College Football Playoff Saturday Thread

For all the endless bitching about the college football playoff from Big Teams who Sucked Too Much to Get a Bid (see Alabama fans last year and Notre Dame’s hordes of homers this year), it’s so much fun to have a real playoff. Do Tulane and James Madison “deserve” to be in the playoffs? I don’t know. Did a five-loss ACC title winner Duke deserve to get a bid instead of one of them? Hell no. Stewart Mandel unloaded on the hacks defending these big teams, including Joel Klatt actually saying that Cinderellas are the worst thing about March Madness and that no one wants to see these little teams. This is just outright untrue about NCAA hoops, though it is the argument of the big conferences who want more bids to be sure that some team that went 17-13 and 8-12 in conference gets a bid that no one actually cares about.

Anyway, fuck these hacks, let’s focus on the games. Outstanding comeback for Alabama against Oklahoma last night. Total collapse for the Sooners. John Mateer has just flat out not been very good as a QB transfer, which shows that the transfer portal isn’t gold for everyone. The Oklahoma defense deserved better. Now let’s hope Alabama is erased by Indiana in their next game.

As for the other three games, the clear marquee TV game is Miami at Texas A&M (-3) at 12 on ABC. I love this matchup. Miami should be better than they are, but Mario Cristobal always lays an egg when it counts. Meanwhile, A&M absolutely looked the part all season and of course blew it at the end, which is a classic A&M move. I like the Aggies here at home, but obviously the oddsmakers see this as a very close matchup and it’s a true “could go either way” game.

The other two games are why the TV networks don’t actually want small market teams in. Tulane is at Ole Miss (-17.5) on TNT at 3:30. These teams already played this year (I wish a bit more work was done to avoid rematches in the first round, Tulane at Oregon and James Madison at Ole Miss would have been just fine). Ole Miss won of course. But the Rebels have also lost their villainous coach Lane Kiffin to LSU (though really, you ride the Lane Train, this is exactly what you get, as LSU fans will find out when Kiffin goes to Alabama the next time that job comes open). How will the Rebels respond? Hard to know really. That said, I still like the Rebels with these points, especially given it was 45-10 the first time around.

Finally, you have James Madison at Oregon (-21). Obviously I really like Oregon here and so does everyone else. James Madison is a fun story though. A Sun Belt should be able to take a swing at a big team. JMU did play Louisville, which led to their only loss, but they only went down 28-14. And they’ve pretty well dominated everyone else. Still, it’s hard to take a team that won over Washington State by 4 at home as a real threat to the Ducks on the road. But could Oregon lose this game? Of course it could. JMU is a legit pretty good team. But I’d take the Ducks with the points here.