(from
http://www.wvgazette.com/Sports/201311300060 )
...Last week's indexes had Rice well ahead of MU. In the tally kept by CBS Sportsline, Rice was 55th and MU 66th. While the Herd should get a bump from beating 9-3 East Carolina, the Owls look good to preserve that gap by beating 7-5 Tulane.
It didn't help that Marshall played one 0-12 team (Miami of Ohio), two 1-11 teams (Southern Mississippi and Florida International) and an FCS team (Gardner-Webb). The three losses came by a combined five points in regulation, plus Virginia Tech's third-overtime touchdown...
Pursuant to the discussion of the new Group of Five holy grail--i.e., the lone CFP (formerly BCS) bowl slot, and our ability in the future to attain it... of course, the theory that several posters here have maintained is that all we have to do in the future is win... that we really don't have to be concerned about the conference as a whole that we're in, as long as we just take care of business on the field...
While it is evidently is true that the selection committee will make the Go5 holy grail choice, and that they will each have the independent freedom to rank teams to their own discretion given the data they individually consider to be paramount, they are mandated to consider these criteria specifically:
- Conference championships won
- Strength of schedule
- Head-to-head competition
- Comparative outcomes of common opponents (without incenting margin of victory)
- Other relevant factors such as key injuries that may have affected a team's performance during the season or likely would affect its postseason performance
(
http://www.collegefootballplayoff.com/story?id=9830895) collegefootballplayoff.com website
Conference championships? Every conference will have one. No real advantage to us there.
Head-to-head competition? It's doubtful there will be many years when we're competing with another CUSA school for the holy grail, so that won't matter within our conference. Outside of our conference, we might luck into an occasional team having a good year, but since you have no way to dictate that (i.e., given that games are scheduled years in advance) and given that we're looking primarily at scheduling games with MAC neighbors... no seeming real advantage there, either.
Other relevant factors? That's a wildcard I guess the selection committee can keep in its back pocket in case something happens like a Heisman candidate for a contender getting hurt late season.
But the remaining two... strength of schedule... and comparative outcomes of common opponents... are essentially two criteria that mostly cover the same ground... and do not bode well for Marshall fans praying that the JWB theory will be valid going forward.
What can we do?
Not much, ie, if you're going to contend that we should be happy as a lark with CUSA as it is currently positioned.
Clearly, what we need is a way to pump up the conference schedule so that we're certain to have some quality wins in any year when we're otherwise winning... which, of course, hopefully, is every year.
You're welcome not to buy-in to my idea of how to achieve that... but regardless, we need someone's idea to emerge, because we sure-as-heck are going to realize too soon that there's a glass ceiling in this current circumstance...
I know, so many of you people like to point to 1999, but you never seem to want to engage the conversation of what we deserved versus what we actually got out of our unbeaten season... a trip to Detroit for a game versus BYU... and think of it...
we'll likely play a bigger name and better opponent in this 2013 season having lost 3 freakin gaames than we did then, in a year we even beat Clemson... you've forgotten what it actually was like to be positioned in a bad conference, and having to anticipate a tacit disrespect keeping you from achieving all you could be if you had the chance.
And the "we're just to poor financially to compete with AAC schools" thing has never made sense to me. We've been competing. We've even went into November games before as a contender for the championship. We've never been in the basement. You can talk all the accounting numbers you want, but what's actually happened on the field? That's where it matters. Maybe our coaching staffs have just been that good... maybe we achieved well beyond our means... but the fact is, we've competed, and even contended.
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