(Top image from The Big Lead)
Yahoo! writer Dan Wetzel has been posting something like this tweet every Saturday:
My weekly reminder that the playoff was supposed to ruin the regular season.
— Dan Wetzel (@DanWetzel) October 19, 2014
Saturdays in the fall are as glorious as ever, even with 4 teams getting in. The best thing about it is that today, on October 21, more teams than last year at this point can say “we control our own destiny.” If only 2 teams made the playoff, then the only teams that would truly have control over their chance to win the championship at this point would be Florida State and the two teams from Mississippi. While that’s not a bad thing (every team in the top 5 conferences had a chance to win it at the start of the season), I’m sure we can agree that there are plenty of 1-loss teams that deserve to be in the hunt at this point, not to mention a team like Marshall (I know, weak SOS) that hasn’t lost a game yet. It doesn’t dilute the chase because there are so many teams and so few games to be played against each other. They can’t possibly have every team play every other one.
Here are my If-The-Season-Ended-Today playoff brackets (seeding process here):
8-Team Playoff (Quarterfinals on Dec 20)
#15 Nebraska (8) @ #1 Ole Miss (1) in Oxford
#11 TCU (7) @ #3 Florida St. (2) in Tallahassee
#4 Alabama (6) @ #8 Oregon (3) in Eugene
#2 Miss St. (5) @ #9 Marshall (4) in Huntington, WV
4-Team Playoff
#8 Oregon (4) vs. #1 Ole Miss (1) in the Sugar Bowl
#2 Miss St. (3) vs. #3 Florida St. (2) in the Rose Bowl
Image from The Big Lead.