re: How TF the gumps playing WCU in week 12?

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These conference championships have to mean something. Why have them if they don't count? This isn't directed at you, just thinking out loud.


You make a good point though, if Penn State beats tOSU. We'll find out soon enough.

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I tend to agree, on one hand, that it seems pointless to have conference championships if they don't carry any extra significance.

On the other hand, I think conference title games are there more so for conference bragging rights, and more money for the respective conferences, than they are for any national implications.

Because, when you think about it, this isn't like professional sports where you have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 teams, and everyone plays everyone, and every team is made up, obviously, of professional players. The playing field is mostly even, you have a limited number of teams, and so you can have a playoff system of however many teams, and no one can really complain about being "left out" because they aren't popular enough. There's a settled structure.

In college, the conferences vary greatly in talent and structure, and so it leaves a ton of subjectivity up in the air. I don't think Oregon or Utah are better than a Tua lead Alabama. But those teams would be arguing, even if Tua were still playing, that they should be in because they won their conference. The problem with that argument, IMO, is that you then have to prove that Bama wouldn't have slaughtered the Pac-12, if they played in that conference. That's a bad conference. And If Bama beats Auburn, they would have beaten the same team, on the road, that Oregon lost to on a neutral field.

Edit- I should add that conference titles games obviously CAN have national implications, depending on the match ups, such as LSU vs Georgia figures to be. But that's more happenstance than anything else. It seems like every year, Clemson faces a .500 team for the ACC championship.