The College Football Playoff selection committee did at least one thing right: They finally ranked Miami over Notre Dame. But in the process, the Fighting Irish got screwed out of a spot in the field a season removed from reaching the CFP national title game against Ohio State. The Irish did start 0-2 and aren’t affiliated with a conference so that certainly didn’t help either.
Notre Dame should have never been ranked over Miami to begin with, considering the Week 1 clash between the Hurricanes and Irish solved one of the main pieces of criteria for the CFP selection committee: Head-to-Head results. Be that as it may, the Irish were fed false hope, only to get nixed out of a spot in the end. Sadly, some teams got the short end of the stick from the College Football Playoff selection committee.
BYU Cougars felt the SEC bias
Make it make sense. BYU gets blown out by four touchdowns in the Big 12 title game and drops below Miami; Alabama gets blown out by three touchdowns in the SEC title game and stands pat at No. 9. The difference? One team is a victim to SEC bias. The selection committee has been all over the place with their justifications and Sunday proved they’re clueless.
They showed that conference championship games don’t punish you, but they also proved they do if you’re not in the SEC. BYU is a two loss team with both of its losses coming to the No. 4 team in the country. Alabama is a three-loss team with losses to Georgia, Oklahoma and unranked Florida State.
The rules can’t be subjective to each specific team, the rules either apply to everyone or no one. BYU won’t make the raucous of some of the other teams that felt they got screwed over will, but it’s fair for the Cougars to feel some type of way about the needle constantly shifting and not in their favor.
Notre Dame Fighting Irish should've joined a conference
Notre Dame got screwed over in a different way than most other teams didn’t. Notre Dame was given false hope because of the selection committee’s backwards way of evaluating. Apparently they couldn’t evaluate Notre Dame and Miami side-by-side unless they were ranked one after the other. That’s why BYU had to get bumped down, so the committee could finally do what they should have been doing the last month.
I don’t disagree with Notre Dame not getting in – this is what happens when money is more important than joining a conference – but to drag them along just to screw them over in the end just doesn’t make sense. All this means now is Notre Dame needs to take advantage of having an open schedule.
They can schedule just about whoever they want so they need to schedule more than two reputable opponents if they want to be taken seriously in close considerations. That said, there was no reason to rank Notre Dame that high if they would arbitrarily be de-ranked, despite not playing a game.
Vanderbilt Commodores did everything right
The team you should probably feel the most for is Vanderbilt. They did everything right, lost at Alabama and at Texas and were right on the cusp of getting in. If there’s any team that actually deserved to get in it should have been Vandy. I don’t want to hear that Texas beat them so they should have the advantage. Texas was a three-loss team with a horrendous loss to Florida and struggled against Mississippi State and Kentucky; stop it.
Diego Pavia just might end up being a Heisman finalist, helping Vandy to its best season ever and SEC bias wasn’t on their side. I don’t know if Vandy could have realistically leaped BYU, Notre Dame or Texas (based on the current, heavily flawed rankings), but they should have been one of the first teams out if we’re truly crediting teams that had strong seasons.