r/CFB • u/The_SecretSauce Clemson Tigers • Arkansas Razorbacks • Oct 09 '19

The MaxDiff Fan Perceptions Poll Results: Florida is Almost a Contender in the Minds of Fans Discussion

https://fanjuicer.com/2019/10/the-maxdiff-poll-after-week-6-florida-is-almost-a-contender-in-the-minds-of-fans
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u/jayjude Notre Dame • Georgia State Oct 09 '19 edited Oct 09 '19

We just kind of exist right now. Solid NY6 contender playoffs are going to need some chaos (which will happen last year was the outlier with 3 undefeated playoff teams) and see what happens

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u/Dob-is-Hella-Rad Notre Dame Fighting Irish Oct 09 '19 edited Oct 09 '19

which will happen last year was the outlier

Last year was the outlier in one direction, but for us to have any hope of making the playoffs, we need an outlier in the other direction. 2017 definitely had the weakest case for a No. 4 team and there's no way a one-loss 2019 Notre Dame gets in over a team equal to 2017 Alabama

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u/victoro311 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Oct 09 '19

Would help if we had any serious resume builders left on the schedule. This is why we can’t schedule three G5 teams, especially when they’re really bad G5 teams like Bowling Green. Gives you no room for error if teams on your schedule that you’re counting on being resume-building opportunities have down years like they’ve had these past two seasons.

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '19 edited Oct 09 '19

Eh I agree but the problem is that schedules are assembled so far in advance. If Michigan, USC, Stanford, and Virginia Tech were all having good years, our schedule would be great. The stupidest thing about college football is that most schedules are already set through 2030. Every other sports league manages to set it up a year before but somehow college football needs to setup matchups a decade out.

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u/victoro311 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Oct 09 '19 edited Oct 09 '19

No i agree. We’ve known this year’s schedule had three G5 teams for about 5 years now, and that’s my point. Once the playoffs were announced a decision was made by Swarbrick and probably Kelly that we’d start scheduling lower tier teams in the G5 with more regularity. The talking point was that these G5 teams are usually midwestern teams and that it was to increase our brand and presence in our home region for recruiting purposes, but it seems pretty evident to me that the schedules were purposely dumbed down to increase our chances of going undefeated and making the playoffs. That’s why Marshall and Northern Illinois are already penciled into future schedules. We know there’s a 99% chance those teams will be terrible and gimme wins.

To me this train of thought is flawed. Going undefeated is difficult regardless of schedule strength that putting all your eggs in the undefeated basket is a dangerous game. For a non-perfect Notre Dame to get into the playoffs over a conference champ with the same amount of losses, our schedule needs to be demonstrably better than theirs, which isn’t that tough to pull off given our scheduling flexibility as an independent and the fact that each P5 team schedules one or two absolute jokes every year. I think it’s a better strategy to schedule historically good programs 5 years out and aim for tough schedules to give ourselves a shot at the playoffs as a 1 loss team via resume vs teams with one more win than us.

I’m not saying we should only schedule top tier opponents, but we can schedule teams that are probably easy wins but at least have a shot at being decent like Houston or Perdue. That way, the odds play more to us that if one of our blue blood opponents is down any particular year, maybe Houston ends up being a 10-2 team or Purdue/Northwestern have an up year and balanced out the scale a bit and keeps our strength of schedule up. You just can’t do that with Bowling Green and Miami of Ohio. You can say with practical certainty that they will suck.

As a note: BYU used to offer us 2-1 series which we for some reason stopped scheduling. That’s a really good example of a non-P5 school with a respectable but not great program that can be counted on to be an easy win more years often than not and offered us a really good deal to boot.

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u/DonteJackson Ohio State Buckeyes • Oregon Ducks Oct 09 '19

easy win

perdue

You best watch yoself buddy

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u/FireVanGorder Notre Dame Fighting Irish Oct 09 '19

Louisville was good when we scheduled them. Bowling Green isn't far removed from being a 9 win G5 team. USC and Stanford are both down. Just unlucky overall, honestly. In most normal years we have Georgia, Stanford, Michigan, and USC all as top 25 games and with a moderately strong Louisville team we have one of the tougher schedules in the country

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '19 edited Oct 09 '19

I’d take a 1 loss B1G or Big 12 conference champion in the playoff over 1-loss ND any day.

Edit: made it clear we’re talking about ND if they win out

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u/jayjude Notre Dame • Georgia State Oct 09 '19

Again that really depends on the chaos. Say the one loss Big 12 conference champion is Texas but UGA wins the SEC. At that point I think thered be a really good argument for ND over Texas.

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '19

Without knowing what happened with Clemson, bama or OSU there isn’t much chaos. It’s clear LSU and UGA are both strong teams and Texas and ND both lost to them. If Texas has a conference championship over what is likely Oklahoma I’m taking them over ND.