the field should be the be all and end all or the system needs to be blown up. This isn't the Urban Meyer Show. What Meyer has done in the past is just that, the past. This should never devolve into some kind of American Idol popularity contest which is exactly what I'm seeing here in it's inaugural season. The attitude of "that's just the way things are" just doesn't cut it.

Secondly I am not being "disingenuous" after the fact. I hated the idea of a playoff for all the reasons I previously mentioned. I have made multiple posts over time about just what I am saying now. We either need to objectify the system or go back to the old way.

 

Good for you for not agreeing to the Playoff System - OU's president and AD did, however.

And, it is The Urban Meyer Show, that's the reality of it; they just proved it yesterday. It may not be fair or right, but it's reality.

No one, nationally, cares about Art Briles' turtleneck shirts or a Chris Farley-looking Gary Patterson playing his guitar at local bars and clubs. Right or wrong don't figure into the picture.

My point is that our president and athletic director need to accept reality and get away from Baylor and TCU...and Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Kansas, and Iowa State. Win, lose, or draw, they are dead weight nationally. There is no bigger evidence that this playoff committee selection.

Perhaps, in order to boost the Big 12, you yourself should buy tickets to Baylor's bowl game since their fans will not. That will prevent the perception that they are a waste of time and money in that eyes of the national power brokers.

 

You're not being "disingenuous". You're being naive. You really think it was even a contest between Baylor/TCU and Ohio State once they all finished with only one loss? It's not even about the coaches. It's about tradition, drawing power and name recognition. TDTW is right. The Baylor football program has been a parasite to whatever conference they belonged to before the last 2 to 3 years. They have now been able to grow their program at the expense of the marquee programs left in the Big 12. But nobody outside of the I-35 corridor in Texas GAS.

Congrats to Baylor and TCU for finally fielding decent teams more often than once every 25 years. It was done at the expense and prestige of UT and OU. And the worrisome thing about that is UT is in a better position to overcome this parasitic drawdown because of their location and financial fire power. I am afraid if OU remains in the Big 12 much longer it will sink to the Baylor/OSU/KSU/TCU level permanently.....regression towards the mean. Several of us warned this would happen before TCU was accepted into the Big 12.

 

Actually, I think the committee made themselves look foolish with their about face. If it were about actual conference strength on the field, then the B10 wouldn't have a team in. Does anybody actually remember the B10's abysmal non-con performance. Their best win was frickin Indiana beating Mizzourah. Ohio State lost to a .500 team at home. Why was TCU in last week but Ohio State in this week? Because Ohio State won 59-0. That's the only reason. It was one game.

 

I don't care about Baylor, or TCU, or OSU, the ONLY school that needs to get better is OU!! All of the talent and coaches, and the preparation this year has been appalling. The players are spoiled into thinking that other teams are just going to lay down because they are playing OU. That attitude doesn't exist any more. The young players DO NOT CARE about the past, they don't know history and it means nothing to them, because they are only interested in themselves. That is why when things are not going their way, they quit!!

 

TDTW, how on earth can you carp about how weak our conference is when we entered the last weekend of play with three teams in the top ten? There are lots of reasons no B12 team made the cut, some arguable but fair, some not so much. If crappy conference was one of them, then tOSU would be sitting outside looking in.
In realityville, the deal worked out pretty much like polls and the BCS would have: lose head-to-head or late in the season and you pay.

 

And, especially with all of this talk about possibly expanding so that we can have 12 and make a playoff again. There are no name recognition teams left to join the conference.

Notre Dame went ACC, so that ship has sailed. BYU and Boise are nice regionals, but no one cares about. Utah, with half the football history of BYU got an invite to the Pac-12 over them. That should tell you something.

We are then, again, stuck with occasional winners without history or clout as potential invitees: Houston, Cincinnati, BYU, and Boise State.

It's like, which pile of dog vomit do you want to eat? The answer is none! Let Texas keep the Big 12 for itself and rot. With nowhere else to turn (thanks to our snubbing of the SEC and letting Mizzou, of all schools, walk in), the Pac-12 is our only hope to escape this conference hell Boren and Castilgione set us up for when they hitched our cart up with Powers/Dodds/Texas and Oklahoma State.

 

No, it was a very smart move on the committee's part. No one GAS about Baylor and TCU outside of the Texas I-35 corridor. The playoffs are much more attractive to the average fan across the nation with Ohio State in over TCU and Baylor. The Big 12 deserves this for making politically expedient decisions iinstead of solid long term decisions about conference viability during the conference re-alignment frenzy a few years ago.

 

I think you just reinforced TDTW's point. And you think the committee cares if they appear foolish to you?

 

You guys...you keep speaking as if anyone on the committee cares about competition. You are stuck in 1991, pre-Bowl Coalition, pre-BCS.

They don't care. They are marketing this level of football now, first and foremost, just like the NFL markets its product. It isn't right or fair. But, it is the world we live in because our leaders have accepted it for us.

Why in the hell do you think we were ahead of undefeated Auburn in 2004 to play USC in the national title game - we had more historic cache than Auburn. We still do. It influenced people's votes then, just as the decision about whom to choose among Ohio State, TCU, or Baylor influenced votes and decisions this weekend.

Look, I am fully and multiple times on record for saying that there should be a real playoff with the champions of every conference being in a playoff. But, I know that isn't going to happen.

As much as College Basketball Powers That Be can live with the occasional Gonzaga, Butler, Florida Gulf Coast wedging into the headlines, the College Football Powers That Be will never let it happen.

 

That's because Texas and OU made the decisions. And, they were based - very falsely - upon the premise that Mack Brown and Bob Stoops knew what the hell they were doing for the on the field part of the proposition.

 

Exactly how do you feel this makes me naive? This exactly what I thought would happen, that this would turn into a popularity contest. That is what we are seeing under the guise of what has been promoted as a more equitable playoff system. In short it's pretty close to the integrity of a Cuban Election but because apparently there are many people around here that seem to have an axe to grind with Baylor, for whatever reasons, just don't see this as much of an issue. If this happened to a team in the SEC those folks would be burning something down, or poisoning a tree or something.

If we want to talk reality, here is reality. Baylor and TCU are members of the Big 12 conference. They are here to stay. They are not going anywhere and from the looks of things neither are we, regrettably. I would have loved to see us move to the SEC when we had a chance but now that will not be happening any time soon. Any system that promotes tradition or television sets or the celebrity culture of coaches is not going to be OK.

 

It's been a popularity contest since the Bowl Coalition formed in 1992. Why is this so hard to see for some?

The SEC isn't going to expand again: already at 14, seven per division
The ACC is already filled to the brim: also at 14, seven per division
The Barfy Big 10 is already full: also at 14, seven per division

The Big 12 stands at 10, with no name programs available to invite.

The Pac-12 is, shockingly, at 12; six per division. It would seem to be a no-brainer for us and Texas to get on the horn and say, let's re-do our 2011 discussions...sans any talk of Tech, Okie Lite, Baylor, and the rest of the hangers on.

But, Boren would have to get over his fear of leaving Oklahoma State behind or having them sue or the legislature going into cardiac arrest.

(We all know Baylor would hire both a PR firm and attorneys, but we really don't care.)

We could leave the Big 12, let the remaining eight scramble for BYU, Houston, Cincinnati, and Boise State, and allow them to become C-USA/Mountain West, Jr. Having Kansas and Cincy in the conference would at least get them a ton of basketball cred. BYU is decent at hoops from time to time as well, not unlike K-State. It'd be a good basketball grouping; and, therefore, not unlike the old Big East - you accept them for what they are in football for the sake of having some basketball gold in March.

But, we should not stick around for the sake of adding BYU, Houston, Cincinnati, and/or Boise. They are all as much dead weight as what we already have on board.

 

I find the fact the Pac12 has 12 teams to be confusing.