College Football Playoffs: Did The Commitee Get It Right?

The dawn of a new age in College Football is upon us. The College Football Playoff begins this year. A 12 person committee selects the top four teams, and they face off in an old fashioned playoff.

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This panel of judges has been meeting weekly in Dallas since the middle of October, and releasing rankings every week. They claim to take strength of schedule, the “eye test”, common opponents, strength of conference, and non conference schedule into play.

The only question we all have as fans is, does it work?

The top four were unveiled on ESPN earlier this week, and there has been a lot of debate on this subject. Do I think it worked? Yes and no.

Dec 6, 2014; Atlanta, GA, USA; Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban helps his players lift the SEC Championship trophy after defeating Missouri in the 2014 SEC Championship at the Georgia Dome. Alabama beat Missouri 42-13. Mandatory Credit: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports

I’m not trying to be wishy-washy or dodge the question entirely, but that is my answer. It did and it didn’t. For a variety of reasons which I will get into more in depth in the coming week before my bowl predictions start coming out.

First, I will start off by saying that it worked because under the old system, there is a great chance that the best team would not have had a chance for the title. Under the BCS system, either one-loss Oregon or Alabama would have been sitting at home watching the game on television because an undefeated Florida State team would not have fallen below number two in the computer rankings. Hell, the human polls still voted Florida State at the top contrary to what the committee kept spitting out every week.

There are a plethora of reasons that I don’t think FSU is one of the two best teams in the country. First of all, the ACC was the weakest of the “power five” conferences by quite a large margin. Louisville helped them out, but regressions by North Carolina, Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, and even Duke watered down the conference. None of those teams were as good as last year. You could also argue that Virginia belongs on that list, but that is for a different column. If the Seminoles had ran roughshod over the ACC again, I might say they belong, but they didn’t. Not even close. In fact, they only covered two point spreads on the entire season. That should tell you how many close games they played that really shouldn’t have been close.

Their OOC schedule also took a hit when Notre Dame collapsed at the end of the season. They struggled against an Oklahoma State team that needed a great comeback to even make it to a bowl game. They also struggled against a Florida team that got its coach fired. This is not the look of a team who is one of the top ten, let alone the top two.

The committee still let them in, apparently fearing the backlash that leaving an undefeated, defending national champion out of the playoff would bring. I guess I am okay with that. After all, the Seminoles still won all of those games that they struggled in. None of their peers can say that. They were the only undefeated FBS team.

So why didn’t it work? The math doesn’t add up. If you have five conference that you consider to be power conferences, you can’t hardly have only four teams. The math is off. Someone is going to be mad. Not that people weren’t under the BCS system, but that was a little more impartial. You are saying that only four of these five were worthy.

Thankfully, the SEC West did a lot of the committee’s dirty work for them. What would have happened if Mississippi State and Alabama both finished with only one loss? The strength of schedule alone should have put both in the top four. The key word in that sentence is “should” That is an argument for another year.

Instead, we will focus on the conundrum that we had this year. Stay tuned for what the committee did right, what the committee did wrong, and the ways that this can be fixed.

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