My comment: His Alabama over Ole Miss comment, to me at least, makes it where Ole Miss has to have an Auburn win to jump Alabama. With margin of victory not relevant, he was fairly firm on how Alabama is ahead of the Rebels. Better losses and better wins. Ole Miss needs analytics to play into it. The committee seemed to go firm with Ole Miss and Bama share wins vs. Carolina and Georgia and Bama has a win over LSU and I guess Mizzou. Alabama lost to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma and UT and that's better than UK, UF and LSU. Not justifying... just interpreting. There's a lot of word salad depending on the needed explanation and talking out both sides of mouth. The message remains if you're in a big conference, just don't play anyone.
On Clemson over Ole Miss and Alabama
"Well, Clemson slid up with some losses ahead of them by Alabama and Mississippi, and they had a win against Citadel, obviously, but that wasn't the big reason. Obviously they're at 9-2, with only two losses. The teams right behind them have three losses. We just felt as a committee as we looked at their body of work, with three straight wins after their loss to Louisville, including back-to-back wins against Virginia Tech and Pitt, that they deserved to move up into that 12th position."
On Alabama vs. Ole Miss
"Yeah, they're really -- I would say in the committee's eyes, they're really similar teams, and they've had similar ways that they've gone through the season. Both have had losses that you didn't expect them to have. Alabama had a loss at Oklahoma, and Oklahoma's performance was dominant against Alabama, and then you have the loss by Mississippi to Florida at Florida. It was one of those losses that you just don't expect them to have. It was a close game, but where we evaluated it, we came out with Alabama ahead of Mississippi and South Carolina since Alabama and Mississippi both won head to head against South Carolina. With Alabama there's the win over Georgia. They won against Missouri. They've beat South Carolina and they won at LSU in dominant fashion. When you put those four wins against Mississippi and what they did, they had the win against Georgia and the win at South Carolina, but they had a tough loss to Florida; lost to LSU in overtime.So when we compared resumes that's how we saw it in terms of the difference between Alabama and Mississippi."
On seemingly ranking by record instead of strength of schedule:
"You know, it's a great question, and it's one that we debate. One of the things that we talk about is teams can only play the schedule they have in front of them against the teams that have been, from a conference standpoint, assigned. We can maybe be critical of non-conference schedules and those kind of things, but when it gets to the conference, particularly as these conferences have expanded, there are more teams to play throughout the conference.Teams can only play the schedule that's in front of them.They can only play the opponents that they have.So we take the stance that we're going to really look at these games, we're going to look at the stats, we're going to look at the strength of schedule, but we're also going to look at how teams are performing against the competition that they have.From our perspective, if it was just about strength of schedule, we wouldn't be needed. You could just take at the end of the season the top 12 teams with the highest strength of schedule and put them against each other.What we've been asked to do is to judge and to look at how teams are playing against the competition that they have and to rank them accordingly to how we see it, and that's the way I would explain how we take a look and we look at the differences even though the schedules and the opponents may be different."
The verbatim answer doesn't matter, but he said there have been 12 3-loss teams in the top 12 over the last 10 years. However, in this warped situation, you have to be maybe 10th to feel safe.
On Clemson over Ole Miss and Alabama
"Well, Clemson slid up with some losses ahead of them by Alabama and Mississippi, and they had a win against Citadel, obviously, but that wasn't the big reason. Obviously they're at 9-2, with only two losses. The teams right behind them have three losses. We just felt as a committee as we looked at their body of work, with three straight wins after their loss to Louisville, including back-to-back wins against Virginia Tech and Pitt, that they deserved to move up into that 12th position."
On Alabama vs. Ole Miss
"Yeah, they're really -- I would say in the committee's eyes, they're really similar teams, and they've had similar ways that they've gone through the season. Both have had losses that you didn't expect them to have. Alabama had a loss at Oklahoma, and Oklahoma's performance was dominant against Alabama, and then you have the loss by Mississippi to Florida at Florida. It was one of those losses that you just don't expect them to have. It was a close game, but where we evaluated it, we came out with Alabama ahead of Mississippi and South Carolina since Alabama and Mississippi both won head to head against South Carolina. With Alabama there's the win over Georgia. They won against Missouri. They've beat South Carolina and they won at LSU in dominant fashion. When you put those four wins against Mississippi and what they did, they had the win against Georgia and the win at South Carolina, but they had a tough loss to Florida; lost to LSU in overtime.So when we compared resumes that's how we saw it in terms of the difference between Alabama and Mississippi."
On seemingly ranking by record instead of strength of schedule:
"You know, it's a great question, and it's one that we debate. One of the things that we talk about is teams can only play the schedule they have in front of them against the teams that have been, from a conference standpoint, assigned. We can maybe be critical of non-conference schedules and those kind of things, but when it gets to the conference, particularly as these conferences have expanded, there are more teams to play throughout the conference.Teams can only play the schedule that's in front of them.They can only play the opponents that they have.So we take the stance that we're going to really look at these games, we're going to look at the stats, we're going to look at the strength of schedule, but we're also going to look at how teams are performing against the competition that they have.From our perspective, if it was just about strength of schedule, we wouldn't be needed. You could just take at the end of the season the top 12 teams with the highest strength of schedule and put them against each other.What we've been asked to do is to judge and to look at how teams are playing against the competition that they have and to rank them accordingly to how we see it, and that's the way I would explain how we take a look and we look at the differences even though the schedules and the opponents may be different."
The verbatim answer doesn't matter, but he said there have been 12 3-loss teams in the top 12 over the last 10 years. However, in this warped situation, you have to be maybe 10th to feel safe.
