It seems the College Football Playoff rankings and ESPN aren’t taking too kindly to some of the remaining undefeated teams in contention for vying for a playoff spot.
The CFP selection committee made it clear it would essentially be a de facto SEC tournament. Understandably, the toughest conference in all of college football will have more than enough representation in the expanded playoff.
But that comes at the expense of teams not in super conferences. Two undefeated teams in particular that are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to real consideration would be BYU and Army. Indiana is a close third.
We’ll dive more into that here later on, but to Army specifically, which is severely on the outside and seemingly not being seriously considered, it’s unfortunate they play in the American Athletic Conference.
Not because they would be able to compete at the SEC level, but because they aren’t a brand that would benefit the CFP.
Look at the teams that have been in it before, won it and the teams that aren’t undefeated. Georgia was blessed with a 12th ranking in the most recent ranking. To be fair, the Bulldogs have the toughest strength of schedule, per ESPN, and the third toughest strength of record.
But what if it was, say, Tennessee that was a two-loss team. They aren’t that college blue blood team like Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, LSU, Texas and others. So would they be afforded the same excuse as some of these other teams? Probably not.
ESPN FPI shows some teams aren’t getting the benefit of the doubt like they should
If you look at the ESPN FPI, Army and BYU both have top 25 strength of records, but FPI’s aren’t in the top 25. BYU has the second strongest strength of record behind Oregon. Army’s is 20th. Their FPI’s are 28 and 49, respectively.
Indiana, as good of a season as they’re having, has a strength of schedule ranked 100 and they’re ranked in the top five. And the rankings are based on what you’ve done, not what you could do.
So by that logic, shouldn’t Army, which has a strength of schedule at 133, deserve to be ranked higher? I think having two teams with 100-plus strength of schedule in the CFP sounds a bit extra. But how can you consider Indiana over Army if both are similar? Because Indiana is in the Big Ten.
The teams in the bigger and better conferences will always have the advantage. And in most cases that’s fine. But when it comes to deciding which team deserves to be in the playoff, you can’t omit a team simply because of the conference they’re in when what they’ve accomplished this season isn’t that much worse than some other ranked higher.
It’s tricky because I see both sides. But at the end of the day, the expanded playoff was supposed to afford more teams a better chance to get in. Instead, it’s becoming an excuse for the CFP selection committee to make excuses for the super conferences and punish the little ones.