re: Is this year a bust if we don’t make 12 team playoff?

Considering our defense. I’d be happy with a 10-2 season .

I think every year we don't make it is a bust. This is LSU.

quote:

---

Moving forward not being in the playoff will be seen as a disappointing season. Fact is 12 spots up for grabs and we have to feel like we should be in there more than not. IT doesnt mean missing it makes every season feel the same. If we went 9-3 and missed it that would feel different than 6-6 or 7-5 for sure...but it does raise the stakes where if someone misses the expanded playoff here for like 3 years in a row they are not doing a good job. I feel like there would be a lot of heat on any coach here if they missed a 12-team playoff 2 years in a row.

---

You’re assuming that those once sleeping powerhouses like have not found the money with NIL to be great again. Go back to my day and look at teams like SC, UCLA, ND, Later but FSU and Miami, Bama, UGA, Tenner, tOSU, Michigan, Penn St.,
That’s 12 teams that were historically better than LSU and have money to be better than LSU that can get talent equal or better than LSU. Then there’s UF, Ole Piss (yes they have a lot of old money and were great), Arky that were power houses.
Making a 12 team playoff now is not like it would have been during Les Miles’ runs. D
So just don’t think this will be a cake walk or something to be a given.

quote:

---

Yes. CBK said year three we’d compete for championships and this is now his team. No excuses with this schedule to not go 10-2

---

Over he didn’t know he would have a brand new QB and lost 2 day 1 starters at receiver in the NFL plus a Heisman Trophy winning QB.

quote:

---

I looked at the final rankings each year since the inception of the CFP

---

The final rankings after the CFP and polls or the final CFP ranking? Cause the latter is all that matters. And even that is not a great gauge because after the top 4, the committee hasn’t really cared about 5 though whatever. Their top 11/12 would have likely been much different if they were selecting 7 or 8 more playoff teams (are they selecting the top G5 team to play or is there a formula? I’m assuming they pick).

quote:

---

Personally, I think this might actually benefit the ACC and Big 12. But I don’t think anyone can be certain either way.

---

This is what is going to be interesting to see what they do. I think FSU and Clemson get the benefit of the doubt in the ACC if they finish 11-1 or 10-2. But are they putting a 10-2 NC State in over a 9-3 Florida with their brutal schedule this year? An 11-1 Baylor over a 10-2 LSU?

The number of losses has almost always been the 1st determining factor in weeding teams out. It’s why (I don’t think) a 2-loss team ever made the 4-team CFP. But with addition of USC/UCLA/Oregon/Washington to the BIG, TEXAS/OU to the SEC, and the dissolution of the PAC, there are going to be huge discrepancies in SOS each year for a lot of teams. Does a 10-2 Oklahoma State with 2 losses to Utah get in over a 9-3 Auburn (in a hypothetical year) with losses to Bama, Tennessee, and Georgia with 2 being on the road? Or a 9-3 LSU (this year) with losses to Bama, Ole Miss, and Oklahoma, but with OOC wins over USC (say they finish 2nd in the Big 10 behind OSU and make the playoffs)? Or a 9-3 LSU team with a win over 11-1 Bama, but a Week 1 loss to playoff bound USC?

And what if LSU loses to USC and Bama and finishes the regular season 10-2, but finishes 2nd in the SEC at 7-1 and faces
12-0 Georgia in the SECCG and loses to finish 10-3? Do they get left out for all the
0, 1, and 2 loss teams? How much are they gonna punish CCG losers if they don’t come into the games 12-0 or 11-1? ***

***by the way, I fricking HATE the no divisions and having the “top 2” conference teams play in the CCG. There will be at least 3-way ties a lot of years (sometimes 4) where head-to-head will cancel them all out. Remember that clusterfrick of a season where the big 12 did this and OU, Texas, and Texas Tech all finished 11-1 with losses to each other? And they had to go to BCS rankings to determine who got in? But mostly because it’s going to mean a ton more rematches and eventually teams will wind up playing for a 3rd time in the playoffs. Hell, Michigan and Ohio State will probably play back to back weeks and 3 out of 5/6 weeks in the next couple of years.

I’m not a huge “get off my lawn” guy, scared of change. I just think the powers that govern college football have—and are continuing to have—an incredible lack of foresight and inability to think through all the potential (in some cases inevitable) unintended consequences. I’ve heard so many expansion advocates over the years do a hypothetical 12-team playoff and drool over the matchups. “You’re telling me you wouldn’t love to see USC go to the Big House in a 1st round game in December? You wouldn’t love to tune in to watch Texas and LSU play in a game that means something in December instead of the Rose or Fiesta Bowl when they’re not in the playoff rotation?

Of course I would. Of course we all would. But are we gonna be that fired up 5 years from now when they’re playing for a 3rd time that year and 8th time in 5 seasons? Probably not. All those “sexy” matchups that we almost never see are going to lose a lot of sex appeal to everybody but fans of those schools as those matchups start to get saturated.

quote:

---

Les Miles was historically bad at underachieving with superior talent

---

I don't know if I fully agree with that. Les had one major issue and that was getting the right QBs. I feel like all his flaws stemmed from that fact. The whole Perriloux fiasco (which was Perriloux's fault, not Les) killed both Lee and Jefferson's future IMO. Both needed at least another year of development. The Kragthorp's Parkinson's (I think that is what it was) diagnosis gave us Stud as an OC for 2011 then Cam after that. After that, it was a snowball effect. Both lines were always very good to great under less. I also think the NC vs Alabama broke Les, he got much more conservative after that.

quote:

---

Our standard can and should be to live in the top 12.

---

Maybe. Nothing helps a program like winning. If Kelly can win 10 regular season games this season, the recruiting ball that is already rolling pretty well will continue and maybe pick up steam. I do think LSU should at least be in the conversation late in the season, though.

quote:

---

an insanely mismanaged roster for 2 years

---

It was a lopsided mess of talent. The most mind-boggling part was the decline of the DLine, O's bread and butter for most of his career.

Yes. Every year will be an unacceptable bust we don’t make the 12 team playoff.

It should be 19 out of 20 years from here on.

quote:

---

The final rankings after the CFP and polls or the final CFP ranking?

---

Final CFP ranking. So that would have been the committee’s final rankings each year after conference championship weekend.

quote:

---

And even that is not a great gauge because after the top 4, the committee hasn’t really cared about 5 though whatever. Their top 11/12 would have likely been much different if they were selecting 7 or 8 more playoff teams (are they selecting the top G5 team to play or is there a formula? I’m assuming they pick).

---

I think this is true to a point, but keep in mind that the committee rankings were also used for non-playoff NY6 bowls. So it’s not like #5-12 were completely meaningless.

Regarding the formula - it’s the top 5 conference champions, with the remains 7 spots filled by at large bids. So generally speaking that will mean four P4 champions plus the highest-ranked conference champion from the rest of FBS. Unless somehow there were two G5 (G6?) champs ranked above a P4 champ. But the easiest way to look at it is that the 5 highest ranked champions and the 7 highest ranked non-champions will get in.

Where it gets a bit interesting is that when you look at the 2024 conference alignments, there were years where no members of the ACC or the “new” Big 12 finished in the top 12. For example - last year, the highest ranked member of the new (2024) Big 12 was Arizona at #14. So theoretically you would have had the following conference champions in the 12-team playoff:
#1 Michigan (Big 10)
#3 Texas (SEC)
#5 Florida State (ACC)
#14 Arizona (Big 12)
#23 Liberty (C-USA)

*Technically Oregon State would be ahead of Liberty as PAC-2 champ, but since they’re a 2-team conference with no championship game they don’t qualify.

In any case, this means both #11 Ole Miss and #12 Oklahoma would have been left out.

It’s obviously more complicated than that, because Arizona wasn’t even in the Big 12 last year. But the fact is that someone from the new Big 12 and someone from another conference is going to get an automatic bid. Maybe Arizona is ranked higher as a Big 12 champion than they were as #3 in the PAC-12. It doesn’t really matter though because either way, Ole Miss and OU would not have made it in since neither were among the top 7 non-champions.

quote:

---

The number of losses has almost always been the 1st determining factor in weeding teams out. It’s why (I don’t think) a 2-loss team ever made the 4-team CFP. But with addition of USC/UCLA/Oregon/Washington to the BIG, TEXAS/OU to the SEC, and the dissolution of the PAC, there are going to be huge discrepancies in SOS each year for a lot of teams.

---

This is the main question that remains to be answered IMO. To pick on the Big 12 again (they are the P4 conference that looks the most different in 2024) - here are the highest ranked teams from the new Big 12 in last year’s final CFP rankings:
- #14 Arizona (9-3)
- #20 Oklahoma State (9-4)
- #25 Kansas State (8-4)

All of these teams will play a marginally easier schedule moving forward due to realignment. Let’s say we have a 10-3 Oklahoma State as Big 12 champion, followed by 11-2 Arizona with a loss in the championship game. OSU gets an automatic bid in that scenario, and I think Arizona probably gets in as well despite the easier conference schedule than pre-realignment. But we won’t really know how the committee views realignment until we see some CFP rankings.

Also worth noting that the Big 12 didn’t just become an easier conference, the SEC and Big 10 also became tougher. So we very well may see less 1-2 loss teams from those conferences as well moving forward.

Time will tell, but the big picture is this: I think people who expect to see 4+ SEC teams getting CFP bids every year are going to be a little surprised. I think most years it will be 3 teams. But obviously nobody knows for sure.

One last point I think is worth noting - there are only 2 CFP committee members with SEC ties and 2 with Big 10 ties. The other 9 members have ties to other conferences.

Yes ! And we probably won’t make it . My prediction is no playoffs with Kelly as coach and he mutually agrees to leave after year 5.

quote:

---

Over he didn’t know he would have a brand new QB and lost 2 day 1 starters at receiver in the NFL plus a Heisman Trophy winning QB.

---

He also didn't know he would have those in the first place. And I believe when he said that it was known fact Jayden had 2 years eligibility left.