ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit took some time this week to help us hash out all things regarding the College Football Playoff picture.
It’s the most wonderful time of the college football year. This is championship weekend, as all five Power 5 conferences will have their conference championship games to help the College Football Playoff Selection Committee decide which four teams will make the fourth annual College Football Playoff.
ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit was kind enough to take a few minutes to talk with us about many of the scenarios that could be in play this weekend with regards to figuring out who will make the College Football Playoff.
It could go chalk or it could be completely chaotic. Here’s my interview with Herbstreit, as we get ready for championship weekend in college football.
FanSided: Kirk, what can you tell me about the good work you’ve done as a part of the Allstate “All Hands In” program?
Kirk Herbstreit: It really started back in late August. Allstate is a group I’ve been working with for a number of years now. They came up with a different campaign and I kind of has three different components. The first is the All Hand Off-The Field component. That’s where I had an opportunity to volunteer with Allstate back at the [Chick-Fil-A] Kickoff Game in Atlanta between Florida State and Alabama. It was pretty cool. We had a chance to build a community garden with the Boys and Girls Club and we had former players come, fans. It was really a neat thing.
What we’re trying to get people to do this weekend before the SEC Championship Game is to try and winterize the community garden and help The Boys and Girls Club for that first official harvest. So if fans will follow the hashtag #AllHandsIn for more information, they can find out how to get involved.
So that’s one component. The other one is on the field where I kind of pick my team of the week that really came together and had a great game and a great week.
And the other thing is social. As much as I like to get involved on Twitter, you know as well as I know that it can get pretty nasty out there. So Allstate has kind of flipped a little bit, have some fun with it and they came up with something called #SweetTalk or #Sweepstakes. If you use both of those or either of those, you could be entered for a chance to win a trip to the national championship.
We try to encourage people to have some fun with it and say something nice about your opponent, so those are the three things we’ve done this year.
FS: That all sounds really great. With the latest revealing of the College Football Playoff rankings, did anything the Selection Committee do really surprise you?
KH: Not necessarily really surprise me. I think that it’s all going to come down to this weekend. I guess the most exciting thing for me is the fact that for the first time in four years, you could make the argument that possibly 10 teams are still alive who maybe have a shot at making it into the final four if you include TCU and USC, who are playing in their conference championship games this weekend. And Alabama, who does not play, but still has an argument to be made taken No. 5.
So that’s the thing that might surprise me the most is just how many teams are still alive and I think that’s really why they came up with the four-team playoff, as opposed to what we used to have with two teams in the BCS. So that’s probably the biggest thing I took away. Where teams are ranked for me personally, there wasn’t anything that really jumped out at me.
FS: Okay. Is it safe to say that the winners of the ACC Championship and the SEC Championship Games are both getting in, no doubt?
KH: The ACC Champion and the SEC Champion are a lock. They’re in without question. If Oklahoma wins, they’re a lock. And if Wisconsin wins, clearly, they’re a lock. The real issue is going to be if TCU pulls off an upset. If Ohio State wins, it wouldn’t be an upset because they’re favored by like six points. If Ohio State beats Wisconsin, that’s where the [College Football Selection] Committee will have its work cut out for them.
FS: So you would say that TCU is the team that could wreck this whole playoff picture, or would that be more Ohio State?
KH: Yeah, if TCU won, I don’t know about wreck but it definitely creates a big argument. If Ohio State were to win alone, without TCU winning, there’s going to be a very heated debate with more than likely Ohio State and Alabama. But depending on what USC does against Stanford, if USC finishes 11-2 and they look very dominant against Stanford, who’s really turned their season around. They’re sitting right there at No. 12 this week. If USC looks great, then you might have a three-way debate between those three teams.
And if TCU wins and Ohio State wins … man. Then you’re really going to have some work cut out for the Selection Committee because you still have Alabama there. If Ohio State were to beat Wisconsin, they would be in the discussion. As I said to you earlier, why not TCU at 11-2? This will be the first conference championship in the Big 12 since it realigned. Part of the reason for that was to have that very thing: a conference championship game. Here’s our one champion. That was a big focus by Bob Bowlsby, their commissioner. And who’s to say that TCU at 11-2 shouldn’t be in the discussion?
So I don’t think its a slam dunk that it’s going to come down to Ohio State and Alabama. I think those other teams down the list definitely have an opportunity to get in it. The last thing I’ll tell you is something nobody is talking about. If Miami wins narrowly over Clemson, Miami’s in. Is Clemson out? I don’t know. Now they’re 11-2. I know they’re not conference champions, but if you look at their strength of schedule and what they did. They were willing to play Auburn and beat Auburn in the non-conference.
You know, Clemson might have a case if they’re not the ACC champ. If they lose on a last-second field goal or lose in a close game, you know, I think Clemson is still going to be in the discussion. So that’s what’s exciting. There are so many different possibilities. We’ll just have to sit back and wait to see what happens.
FS: So the one game I found really interesting is the Big Ten Championship. Obviously, you’ve got an undefeated No. 4 Wisconsin team taking on a two-loss No. 8 Ohio State team. Does a two-loss Big Ten Champion Buckeyes team get in? Or is there a chance that a one-loss Wisconsin is getting in as an at-large?
KH: Well, if Ohio State beats Wisconsin, then Wisconsin is going to be out. We want to look at their schedule. While it’s not fair that they’ll only have one loss, it has everything to do with really the thing that has been holding people back from really buying into Wisconsin is they haven’t had an opportunity outside of Iowa late in the year, Michigan late in the year — neither of which are currently ranked.
So I think people that are outside of the Big Ten region when they talk about Wisconsin is that there is a little bit of a roll of their eyes as to what have they done? Sure, they’re undefeated, but look who they’ve played. So this is a real opportunity for them against Ohio State, who’s a top-10 team, to be able to show everybody that we told you so. And if they lose, I’m afraid of because of what their schedule is, they’re probably going to be on the outside looking in.
Then it would come down to, as I said, depending on what happens in the other games. You could have Ohio State as a two-loss champion. You think about the two losses and the way they lost to Iowa. For them, it’s a really like an anchor that’s been at times holding them back. But you also have to give them credit after they lost to Iowa and what they’ve been able to do since then.
People were really excited about where Michigan State was. Michigan State was on a roll. They beat Michigan and knocked off Penn State. They got all the way up to No. 12 in the country when they came to Columbus and Ohio State beat them, 48-3. So as bad as the Iowa game was, the next week was just as impressive against Michigan State. Illinois, Michigan on the road when Barrett went down — their backup quarterback went in there and won a rivalry game on the road.
So, there’s a lot to still be impressed by. It’s just what happens in that Big Ten Championship Game. I think it would help them. You remember in ’14, they were on the outside looking in and they won 59-0 and they leapfrogged both Baylor and TCU and went on to win the national championship. It would probably help their resume and kind of their closing argument, to not only try to beat Wisconsin but to look pretty good doing it. I don’t know if they’re capable of doing that, but if they did it might help them in any kind of discussion whether or not they deserve to be in the top four.
FS: Everybody tends to think that the best one-loss at-large team to potentially make the playoff would be No. 5 Alabama. I think a TCU win has to happen. Is there anything else that would have to happen for Alabama to get in?
KH: Well, if Ohio State wins, there could be a big debate coming down to Ohio State and Alabama. I don’t know if Alabama would win that discussion because any time you get what the Committee calls clusters — that’s like their term for when teams are sitting in that four, five, six-range, and you say cluster a team. And that’s when there’s confusion from the fan’s perspective when they see conference champion and head-to-head. None of those things apply until it comes to the cluster.
Sometimes I think that because those variables are out there, people think that you need to be those in order to even qualify to make it into the playoff and that’s not true. What’s true and factual is when they get these clusters after all the games have been played, then they look at four variables. And those things are the strength of schedule, common opponents, head-to-head if they played each other and if you’re a conference champion. Those are differentiators, those are things they look for.
In Alabama/Ohio State’s case based on what the Committee looks at, strength of schedule is about a wash. You don’t have common opponents. They did not play head-to-head. The only thing that applies to these two teams would be conference championships. Alabama of course, will not have made their trip to Atlanta. Ohio State, with what we’re discussing, will have won their Big Ten Championship. They would have a nod over Alabama.
And then people will say, how did Ohio State last year go when they didn’t even make it into their own Big Ten Championship Game? And yet, they made it into the playoff. What’s the difference between them this year and Alabama last year? The difference is that Committee recognized their strength of schedule variables. They will have beaten three of the top-10 teams in the final rankings.
And with Alabama, their best win will have been against LSU sitting at No. 17, while Mississippi State is at No. 23. So last year and this year are very, very different when you’re looking at where Alabama is now and where Ohio State was a year ago. I guess what you’re saying is that they would need a TCU win over Oklahoma to enhance their chances of getting in there.
FS: Okay one last question for you, Kirk. One thing I noticed by the Committee moving Auburn up to No. 2 with two losses is should the Tigers beat Georgia in the SEC Championship and Clemson loses to Miami in the ACC Championship, we might have our first not only two-loss team making the playoff but could Auburn be the No. 1 seed?
KH: Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. And for me, I don’t think people will get caught up in them being a two-loss team. I don’t, personally. And I think because we’ve always been trained by the AP Poll if a team loses, they drop four or five spots. And what I love about the Committee, they don’t play like that. They evaluate teams where they don’t have to necessarily be behind teams with one loss or zero losses.
They rewarded Auburn being willing to play Clemson and they played that game in Death Valley in Week 2. And I know they lost the game, but they lost by eight points. So that’s impressive in the Committee’s eyes. That’s not a loss when you’re negotiating on where they should stack up. That’s a pretty good performance. They lost to LSU in a game where they were up and they didn’t hold on on the road to another trip to another Death Valley. They lost by four.
So their two losses are not very significant in comparison to what some other teams have done. And then you throw on top of that on how a team is trending in the month of November. Think about what they did in November. At home, they knocked off then No. 1 Georgia — dominated them. And a couple of weeks later, they bounce back in a rivalry game again a new No. 1 and they blow their butts out.
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I personally put Auburn at No. 1 and it didn’t bother me at all that they have two losses, with one of them to Clemson. It has more to do with them being such a different team from who they were in Week 2 with what they’ve done in the last month of the season. In my opinion, they should be rewarded for how they are playing right now. They could lose to Georgia Saturday, but right now, I have no problem personally putting them as the No. 1 team in the country.