COLLEGE FOOTBALL WEEKLY RANT
BREAKING DOWN THE COMMITTEE’S SELECTION PROCESS
It has taken four years, but the CFB Playoff Selection
Committee finally has me baffled as to the criteria they are looking for to
select their playoff teams.
In 2014 the committee put so much stock in Conference
Champions that they dropped TCU from #3 to #6 after they beat Iowa State 55-3
in the season finale because they were declared Co-Champions of the Big
XII. The conference would not declare a
specific winner. This left the Big XII
out of the 1st playoff as Baylor finished 5th in the
final rankings, 1 spot ahead of TCU, both with an 8-1 conference record.
In 2015 it was “Top 25 Wins” that the committee preached
about during the selection process. That
helped Oklahoma jump from 15th in the original rankings to 12th,
to 7th and finally to 3rd in consecutive weeks as they
beat 3 Top 25 opponents during that 4-week span. OU then dropped from 3rd to 4th
in the last rankings while not playing on the final week of the season.
In 2016 it was “big wins matter, bad losses don’t”. In Week 11 last season Clemson and Michigan
both lost to unranked teams on last second field goals. Clemson dropped from #2 to #4, Michigan
remained at #3. #4 Washington also lost
that week, they dropped from #4 to #6.
Despite those losses, all 3 teams remained very much alive for a playoff
position.
This season, the message received by the committee was “don’t
lose”. This advice is important in all
sports, but has the potential to be very damning to the landscape of college
football.
In 2017 the committee went against their policy of making
Conference Championship’s important, by keeping the Big Ten Champ out for the 2nd
consecutive year. The PAC 12 Champ was
also left out this season. However, for
a 2nd straight year, a team that didn’t even play for a conference
championship was selected.
The committee also threw out the idea of Top 25 wins being
important this year, when they selected Alabama over teams like Ohio State and
USC. Leading up to the final rankings
the committee said publicly that teams 5-8 (Alabama, Georgia, Miami, Ohio St)
were all very close in consideration.
Ohio State proceeded to beat an undefeated Wisconsin team that ranked #4
going into the game, but remained behind Alabama, who did not play. Remember Oklahoma falling in the rankings
when they didn’t play the final week of 2015? Alabama moved UP this year by
doing the same! Alabama finished the
regular season with just 2 wins over teams in the Final Top 25 (#17 LSU &
#23 Miss St.) Ohio State had 3 such wins
and all 3 were against teams ranked higher than either of those 2 from Alabama
(#6 Wisconsin, #9 Penn State & #16 Michigan State). USC entered the week at #10 and beat #13
Stanford for the 2nd time this season. Maybe it is fitting that Ohio State and USC
will be playing each other in the Cotton Bowl this season.
When it came to “good losses” or “bad losses” this year the
committee was very inconsistent. When
Clemson lost to a Syracuse team that finished 4-8 on the year, the committee
pointed to the fact that Clemson’s QB entered the game with a nagging ankle
injury and ended up leaving the game for good in the 2nd Q with a
concussion. The committee basically gave
Clemson a pass due to injuries, which can be a slippery slope considering the
nature of the game and the fact that every team is battling injuries every
week. At the same time, the committee
seems to have penalized Oklahoma for their home loss to Iowa State, who had a
QB making his 1st career start.
That Iowa State went on to have a much better season than Syracuse. The Cyclones finished 7-5 and are heading to
a bowl game.
As I mentioned before, the biggest takeaway coming from the
committee this year was simple, “don’t lose.”
And just like that we are back to the BCS Era.
Looking at solely the loss column is not an effective way to
judge football teams and it is an awful message to send to teams, coaches and
AD’s who schedule football games. As I
say almost every week in my Rant Rankings, I try to ignore how many losses a
team has when I evaluate them. You
certainly have to consider the final result of a game, but you also have to
take into consideration the opponents, the situations that may take place in a
game, the scheduling (USC’s playoff hopes were killed by its own conference
scheduling) and how teams have played since those losses. By selecting Alabama, who had just 1 loss,
the committee overlooked that they didn’t challenge themselves with their
non-conference schedule. Alabama has not
played a true non-conference road game since 2011. They also have played an FCS opponent in 9
straight seasons, all those games coming in November, when most other teams are
playing conference games.
Some of the best games in the college football season are in
the opening few weeks of the season when you get Power 5 teams going out of
conference to face other Power 5 teams. If
teams take note of Alabama’s scheduling and try to mimic it, it will be the
fans that lose out. Auburn played Clemson
the past two years, losing both games.
Ohio State and Oklahoma also have played each other the past two
seasons, the visiting team winning both games.
USC went on the road and played Notre Dame in a rivalry game this
season, they lost. You have to wonder to
yourself, if Auburn had scheduled a Sun Belt opponent instead of Clemson this
year would they be in playoff? An 11-2,
SEC West Champ that beat Alabama head -to-head would have probably made the
playoff instead of Bama this season.
What about Ohio State, what if they play Bowling Green and beat them by
70 this season instead of challenging themselves by playing a team like
Oklahoma? 12-1 Big Ten Champs, yep they
are probably in over Alabama too. If USC
plays San Jose instead of Notre Dame, is a 1-loss PAC 12 Champ in the playoff
instead of Alabama? Probably.
The Committee needs to be much more transparent with their
selection process in the future to allow teams to enter the season, knowing
what they will and will not be judge by.
And by the way, all the people out there saying this season
is why they should expand the CFB Playoff to 8 teams, STOP IT. There weren’t 4 teams deserving this year and
now we want to try to find 8 deserving teams? NO!
Just for reference, in case you are interested, here is the
official protocol used by the selection committee, or at least they claim it to
be…
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