2022 Regular Season Wrap-Up

Well, we've made it to the end of the regular season (aside from Army-Navy). So before we look forward to the bowl games to come, I thought I'd take a look back at the season we enjoyed and shared some highlights.

12 team playoff "what if": 2022

 2022 - Semifinals:  Peach and Fiesta

Top 4	Quarterfinal	First Round
#1 Georgia	Sugar	#9 Kansas State @ #8 Tennessee
#2 Michigan	Rose	#10 USC @ #7 Alabama
#3 Clemson	Orange	#11 Penn State @ #6 Ohio State
#4 Utah	Cotton	#12 Tulane @ #5 TCU

This format still allow for the same 12 teams in the New Year's Six.  Due to the uneven match-ups in the conference title games and a couple of upsets, the four teams getting first round byes are actually ranked #1, #2, #7, and #8.

The only guaranteed rematch comes from the Big Ten, where OSU had previously beaten PSU.

12 team playoff "What If": The early BCS era

In the final part of our "What If" exercise, we take a look at the early part of the BCS and apply the proposed 12 team playoff structure to those seasons.

Again, we will just be looking at seeding and early matchups, as the landscape of college football was vastly different at the time.

New Year's Six Projections: Week 13

 I think these projections/predictions will be quite boring, and probably not much different from next week.

Predicting the 2022 final four

This is probably the perfect year for exactly a 4-team playoff.  I believe it's going to be an easy decision for the top 4, and I think there's only one conference championship that matters.  However, there seems to be a lot of people expecting some sort of drama and debate.

What if the Pac-12 had divisions? 2022 Wrap up

Now that the season is over, we now know that the real life championship game is set between two teams from the same division, after a complicated tiebreaker procedure.

Pac-12 North Champion:  Washington Huskies (7-2)
Washington was tied with Oregon at 7-2, but had the head-to-head tiebreaker.

Pac-12 South Champion:  USC Trojans (8-1)
USC clinched the division with the best record.  No tiebreakers required.

There was no reason to rush to eliminate divisions this year, as the #2 team still has a 7-2 record.  Plus, the divisionless format pushed the conference to a rematch, whereas the divisional setup would have featured a new matchup.

I hope that the Pac-12 and all of the other conferences in the process of eliminating divisions take the time to more fully think out the tiebreaker procedures, or adjust their schedules in a way to allow as much of the decisions to be made on the field as possible.

2022 Week 13 Full Wrap-Up

The regular season is over, and we just have championship games left.

ACC Championship:  Clemson Tigers (8-0) vs. UNC Tar Heels (6-2)
Both teams clinched their divisions by virtue of having the best record in either division.  There will be no tiebreakers required in the ACC.

SEC Championship:  Georgia Bulldogs (8-0) vs. LSU Tigers (6-2)
Georgia has the best record in the East.  LSU has the head-to-head tiebreaker over Alabama, also 6-2.

Big Ten Championship:  Michigan Wolverines (8-0) vs. Purdue Boilermakers (6-3)
Both teams clinched their divisions by virtue of having the best record in either division.  There will be no tiebreakers required in the Big Ten.

Big 12 Championship:  TCU Horned Frogs (9-0) vs. Kansas State Wildcats (7-2)
These teams have the two best records in the conference with no tiebreakers required.

Pac-12 Championship:  USC Trojans (8-1) vs. Utah Utes (7-2)
USC has the best record in the conference.  Utah, Oregon, and Washington were all tied for the second best record, and it came down to the fourth tiebreaker of opponent win percentages.

I know I said last week that Utah was out of contention and it should have been Oregon or Washington.  However, as I was projecting the tiebreakers, I made two errors.  First, I forgot that Oregon was 1-1 against the other two teams.  But the bigger error was that I forgot to include Oregon State as a common opponent.  So that changed the projection from Oregon having the best record among those teams to all three teams still being tied.  Honestly, I don't even fully understand step 3 and step 4 looks like a lot of work, so I'll take ESPN's word that this tie is resolved by the 4th step of conference opponent win percentages, and it goes to Utah.

2022 Week 13 Black Friday Wrap Up

With an extra day of games, including a few key ones, we have a few more conference pieces in place.

History of the ACC Wheel of Destiny

During the season, it always looks like the ACC divisional races get complicated and we spend a bunch of time parsing through the tiebreaker scenarios.  Now that we have completed the era of ACC divisions, we can take a full look back at 17 seasons of conference play, and see how often the conference actually need to use tiebreakers, and how far they have gone.

Race to the Finish: 2022 Regular Season

 With Rivalry Week upon us, and the 3rd-to-last CFP rankings available, I wanted to take a look at the few remaining pieces of this season's conference and NY6 chase.

New Year's Six projections: Week 12

This is one of the more difficult weeks to do NY6 projections.  As you know, at this blog, we don't automatically place the current top four teams in the CFP if we know that they have to face off at some point during the season.

2022 Week 12 Wrap-Up

The best part about only having one week left of the regular season is that it really makes for clean "what if" scenarios.

What if the Pac-12 had divisions? Week 12 wrap up

Over in the real world, one participant of the Pac-12 championship game has already been clinched, with two or three teams still vying for the other spot.  How does it look in the original version of 2022 with divisions?

New Year's Six projections: Week 11

Peach and Fiesta Bowls are the semi-finals this year, limiting the at-large positions.

Projected semi-finals:
#1 Georgia vs. #5 Tennessee
winner of #2 Ohio State/#3 Michigan vs. #4 TCU

There's no sense projecting any semi-final that will pit OSU against Michigan again.

Rose Bowl:  loser of #2 Ohio State/#3 Michigan vs. #7 USC
Since the winner of OSU/Michigan is projected to eventually win the conference, the Rose Bowl will be looking at the highest ranked Big Ten team remaining.  While the Pac-12 still has quite a bit of settling to do in the next week, USC is the highest ranked team at this point.

Sugar Bowl: #6 LSU vs. #19 Kansas State
Both of the normal participants (SEC and Big 12 champs) are projected to be in the CFP, so we just go with the next highest ranked team from each conference.  (Or third in the SEC's case, as Tennessee is projected into a semi-final.)

Orange Bowl:  winner of #9 Clemson/#13 UNC vs. #8 Alabama
Hedging the bets here, as the ACCCG is a matchup of the two highest ranked teams in the conference, and the winner will go here, barring any craziness in the last two weeks that could catapult the winner into the CFP.  On the other side of the matchup, we go with the highest ranked team out of the Big Ten, SEC, and Notre Dame that isn't already committed to the CFP, Rose Bowl, or Sugar Bowl.

Cotton Bowl:  #17 UCF vs. #10 Utah
I haven't looked at the G5 races close enough to see if UCF can actually win their conference, but they are currently the highest ranked G5 team.  Meanwhile, Utah is the highest ranked team not already committed to a bowl.

I don't expect any of these matchups to actually happen, though.

What if the Pac-12 had divisions? Week 11 wrap up.

Continuing our look at the alternate reality where the Pac-12 has divisions and seeing if that race is any clearer than what we've got going on in the real world.

2022 Week 11 Wrap-up

Two entire championship games are set, and we have a winner-take-all division matchup set.  But somehow, one division has managed to completely tie itself into a knot?

What if the Pac-12 had divisions? Week 10 wrap up

Continuing our look at the alternate reality where the Pac-12 has divisions and seeing if that race is any clearer than what we've got going on in the real world.

2022 Week 10 Wrap Up

We have our first championship game participant clenched!  And wait...did Alabama just get knocked out of the playoff?

10th-Week Look-In, 2022 Season

 I last did one of these after Week 5; this next one is BEFORE the bulk of Week 10 (technically "during", as the midweek MACtion has already been played).

We now have CFP Rankings to look at, which officially gets us into the race to the finish!

What if the Pac-12 still had divisions? 2022 Week 9 Wrap Up

Since the Pac-12 scrapped their divisions this year but kept the schedule, we can track how the season would have gone with divisions and see if we ultimately end up with a different Pac-12 championship.

Happy Halloween, College Football Edition

There is nothing scarier in the world of college football than a classic trap! Especially when it comes at the end of the season, in pure horror film fashion.

While we're still over a month away from the end of the season and conference championships, I thought I'd celebrate this spooky day by remembering season-ending stumbles from years past.

2022 Week 9 Wrap Up

We've finally hit the part of the season where tiebreaking scenarios start coming into play.  However, most of them are long shots.

2022 Week 8 Wrap Up

Seems like it was a light week across the board for the Power 5 with a lot of teams on bye.  But, we're clearly getting closer, as several teams have found themselves eliminated or on the verge.

2022 Week 7 Wrap up

Oh boy, Tennessee beat Alabama, and it's gonna make things fun in the SEC.

2022 Week 6 Wrap up

So we've reached that point of the season where everyone has started conference play, no one has been able to clench or be eliminated yet, and there's a lot of teams in the middle.

5-Week Look-in

Hard to believe that October is in full swing, and we're 5 weeks done with the season already! We're halfway to the CFP Rankings taking over as "the" numbers to go by!

2022 Week 5 wrap-up

It's October, and we're finally in the thick of conference schedules!  But somehow, we're on the verge of seeing Gameday live from KANSAS, who is undefeated in October?

2022 Week 4 wrap-up

West Virginia may have kept the Black Diamond Trophy, but "Country Roads" still ain't about you.

2022 Week 3 wrap up

Not a lot of changes this week due to very few conference games.  Things should really start kicking into gear over the next couple of weeks as everyone should start getting to the conference slate.

2022 Week 2 wrap up

Happy New Year!  It's an interesting time for college football, as we are in the early stages of the Super Conference Realignment of 2022 and Beyond.  Over the last couple of years, different conferences have stated their intentions to change their format and scheduling, as several of them are trying the "two best team" format for their championship games.  The Pac-12 was the first to abolish divisions effective this season, although they will still play the same schedule.  This will be the final year of the divisions in the ACC.  And finally, as the games were getting ready to start on Friday night of week 1, the CFP announced that they were expanded to a 12 team format.

This certainly will make my efforts here more challenging, trying to keep track of who's in the running for what, but we're all here for chaos and madness.

12 team playoff "What If?": The late BCS era

While it's been difficult to apply the structure of the CFP/NY6 to the BCS era, it might be a little easier to determine the potential 12 team playoff lineups of those years.  Since the structure calls for the six highest ranked conference champions without any stipulations, we can just pick conference champs from that era and not worry about how to classify the Big East.

Unlike the CFP era "What If" exercise, we will only be looking at seeding and early matchups, and not assigning the quarterfinal matchups to bowl games.

12 team playoff "What If": CFP era

They finally took the vote and made it official to expand the CFP to 12 teams.  By the end of the 2026 season, we'll be seeing a full tournament of playoff games.  Let's play "what if" and see how the 12 team playoff would have looked since 2014.

2022 Season Look-Ahead

It's here - another college football season! And with a twist this year - I decided to wait until the Sunday of Week 1 to do my annual look-ahead post.

What Will It Take...First National Title

 After watching my beloved Hokies do so well in both baseball and softball, yet falling short of the College World Series (final 8) in either sport, there was a certain mix of school pride and consternation. And ultimately, the question "what will it take" to break that ceiling and win a team national title??

One thing's for sure: it's tough!  As this is a college football blog, I'll shift my attention to the sport as a whole, and ask if anyone has a path to ascend to those greatest heights - at least as far as FBS is concerned.

Essentials of a Bigger CFP

Last June, the college football world experienced some excitement at the idea of a 12-team CFP. A format and qualifying criteria were announced. However, there were too many "little details" that just couldn't fit together. And so we hold onto 4, for 4 more seasons.

So when that time comes - and have no doubt, the time to start planning is now - what all needs to be satisfied?  Let's dig in, piece by piece.