WASHINGTON — The College Football Playoff Committee released its final
poll on Sunday, sending Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State to the
inaugural four-team, three-game soiree that will decide this year’s national
title. By doing so, they took the least controversial route, but not
necessarily the correct one, and made every fan of the game question the
entire process of how they got to any of their decisions.
Here are the three biggest issues in the entire selection process:
One true champion*
*Note: not really.
The Big XII Conference took what should have been a much more difficult
decision and made it easy for the committee, becoming the only conference to
refuse to stand behind its champion. In a desperate and futile attempt to
squeeze two teams into college football’s final four — Baylor and TCU — the conference ignored their own calling card of this season, and ended up with both
on the outside looking in.
The conference aired a commercial all year long,
including Saturday during TCU’s and Baylor’s games. The ad features the
10 coaches of the Big 12 Conference (at least when the season began — Charlie
Weis has since been replaced at Kansas and in the ad) morphing into one
another, declaring the following creed:
In the Big 12 Conference
There are no divisions
To determine our champion
We battle each other every year
With explosive offenses against aggressive defenses
In front of thousands of passionate fans
In college football’s top venues
Every game matters
Ten teams, nine games
One. True. Champion.
That last line is delivered by TCU head coach Gary Patterson, after Baylor
head coach Art Briles morphed into him. The hysterical irony of this should
not be lost on any college football fan.
Both Baylor and TCU won eight of their nine Big 12 Conference games this year.
Both finished the season 11-1. Baylor lost its one conference game on the road
in Morgantown, West Virginia, in a penalty-fueled mess of an affair, 41-27. TCU
survived their own test at West Virginia, needing a game-winning field goal as
time expired to escape with a 31-30 win. The Horned Frogs’ lone conference
loss? At Baylor.
That’s right; TCU lost to Baylor. On the field. In an actual football game
(I’m sure it happened — I was there).
By virtue of that loss, Baylor should have been the One True Champion of the
Big 12, as both teams finished with identical records but with the Bears owning the
head-to-head advantage. This is how champions of every conference without a
title game have been crowned throughout college football history. They may be
co-champions on paper, but if there is a crucial bowl game in question (say,
the Rose Bowl for the old PAC-10), only one team gets to go: the team that won
the head-to-head game.
But TCU came into the week ranked third, Baylor sixth. This was poised to be
the biggest mess of the selection process. Then Ohio State embarrassed an
overrated Wisconsin team 59-0 in the Big 10 Title Game, giving the committee
an easy way out. With only four identified Power 5 conference champions and
four
spots, neither Baylor nor TCU would make it. Which brings us to the next
point…
Five major conferences, four playoff spots
It’s amazing this wasn’t discussed more leading into the season’s final
weekend. Perhaps everyone just assumed that Florida State, the only contender
in the ACC, would eventually lose, removing themselves from the conversation.
But with five major conferences and four playoff spots, you are inevitably
going to leave a team that has earned its way to conference title out of the
competition. Why even have a playoff if you can’t earn your way there?
Furthermore, knowing the restricted space, shouldn’t conference strength be a
decisive factor? Here’s how the
Power 5 rated at the end of the season:
1. SEC
2. PAC-12
3. Big XII
4. ACC
5. Big 10
How could the committee award a spot to a one-loss winner of the worst power
conference over one of the two from the third-ranked conference? The Big 10
was a tire fire this year, devoid of good wins and full of near-
miss losses to far inferior competition. Ohio State beat a good Michigan State
team, but did not have much else on the schedule of note. Furthermore, they
lost, at home, to a Virginia Tech team that was the very definition of
mediocrity, winning just 5 of its 11 other games.
The Buckeyes’ wins were not as impressive as, and their loss was worse than, both
Baylor’s and TCU’s. So what’s the real answer for how the committee could have
come to this result?
Nothing has changed from the BCS
The ushering in of the playoff era was supposed to erase the perceived faults
of the Bowl Championship Series. As you probably recall, the BCS relied on a
combination of human and computer polls to determine its rankings. While those
computers aren’t used anymore, they still generate their rankings each week. A
composite of the final rankings is listed below for the top six teams (average
rank in parentheses):
1. Alabama (1.5157)
2. Florida State (2.2679)
3. Oregon (2.9302)
4. TCU (3.7585)
5. Ohio State (4.1289)
6. Baylor (6.1879)
Of course, the polls didn’t quite agree. The USA Today poll had OSU fourth,
Baylor fifth and TCU sixth. The AP Poll had Baylor fourth, Ohio State fifth
and TCU sixth. Ultimately, if you combine the computer rankings with the poll
rankings in the same way that the BCS formula did (with the Coaches Poll
taking the place of the old Harris Poll), you get the following rankings:
BCSFinal
That is, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the committee’s top
six in order. The only difference — Oregon and Florida State swapped —
doesn’t really matter, as the two would have ended up playing one another in
the Rose Bowl anyway. So, if none of the elements designed to improve the
system actually made a lick of change, why do they exist in the first place?
The Big 12 needs to figure out its long-term solution, one which likely will
include the return of a conference title game. The selection process needs to
reevaluate how it’s possible to choose four teams with five conference
winners, perhaps by expanding to six or eight teams. And past that, the people
in charge need to figure out why they’re paying more than a dozen people to
come together and debate all of this, when the end result is no different than
a formula that requires none of the speculation.
Until then, enjoy the ride.
Follow @WTOP and @WTOPSports on Twitter and WTOP on Facebook.
