Interesting article from CBS SPORTS

[ASUGoose]

As I have said previously, we could have finished 13-0 last season and still played in the same bowl as we did - Houston had more impressive victories and won their conference tourney - at 12-1, I absolutely believe it would have not made any difference - not our fault - the SunBelt bowl tie-ins leave much to desire --- Basically some of the mid-tier bowls would ideally have a choice of top G5 teams and not take #8 from the ACC or #9 from the Big 10 --- Of course, that is happening anytime soon ---

Disagree here - if we beat Clemson first game last year and run the table, we are in the NY6 bowl.

If we beat Clemson the first game of the season they just kissed the championship game away - might not even be ranked in top 10-15 in week 2 ---

They would have finished 12-1 and ACC Champs. Not saying they would have been lock for playoff game but they would have been top 8 at seasons end. That gets us to a NY6 bowl definitely being undefeated.

[WVAPPeer]

I wish I had the confidence in the selecting body that you guys seem to have - my feeling still is Houston being from the AAC and winning their conference championship game (which we wouldn't have had) at 12-1 with more quality wins is going over 12-0 APP - We need to get used to playing in the sub-par bowls until the SunBelt can arrange some better tie-ins (at least for a ranked team not chosen to the NY6) --- If APP goes undefeated this coming season we will be going - (I'd say the odds are less than 5%) - But I will consider it possible until it no longer is !!!

[EastHallApp]

I wish I had the confidence in the selecting body that you guys seem to have - my feeling still is Houston being from the AAC and winning their conference championship game (which we wouldn't have had) at 12-1 with more quality wins is going over 12-0 APP - We need to get used to playing in the sub-par bowls until the SunBelt can arrange some better tie-ins (at least for a ranked team not chosen to the NY6) --- If APP goes undefeated this coming season we will be going - (I'd say the odds are less than 5%) - But I will consider it possible until it no longer is !!!

Ha, yeah, actually you're being generous. ESPN FPI gives us a 0.1 chance of going 12-0, which is probably about right.

And as I said, I don't have so much confidence in the selection committee, I just think that if they had passed us over at 12-0 it would have been because of $, not on-field reasons. Not that they'd have admitted it, of course.

[AtlAppMan]

Here is the only way App gets selected to a NY6 bowl and was a point I made earlier. Even if we go 12-0 we have to win by a wide margin against most of our schedule to convince the pollsters that we are a serious national contender. They know the SBC is weak so we have to crush most of our SBC opponents. We were on that track last year after the GaSU game and remember the positive noise/articles that were starting to emerge. We have to have no mercy and show overwhelming force, burnt earth policy, Sherman on his march to the sea, you get the point.

Houston was putting up big offensive numbers last year against better opponents overall. We have to compensate for that gap in quality of opponents and we will every year unless the SBC, as a whole, gets better and that will not happen soon.