[stupac2]

[quote author=stupac2 link=topic=14322.msg151927#msg151927 date=1452295320]
No, there's no value for our playoff aspirations. What value did it give us this year? If we had beaten Oregon, it wouldn't matter if we had played ND or UC Davis, we would've been in the playoff with a win. (Well, and a win the next week.) This idea that the conference values hard schedules was exposed as a complete load of horseshit this year. If the committee valued hard schedules we would've been in, we weren't so they don't. Until proven otherwise scheduling like Alabama is the way to go.

Had UNC beaten Clemson, the the University of Dead Fake Girlfriends game would have taken us to the playoffs with two losses over a 1-loss North Carolina team.

While Alabama had 4 non-conference games, and only one of those against a real opponent (Wisconsin), it is still objectively a pretty tough schedule (see, for example, Sagarin).  They had 9 games against Sagarin top-30 teams; we only had 6 such games prior to the bowl season.  No other top-10 team played more than 6 games against top-30 opponents.

BC
[/quote]

In that universe I don't think it would've mattered that we played ND, as long as we played some other reasonable school (which, given the way Stanford schedules, we probably would've). In that world it would be a choice between UNC, which effectively went 10-1 because two of its wins were against FCS schools, vs us who went 11-2 (assuming we replace ND with some other non-FCS school). Our schedule also would have been much stronger, even without ND, since UNC missed most of the good ACC teams and the ACC sucks anyway.

Plus, giving up ND doesn't necessarily mean that we play a bodybag team. Maybe instead of playing ND we schedule Michigan. Who knows? But we can't really schedule Michigan, because we always play ND.

[stupac2]

[quote author=stupac2 link=topic=14322.msg151927#msg151927 date=1452295320]
No, there's no value for our playoff aspirations. What value did it give us this year? If we had beaten Oregon, it wouldn't matter if we had played ND or UC Davis, we would've been in the playoff with a win. (Well, and a win the next week.) This idea that the conference values hard schedules was exposed as a complete load of horseshit this year. If the committee valued hard schedules we would've been in, we weren't so they don't. Until proven otherwise scheduling like Alabama is the way to go.

Had UNC beaten Clemson, the the University of Dead Fake Girlfriends game would have taken us to the playoffs with two losses over a 1-loss North Carolina team.

While Alabama had 4 non-conference games, and only one of those against a real opponent (Wisconsin), it is still objectively a pretty tough schedule (see, for example, Sagarin).  They had 9 games against Sagarin top-30 teams; we only had 6 such games prior to the bowl season.  No other top-10 team played more than 6 games against top-30 opponents.

BC
[/quote]

In that universe I don't think it would've mattered that we played ND, as long as we played some other reasonable school (which, given the way Stanford schedules, we probably would've). In that world it would be a choice between UNC, which effectively went 10-1 because two of its wins were against FCS schools, vs us who went 11-2 (assuming we replace ND with some other non-FCS school). Our schedule also would have been much stronger, even without ND, since UNC missed most of the good ACC teams and the ACC sucks anyway.

Plus, giving up ND doesn't necessarily mean that we play a bodybag team. Maybe instead of playing ND we schedule Michigan. Who knows? But we can't really schedule Michigan, because we always play ND.