The playoff is set. After Saturday night’s round of college football conference championship games, the 13-man committee settled on the four best teams in college football. Or is it the most deserving? I’m not really sure which, and neither is anybody else. I don’t think the committee knows what it takes to qualify for the playoff.
I also don’t like to use the term qualify in the context of the College Football Playoff. The word qualify creates the sense that there is objectivity and that there are official prerequisites, when in fact there are no official prerequisites and plenty of subjectivity lies on the part of the committee.
Shouldn’t the University of Central Florida be in the college football playoff considering they were undefeated the entire regular season? Probably not, when you put them in the proper context, but doesn’t that further my point? There is an infinite number of ways to interpret who is in the College Football Playoff, and for many Ohio State advocates, the committee made the wrong interpretation.
The Ohio State Buckeyes finished the regular season 10-2, winning their division and the Big 10 championship, which, amazingly enough, came one year after the Buckeyes made the CFP after failing to even qualify for the Big 10 championship game in 2016.
Meanwhile, the nearly inexorable Nick Saban and his Alabama Crimson Tide lost last week to the Auburn Tigers. The Tigers replaced Alabama in the SEC Championship game, then lost to CFP-qualifier Georgia. Now, Alabama is in the four-team playoff too.
Ohio State fans got a taste of their own medicine Sunday. The same scenario that got OSU into playoff has been repeated, this time with the Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie-eating Saban. The committee is essentially saying that the conference championship games have almost no more value than any other regular season game in their eyes.
A few weeks ago, I was on “For the Win” sports talk radio show on WBGU-FM with former ESPN anchor Jay Crawford, who likened conference championship games to your annual middle school bake sale. They’ve become of little importance other than making money. Tons and tons of easy money.
In my interpretation, the committee did the right thing by letting Alabama into the playoff over Ohio State, despite the questionable fairness of the whole system. Yes, Alabama has a weaker strength of schedule. Yes, OSU has more impressive wins. But, Alabama still has fewer losses and plays in its own respective Power 5 conference.
By that logic (if we can call any of this logical), shouldn’t Wisconsin be ahead of OSU because they have one loss compared to Ohio State’s two, and they didn’t win the worthless Big 10 championship game like OSU last year? Again, it’s all about your interpretation of what qualifies a team for the playoff.
The entire system is full of hypocrisy and reasoning that contradicts itself left and right. Like all other levels of competitive football, it’s time to expand the playoff format (eight teams is a good start), and set undisputable qualifiers for making the playoffs.
Later on “For the Win,” Crawford explained how eight teams would include the five champions from the Power 5 conferences. This would rejuvenate the importance of conference championships. The remaining three playoff participants would include “at-large” bids for the non-champions such as an Alabama, a Wisconsin and perhaps even a Central Florida.
College football could expand it further to 16 teams at some point, but 8 teams is a viable start. It’s the format for which fans have waited. It’s the format they deserve.
