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College Football Playoffs: What The Committee Got Right

ByMike Marteny|

In my first post of this series, I answered whether I thought the committee got it right or wrong. As you can see by my answer, the system is still not perfect by any means, but it likely is better than the old BCS system would have been this year.

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Now we are going to take a look at the things that the committee did well. As with any new system, there are bound to be some kinks to be worked out. Do you remember how many changes that the BCS system underwent in its 15 years? Here we are going to applaud the things that I like about the new system. Next up will be the things that need to be fixed. But for now, we are going to focus on the positive.

Rewarding/Penalizing teams for their non-conference scheduling:

Why else would Oregon jump Florida State, aside from the fact that the Seminoles consistently failed the eye test? Oregon’s win over the Big Ten(14)’s number two team in Michigan State helped catapult them to number two. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter since the two are playing each other anyway.

This is not to say that Florida State didn’t have a big name opponent. They brought in Notre Dame. The thing that hurt the Seminoles here was the collapse of the Irish that began with the heartbreaking loss in Tallahassee.

Still, while TCU or Baylor were never going to catch Florida State, you can argue that Oregon’s win over the Spartans in September is a big reason they get to participate in the playoff. You can even argue that Ohio State playing Virginia Tech helped their cause even though they lost. At least they attempted to play a team with a pulse.

Personally, I love the fact that they seem to take out of conference scheduling seriously. It is an abomination for some teams to play the cupcakes that they do. Rewarding a team for playing a tougher OOC opponent is good for the game. We will see more Wisconsin-LSU, Florida State-Notre Dame, and Oregon-Michigan State type games.

Looking at the ‘big picture’ more than recent events:

By this I mean that they seemed to look at where a team ended up when one of the playoff members beat them as opposed to where they were when they played. Oklahoma going into the toilet destroyed Baylor and TCU’s strength of schedule. The Sooners were ranked in the top five when they lost to TCU and the top ten when they lost to Baylor. I think we all know that Oklahoma was not a top five or a top ten team.

Conversely, when TCU played Minnesota out of conference it was no big deal. The Gophers weren’t expected to make the noise that they did in the Big Ten(14). Once they did, TCU’s strength of schedule showed.

Those talking heads (and many of you as well) that were complaining about “head to head not meaning anything” are missing the bigger picture. Yes, Baylor beat TCU, but Baylor also lost to a 7-5 West Virginia team that the Horned Frogs beat in Morgantown. The fact remains that TCU’s only loss came on the road to the number 6 team, and they beat number 25 Minnesota by 23 points. Baylor’s non conference schedule was by far the worst of any ranked team.

Not confroming to the polls and ranking a team number one just because they were undefeated:

In fact, you can argue that the committee swayed the pollsters into dropping Florida State to number two. The Seminoles were never at the top of the CFP poll, and they were not ranked higher than third after the first two CFP polls despite remaining undefeated.

Now, I am not trying to take anything away from Florida State. The fact remains that they made it through their schedule without a loss, and were the only FBS team to do so. Other teams were not able to overcome bad games the way Florida State was. That said, the ACC was the worst of the power five conferences. They did not deserve the number one seed.

Now that we have taken a look at the good, the bad and ugly have to be looked at as well. Stay tuned for that later in the week, along with more fantasy football and basketball analysis than you can shake a stick at. Did I mention that we also have FanDuel lineups for basketball every day and football every weekend? We’ve got you covered at Fantasy CPR!

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