There's a First Time for Everything

And the 2014 version of the shoulda-coulda-woulda NCAA Division 1-A football playoffs offers some proof to that. 

Aw, what the heck...let's just cut to the chase and show you what happened:

FIRST ROUND (seeding in parentheses): Northern Illinois (9) 35, Louisiana-Lafayette (24) 14; Missouri (16) 35, UCLA (17) 7; Arizona (13) 35, Arizona State (20) 21; Kansas State (21) 35, Colorado State (12) 33; Wisconsin (14) 14, Clemson (19) 7; Mississippi State (11) 28, Cincinnati (22) 20; Mississippi (18) 37, Georgia Tech (15) 7; Michigan State (10) 28, Central Florida (23) 7

SECOND ROUND: Florida State (1) 42, Northern Illinois 17; Boise State (8) 24, Missouri 6; TCU (5) 56, Arizona 7; Oregon (4) 17, Kansas State 7; Baylor (6) 21, Wisconsin 19; Alabama (3) 21, Mississippi State 2; Marshall (7) 21, Mississippi 17; Ohio State (2) 14, Michigan State 7

QUARTERFINAL ROUND: Boise State 22, Florida State 21; Oregon 49, TCU 28, Alabama 40, Baylor 7; Marshall 31, Ohio State 28

SEMIFINAL ROUND: Oregon 21, Boise State 7; Alabama 21, Marshall 14

CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: Alabama 49, Oregon 21

For starters, it was the fourth straight year a team that had never won these playoffs before went all the way (something Oregon did in 2011, followed by Notre Dame in 2012 and Baylor one season later; the Bears relinquished their title in this season's quarterfinals). 

It was just the second time a Southeastern Conference club won it all in these playoffs...and, inexplicably, the very first time an SEC champion turned the trick. (Florida's 2009 D-1-A playoff champion was an at-large squad...in a year where the Crimson Tide ruled the most popular league in college football.) 

Not only did Arizona and Marshall post playoff wins for the first time, but Northern Illinois did it, too...after five failures, starting in 1983 and then every campaign since 2010. 

This year's MVP: Alabama QB Blake Sims, who fired three air scores in the title game, where he went 24-for-41 for 318 yards (in addition to running for 67 yards on nine tries against the Ducks; scored a TD, too).

Who knows...maybe the trend of a first-time champion winning this version of a major-college football playoff will continue.

Let's just stay tuned and see.

Just Because They're Finally Staging the College Football Playoff...

Well, that doesn't mean that this football fan's going to stop using his computer to wage his own version of a 24-team shoulda/woulda/coulda NCAA Division 1-A college football playoff.

I wasn't sure what kind of decision the 13-member selection committee was going to come up with when College Football 2014 (regular-season style) was about to come to an end (after all, the first-ever CFP Poll had three Southeastern Conference teams among the top four clubs in Division 1-A). I thought it was just going to be the BCS-Plus-Two.

Me, I can live with what Jeff Long, Tom Osborne, Condoleezza Rice, and Co. came up with. 

I can live with a championship entry from each of four different conferences.

Still, I can't wait until this becomes an eight-team playoff...or a 16-team one. (Maybe the day will come when the NCAA takes over the 1-A playoff process.)

Maybe if Mark Emmert and his lieutenants ran this 1-A playoff, all ten of the leagues in that division- not just the five wealthiest leagues- would get automatic bids. 

If Emmert and Co. ran it the way I do, this year's D-1-A playoff field would look exactly like this:

1. Florida State (13-0; ACC champ)/2. Ohio State (12-1; Big Ten champ)/3. Alabama (12-1; SEC champ)/4. Oregon (12-1; Pac-12 champ)/5. TCU (11-1; Big 12 at-large)/6. Baylor (11-1; Big 12 champ)/7. Marshall (11-1; Conference USA champ)/8. Boise State (11-2; Mountain West champ)

9. Northern Illinois (11-2; MAC champ)/10. Michigan State (10-2; Big Ten at-large)/11. Mississippi State (10-2; SEC at-large)/12. Colorado State (10-2; Mountain West at-large)/13. Arizona (10-3; Pac-12 at-large)/14. Wisconsin (10-3; Big Ten at-large)/15. Georgia Tech (10-3; ACC at-large)/16. Missouri (10-3; SEC at-large)

17. UCLA (9-3; Pac-12 at-large)/18. Mississippi (9-3; SEC at-large)/19. Clemson (9-3; ACC at-large)/20. Arizona State (9-3; Pac-12 at-large)/21. Kansas State (9-3; Big 12 at-large)/22. Cincinnati (9-3; AAC at-large)/23. Central Florida (9-3; AAC champ)/24. Louisiana-Lafayette (8-4; Sun Belt champ)

Actually, the Ragin' Cajuns are Sun Belt champs by proxy this time. Georgia Southern celebrated its first year of 1-A football by not only going 9-3...but also racking up an undefeated (8-0) SBC mark. But because the Eagles (with six Division 1-AA titles between 1985 and 2000) are still transitioning into 1-A football, they won't be officially able to qualify to taste postseason action in that division until next season.

You try asking the CFP committee (which also includes Archie Manning and Oliver Luck, two former NFL quarterbacks whose three sons between them have become famous NFL quarterbacks) how it came to pick Alabama as the group's Number One seed (leading to a date with fourth-seeded Ohio State) and how it came to select Oregon as the second seed (and Florida State the third banana).

They won't tell you.  

But I'll be glad to tell you how THIS 24-team playoff field got determined.

First of all, besides all ten D-1-A circuits receiving an automatic bid apiece, a point system is used, and it's not unlike the system your state's high school athletic association probably uses to determine football playoff seeding. 

A team receives 50 quality points for beating a 1-A club that had a winning record, 45 points for stopping a Division 1-A entry that suffered a losing mark or had a .500 season.

The club wins 40 quality points for defeating a Division 1-AA squad that racked up a winning campaign...and gets 35 for a victory over a losing (or .500) 1-AA team.

Yep...quality points are subtracted for losses, too: 50 for each loss to a winning 1-A team, 55 for every loss to a losing 1-A club (or one that won half its games), and 60 should our playoff entry lose to a successful 1-AA contingent.

And should that D-1-A playoff squad lose to a D-1-AA team that was .500 or worse...that's a loss of 65 quality points. 

In case a team wins all its games, the club receives 55 extra quality points...something that happened for Jimbo Fisher's Seminoles this time around.

This system's got tiebreakers, too. The first one is the number of games won by all the Division 1-A clubs that played the tied teams. (This season, Alabama and Ohio State each earned 520 quality points...yet because the Buckeyes' D-1-A opponents won a combined total of 87 contests, while the 1-A foes of the Crimson Tide racked up 83 wins, Urban Meyer's players got the second seed for 2014.)

Head-to-head competition is the second tiebreaker...and if the tied teams didn't meet during the regular season, conference records are examined. (This tiebreaker kicked in for 2014, since Arizona State and Clemson not only totaled 265 quality points apiece, but saw their Division 1-A foes win 74 games each. No, the Sun Devils and the Tigers didn't taste it up this year...so it came down to the fact that ASU had a 6-2 Pac-12 record, topping Clemson's 6-3 ACC ledger.)

Had the circuit marks been the same for Todd Graham's and Dabo Swinney's teams, point differential would've been looked at...first in head-to-head competition, then in conference play, and next in all games.

If all else fails, the final step is a coin toss.

By the way...I'm going to use Lance Haffner Games' 3-in-1 Football to run this playoff cycle, and the games will be computer-vs.-computer style.

Can't wait to play these...and I'll give you the results as soon as possible.

Until then, may 2015 really rock for you! Thanks for reading this blog!

Thoughts? You Bet I've Got 'Em!

Last year, I set foot in the state of Texas for the first time in my life (the occasion was our family's first reunion in nine years). To get to America's Lone Star State, I traveled in a plane for the first time in ten years.

The reunion took place on Labor Day weekend in the Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington area. And in between the hassles of getting in and out of both Omaha's Eppley Airfield and one of the world's biggest airports (Dallas-Fort Worth International), I did have a good time.

*Well, this week, the Metroplex opened up a new amusement park (see the pictures above). 

I've got to be honest with you: If I get a chance to go back to North Texas, and I want to go to an amusement park (and I mean a REAL amusement park), it's going to be Six Flags. (Correct me if Six Flags over Texas changed its name in recent years.)   

*Speaking of plane travel...I understand that, for the first time since enacting it earlier this year, Congress decided to back off a taste on upholding its sequester.

Today, after the Senate took action, the House voted to get many of the air traffic controllers off the furlough the sequester brought on.

The whole point was to help out all those frequent fliers and all those business travelers.  

It's fine that today's Republican-led House wants to put a stop to (or at least a crimp in) all those flight delays and cancellations. Restoring jobs to those air traffic controllers is great.

It's too bad those same US representatives don't have the guts to restore the money that keeps programs like Head Start and Meals on Wheels available to all who NEED those programs.  

*And speaking of guts...I'm still incensed at the 46 US senators who showed they wouldn't stand up to the National Rifle Association.

Some (if not all) of those 46 cowards (that's right, cowards) got on TV, radio, and/or this here World Wide Web to explain just why they wouldn't stand for background checks- the measures that would've made sure buying a gun here in America is no longer as easy as buying a carton of cigarettes. 

No telling how many of those chickenhearts (oops, I mean senators) told reporters "It wasn't an easy vote."

No telling how many of them cited the Second Amendment.

I mean, background checks were the very least of the demands gun-control advocates have wanted all this time. We keep hearing that nine out of every ten Americans who answer opinion polls have come out in favor of those background checks. 

Both of Nebraska's US senators (that's right, Republicans Mike Johanns and Deb Fischer) played chicken on background checks.

If you don't want as little as to put a background check between someone and his or her wanting to buy a "shootin' arn," then you're in favor of keeping the gun violence going. It's as simple as that.

*On something just a little bit lighter...after some details have come out this week, I'm not as excited about the upcoming College Football Playoff system as I would've liked to be.

And it's all because it'll be run by the same people who cooked up the BCS nonsense: The commissioners of the now five wealthiest Division 1-A football-playing conferences (Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-12, and Southeastern). 

I'd have preferred to see the NCAA take it over...but we keep hearing that there's no longer any real leadership in that governing body.

Got the feeling that the commissioners will rely on the USA Today and Harris Interactive polls (and maybe the Associated Press poll will be a deciding factor here, too, a la the past).  

And if that's going to be the case...instead of each league's champion qualifying for the playoffs, get ready for things to get to the point where all four of the playoff clubs will be from the SEC.  

One more, and I'm going to wrap it up: 

*Lots and lots of sports reporters and sports talk-show hosts have been worried about this year's NFL draft; the consensus feeling is that the 2013 selection process just doesn't have the glamor that last year's did.

It's time for the media people to calm down. 

More 2013 NFL draftees are going to turn out to have great playing careers than any of us might think. (Yeah...I know: How often do you get a situation in which an Andrew Luck, a Robert Griffin III, and a Russell Wilson come out of college at the end of the same academic year?)

Far as I'm concerned, all this media fear about this year's National Football League draft manifested itself in (1) a USA Today article about the biggest busts in the draft's history and (2)  an ESPN report looking back on the 1983 NFL draft...the one that produced Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterbacks John Elway and Dan Marino.

Don't feel disappointed that the Kansas City Chiefs went with offensive lineman Eric Fisher as their top draft pick- the NFL's first choice here in 2013.

And don't automatically label Geno Smith a failure.  

Let's just see what happens.

One thing that's happening is: My time is up. 

Thanks for reading "Boston's Blog!"