At last we have our 12 team College Football Playoff. And just like every playoff in the past few years there are those that are discontent with how it worked out. Frankly, I think it turned out ok. It’s not perfect, but it probably never will be. But there isn’t a team that was absolutely deserving of being able to compete that got left out, and I think that’s what people wanted to see.
But we apparently need to talk about it, because not everyone is as generally content as I am with it. The case is that a 12 team playoff should, by it’s very nature, simply take all the teams ranked 1-12 in the CFP rankings and roll with it. The “committee” doesn’t need to do anything. This sounds good on the surface. But that’s not any different than the old “top 2 teams selected by the committee play” or the “top 4 teams selected by the committee play”. It’s still the teams selected by the committee. The issue being, of course, that Clemson was ranked outside of the top 12 and managed to win the ACC title game, leapfrog themselves in, and kick Alabama out. I submit to you that this is exactly why a 12 team playoff exists. Because football isn’t just about being good. It’s also about winning.
Do Conferences Matter?
The question we all find ourselves asking is, “Do Conferences Matter?”. Alabama fans say that because they play in the SEC, their strength of schedule is better than Clemson’s and so this is an outrage. But the SEC also got 3 playoff spots. The Big 10 got 4. The ACC 2 ½ (Notre Dame is halfway in the ACC. If you’re in the bowl hierarchy, if you don’t make the playoffs, you’re not really independent, are you?) Mountain West 1 and Big XII 1. You have a good mix of high ranked teams along with teams that we gave the chance to play their way in. Should the SEC have had 4 teams? Should the SEC have had 6 teams? Should the playoff have been 6 SEC Teams vs 6 B1G teams? I really hope not. I think we want to avoid the playoff being a rehash of regular season games (for instance, we could see a THIRD Georgia vs Texas this time around).
Is Boise State or Arizona State going to wind up getting blown out by 50? Sure, maybe they will. But maybe they’ll pull off an upset or two along the way. That’s the reason we let conference champions in. Because even if they’re in a weaker conference, they earned a right to step into the ring and get their clock cleaned. Is Clemson going to get embarrassed? I doubt it. They’re clearly down this year, and it might be a stretch to say they’re in a good spot to win it all, but you should never underestimate Dabo Swinney.
Does Alabama have a legitimate grievance by saying that a 9-3 SEC team isn’t the same as a 9-3 ACC team? Not really. The best 2 teams from the ACC went. The best 3 teams from the SEC went. Could Alabama have played for the ACC title if they were in the ACC? Maybe. But they’re not in the ACC. They’re in the SEC. Maybe they’d be happier in the ACC if they can’t hack it in the SEC anymore.
But the Playoff isn’t a suicide pact among the other conferences either. Yes the SEC is hard. But that is a personal problem for them. The ACC should never have just quietly accepted FSU being written out last year. That was a huge slap in the face to the league.
The bottom line is that if the current structure of college football matters, where you have a conference that you play in that continues to exist, then winning the conference title should matter. If winning the conference title doesn’t matter, maybe all the football teams should just be independent like Notre Dame pretends to be?
The Future of College Football
And basically, the playoff has kicked off an argument that we have known was coming for a while now. Earlier this year, the SEC and the B1G were talking about whether or not they should collude together to cut the other conference out and have a playoff between them. This is now amping that plan up for the SEC. But I think it would be a huge mistake for them. I think if you cut out the other conferences, you’re killing the golden goose. The SEC perennially has a lot of talent and a lot of good teams. But they don’t have an exclusive right to that talent. The truth is that in the Playoff Era, the Championship has bounced between the SEC, the B1G, AND the ACC. Not only that, but Texas just entered the SEC and very nearly won the SEC Championship in their first year out of the Big XII (their SEC schedule was made by the SEC office. That’s not anybody else’s problem but the SEC’s). And ultimate SEC Champion Georgia was taken to 8 overtimes by a Georgia Tech team that finished 6th in the ACC. There’s a gap in talent and money there, but it’s not an insurmountable gap. It would be a huge mistake for the SEC to run off and do something stupid for the sport just because the rest of us won’t get down on our knees and worship them. And really, not respecting that kind of entitlement mentality is what makes College Football great. You show up, you do your best, and you play to win.
And if the SEC comes out swinging and wins this year’s playoff, it doesn’t really change any of that. But after all their entitled whining, you can bet that if they lose, those losses will “just mean more”.
