College Football Playoff First Round | Page 3 | The Boneyard

College Football Playoff First Round

There are 12 teams in the playoffs. I'm not mad at 2 of them being from the G5, even if they're getting blown out.

Just remember that JMU has scored twice as many points by halftime in their playoff game than Texas A&M scored in their entire playoff game. Maybe this "5 teams from the SEC" should get a little more scrutiny than the inclusion of Tulane and JMU...
 
I would see today's miserable showings by the G5s as an argument against a 16 team field. If BYU and ND were the 11 & 12, is anyone else even in the conversation for 13-16 if no G5s?
 
Oregon smacking the ducking crap out of JMU. Like every 4 plays they score! Gotta say, these G5s are making our Fiesta Bowl loss to Oklahoma look more like a competitive game. And to think that our ex-coach thinks he can get CSU to compete in the CFP better than JMU or Tulane...hahahahahaha.
 
Well this was the worst possible scenario for the G5 schools. There no way we will ever see two G5 again and tbh, I’m not sure we should see another. Tulane came from the best G5 conference and got plastered. I’m not sure what their AD budget is but that’s not a good sign. I know this is bad news for UConn unless we somehow find a way to overcome Rule #1 in CR. I would have rather Vandy or some other school that had a decent resume get in and have it actually be a game. I hate Alabama but that’s was a good game last night. Bama was a team people thought shouldn’t be in but they belong because they spend like the rest of them. JMU and Tulane just gave the P3 all the ammunition they needed to lock out the G5 for good in the very near future.
 
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Well this was the worst possible scenario for the G5 schools. There no way we will ever see two G5 again and tbh, I’m not sure we should see another. Tulane came from the best G5 conference and got plastered. I’m not sure what their AD budget is but that’s not a good sign. I know this is bad news for UConn unless we somehow find a way to overcome Rule #1 in CR. I would have rather Vandy or some other school that had a decent resume get in and have it actually be a game. I hate Alabama but that’s was a good game last night. Bama was a team people thought shouldn’t be in but they belong because they spend like the rest of them. JMU and Tulane just gave the P3 all the ammunition they needed to lock out the G5 for good in the very near future.
Rather than a blanket ban, they'll probably require a certain resume in order to qualify. Merely winning the AAC, the Pac-12, etc., and simply being ahead of the other G5 conference champs won't be enough.
 
I was hoping the G5 might put up some fight but just totally outmatched on the D side of the ball. I’d think we would have faired pretty well against either team because neither has any D.. not that ours would do any better,
 
can you imagine a 12-0 UConn with our schedule this year, against Oregon or Ole Miss today?

LOL
 
Just remember that in the end, JMU lost to Oregon by a similar score to what USC did, and better than Minnesota and Rutgers... on the road...

... I'm tired of the system finding reasons for schools not to compete...
 
Tulane gets mopped around by Ole Miss.
Oregon just scored 3rd touchdown and its the 2nd quarter.

I love the underdog story, but unfortunately in this NIL and P2 power consolidation era, the field is just unevenly stacked.
I want G5's to do well, but this is just not fair to them. And I now have no idea how to reach better parity. I don't want to eliminate G5's from the CFP.

one of my favorite games of all time was 2007 fiesta bowl - Boise St vs. Oklahoma - a cinderalla story.
It's just not possible for it to happen in this era.

G5 haters will say close the CFP door permanently to all G5 schools. That's their ultimate goal.

I HATE what football has become. screw Big 10, SEC, CFP and all the powers that be.
College football jumped the shark. It's a 12 team playoff. None of the bowls matter anymore and there's like 3 teams who can actually win it all.

They put two G5's in this year so that next year and moving forward they can say we tried that and the G5's got wrecked.
 
I was just arguing with a UW graduate about this on a Seahawks board I frequent. Once you're in the club, you fall victim to just being annoyed that there are noncompetitive games in the mix. And I can agree to a point, because JMU and Tulane were not great teams, even by G5 standards. They're pretty good, but not really good enough to win against Oregon or Ole Miss, and it makes the path to the title easier for those two middling seeds. But there has to be a path to the CFP for outsider schools who are able to build a program that is good enough to compete, and proves itself. Maybe a strength of schedule/strength of victory qualification, coupled with a one-loss maximum, would work to distill the somewhat rare non-P4 schools who are good enough to give an Ole Miss a game from the schools who are overmatched. Maybe having a play-in level of the CFP where your Notre Dame or your other P4 who just missed the cut has to participate in a first-round play-in game against the best of the G5 schools, assuming no one qualifies automatically.

It's important for this to be worked out, because if it's not, it hastens the development of a two-tier system for all sports where only the P4 members can meaningfully compete for national championships in major sports and earn the perks that go along with that recognition, while everyone else is relegated to competing for some minor league-type title that doesn't carry the same clout, and diminishes the resources of the school as a whole over the long term.
I’m just happy to have watched us win so much. I don’t plan to be watching sec/b1g play each other. Certainly won’t be paying to watch.
 
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Tulane gets mopped around by Ole Miss.
Oregon just scored 3rd touchdown and its the 2nd quarter.

I love the underdog story, but unfortunately in this NIL and P2 power consolidation era, the field is just unevenly stacked.
I want G5's to do well, but this is just not fair to them. And I now have no idea how to reach better parity. I don't want to eliminate G5's from the CFP.

one of my favorite games of all time was 2007 fiesta bowl - Boise St vs. Oklahoma - a cinderalla story.
It's just not possible for it to happen in this era.

G5 haters will say close the CFP door permanently to all G5 schools. That's their ultimate goal.

I HATE what football has become. screw Big 10, SEC, CFP and all the powers that be.
I expect a change so that we won’t see 2 G-5 teams again, unless one of them qualifies as an at large. Tulane beat the ACC champion and won the fifth best conference in a year where it had a number of scalps. They deserved their chance. And this was one year — last year the G-5 representative played a competitive football game.
 
41-10, it looked a lot worse and 51-34 is a bit of a respectable score when Oregon looked like they were gonna put up 80.
 
Those games reminded me a bit of the Fiesta bowl against OU, seeing the mismatch on TV doesn’t do it any justice seeing it in person. UConn kept the score somewhat respectable due to the pick 6 and special teams play. Had we scored an offensive touchdown we would’ve had a tease but OU could’ve scored a TD whenever it wanted to. In person I carefully watched the line and we got 0 pressure on Landry Jones, Demarco Murray looked massive and bigger then our linebackers.

What would’ve been 20 yard runs for Todman during the season were 5-7 yard runs at best, felt like the holes would be closed in half a second when there even was a hole.
 
I expect a change so that we won’t see 2 G-5 teams again, unless one of them qualifies as an at large. Tulane beat the ACC champion and won the fifth best conference in a year where it had a number of scalps. They deserved their chance. And this was one year — last year the G-5 representative played a competitive football game.

It is going to keep getting worse. What is Ohio State's payroll? What is JMU's? This isn't like 10 years ago where the major programs were at least pretending to not be paying their players. 10 years ago, a kid might go to JMU over riding the bench for a SEC team. Very few kids are going to do that now when the money is 3x or 4x to be the #4 left cornerback on Mississippi State compared to being the starting left cornerback on JMU.

The P4 are even having a hard time competing with each other. You are going to see some matchups within the major conferences where the lower team is never going to win another game, ever.

What is the point of Tulane vs. anyone? There is not some combination of factors that will enable Tulane to beat a Top 15 team. Although, I guess you could make the same argument about a lot of college football. What is the point of most of these games?
 
41-10, it looked a lot worse and 51-34 is a bit of a respectable score when Oregon looked like they were gonna put up 80.

That Oregon game had all the benchmarks of the networks making a call down to the field to ease up on JMU.
 
I would see today's miserable showings by the G5s as an argument against a 16 team field. If BYU and ND were the 11 & 12, is anyone else even in the conversation for 13-16 if no G5s?
They would’ve talked about Texas.
 
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There has to be a tiering of teams by athletic budget. James Madison is no longer playing the same sport as Oregon. I think a G5 team should not be eligible for the playoffs unless they are spending a minimum of $10 million a year in player compensation, or something like it.

We are already seeing unholy blowouts within Big 10 and SEC conference games, and that will only get worse. Same goes for Big 12 and ACC. Programs like BCU are not even pretending to try to compete.
I’ll bite: JMU did not leave the FCS to be relegated back into a lower tier. And requiring a spending budget to make the playoffs is only gonna turn the sport further into a money grab/pit.

You’ve been very anti-P4 for UConn specifically. Not trying to poke a bear here but I’m a bit surprised this is your take honestly.
 
Just remember that in the end, JMU lost to Oregon by a similar score to what USC did, and better than Minnesota and Rutgers... on the road...

... I'm tired of the system finding reasons for schools not to compete...
Not sure this is one of your strongest arguments for inclusion of G5 schools. JMU lost that game by halftime (being nice here). The final score was not indicative of just how bad of a whooping they took. I think had you stopped with USC you might have had some case, but by adding Minnesota and Rutgers, I think you actually support just why JMU didn’t belong.

The only reason I paid any attention to the playoffs this year was due to the inclusion of Tulane, Miami and JMU. I love to watch the underdog, but the two G5 schools were clearly unable to compete. These lopsided games are okay for basketball, because a bad game can be easily switched off to watch a more competitive game. This isn’t the case in football and is why I feel G5 schools should no longer be included. The gap is just too great and it just isn’t a fun watch.

I don’t think it is the powerful system looking for reasons to exclude the G5. Clearly, these schools proved they can’t compete.
 
Just have a receiving votes tournament whoever wins that plays the 25th ranked team then you have a bunch of play in games to make it into a field of 16.
 
Those games reminded me a bit of the Fiesta bowl against OU, seeing the mismatch on TV doesn’t do it any justice seeing it in person. UConn kept the score somewhat respectable due to the pick 6 and special teams play. Had we scored an offensive touchdown we would’ve had a tease but OU could’ve scored a TD whenever it wanted to. In person I carefully watched the line and we got 0 pressure on Landry Jones, Demarco Murray looked massive and bigger then our linebackers.

What would’ve been 20 yard runs for Todman during the season were 5-7 yard runs at best, felt like the holes would be closed in half a second when there even was a hole.

Both games I saw yesterday were worse. UConn at least limited Murray on the ground and moved the ball just fine (drops killed us). They slowed down Todman, but no more than we slowed down Murray. Our OL protected Frazier well.

Specials, coaching, and running game, and defense were about even. With that said, the passing edge in their favor was catastrophic.
 
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These G5 schools are fine. It’s just that the top 5 or so are dominant. There aren’t many remaining P4 teams that would have done much better. There’s a huge difference between a top 5 team and a top 20 team.
Looking over who both Tulane and JMU played in 2025, I don’t see how they even belonged in the top 20. Notre Dame perhaps should have been somewhere 18-25, but ended up over rated as well. Time to dig our heads out of the sand. The separation between the P4 and the G5 is growing and how long before there is justification for the P4 football to break away? Would it be the worst thing for the G5 to have their own playoff?
 
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Both games I saw yesterday were worse. UConn at least limited Murray on the ground and moved the ball just fine (drops killed us). They slowed down Todman, but no more than we slowed down Murray. Our OL protected Frazier well.

Specials, coaching, and running game, and defense were about even. With that said, the passing edge in their favor was catastrophic.
Frazer had also regressed at that point. He really lost his mental edge by then. He was very unsure of himself.
 
The committee (or whatever label you care to put on the powers that be who created this playoff) could have easily avoided a lot of this if they had a little more foresight and a bit less arrogance when they first created the rules.

If within the initial rules they capped G-5 at one automatic qualifier (their arrogance led them to believe this could never be a possibility), we wouldn't have the mess we've seen with complaints that ND got bumped, that Miami or Bama weren't deserving or that G-5 schools don't belong. Now we'll have a full offseason listening to how G-5 schools never should have been there to begin with.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I also believe the committee intentionally matched Tulane with a team that had already seen them, to help ensure blowouts in both games and it wouldn't surprise me if Ole Miss and Oregon were instructed to keep their foot on the gas well after the outcome had already been decided.

I personally believe that it would take a once in a century set of events for a G-5 school to run through the playoffs and win the title. That said, I also personally believe that they should not be able to exclude all G-5 schools from the playoffs, especially if they do so to add a fourth or fifth place school from a P-2.
 
Not sure this is one of your strongest arguments for inclusion of G5 schools. JMU lost that game by halftime (being nice here). The final score was not indicative of just how bad of a whooping they took. I think had you stopped with USC you might have had some case, but by adding Minnesota and Rutgers, I think you actually support just why JMU didn’t belong.

The only reason I paid any attention to the playoffs this year was due to the inclusion of Tulane, Miami and JMU. I love to watch the underdog, but the two G5 schools were clearly unable to compete. These lopsided games are okay for basketball, because a bad game can be easily switched off to watch a more competitive game. This isn’t the case in football and is why I feel G5 schools should no longer be included. The gap is just too great and it just isn’t a fun watch.

I don’t think it is the powerful system looking for reasons to exclude the G5. Clearly, these schools proved they can’t compete.
My point is that Minnesota can't compete either. Rutgers can't compete either.

I'm tired of the G5 label meaning more than it should. The reality is that there are only about 6 or 7 schools that can legit win the championship (Texas A&M proved that). So if that's the case, they shouldn't get worked up about who team #12 is. They should be happy that they get an easier game than against Notre Dame or Vanderbilt...
 
These G5 schools are fine. It’s just that the top 5 or so are dominant. There aren’t many remaining P4 teams that would have done much better. There’s a huge difference between a top 5 team and a top 20 team.
^^^^THIS!!!
 
Looking over who both Tulane and JMU played in 2025, I don’t see how they even belonged in the top 20. Notre Dame perhaps should have been somewhere 18-25, but ended up over rated as well. Time to dig our heads out of the sand. The separation between the P4 and the G5 is growing and how long before there is justification for the P4 football to break away? Would it be the worst thing for the G5 to have their own playoff?
There is a separation, which is why people here mostly want to get into a P4. G5 playoffs would undermine that goal for more revenue/long term stability.
 
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