Did The College Football Playoff Committee Get It Right? Well....
I’m sure you’ve already seen it, but here’s the final four:
-Not that it matters, but I thought OSU was going to be in. Their victories over Penn State, Wisconsin, and Michigan State are all better than any of Alabama’s victories. Not to mention their Big 10 championship.
-LSU may be better than Michigan State, but I’m not convinced. To me, that’s a coin flip. Same with Mississippi State and Michigan State. Either way you put it, Ohio State has two better victories than Alabama.
-What it seemed to come down to for the committee was Ohio State’s 55-24 loss to Iowa. OSU can complain all they want about the committee not valuing their conference championship, but it all could’ve been solved if they decided to show up against Iowa in October. That’s the beauty of college football, though. Every week matters. You need to show up every Saturday and if you don’t it can bite you in the butt.
-Look at the Patriots. They will most likely find themselves with home-field advantage in the playoffs and in the Super Bowl. They had two losses to the Chiefs and Panthers early in the season that don’t matter that much now. You can argue that this is the better way to find the best team, but CFB’s beauty is in its randomness.
-Should the playoff move to eight teams? That’s a hard question. At this moment, I don’t know if the trickle-down effect would be worth it. Think about all the drama that has occurred since week one knowing that only four teams get in. As I just discussed, the beauty of college football is every week matters. You can feel it when you are watching the game. You can’t not show up one week or you sacrifice your entire season. Moving to eight wouldn’t completely take away the quality of every week, but the drama wouldn’t be as intense from September-December.
-You could counter my argument by saying that moving to eight would benefit college football as a whole by adding a G5 team into the automatic qualifiers. Also, the conference championship games would become more important. I go back and forth with moving to eight teams. If expansion does occur in the next few years, I won’t be completely against it. Starting with four was the correct move.
-A top eight would look like this:
1. Clemson vs. 8. UCF
4. Alabama vs. 5. Ohio State
3. Georgia vs. 6. Wisconsin
2. Oklahoma vs. 7. USC
-“Hi Clemson, congrats on being the number one team! You are slotted against Alabama in a game a few hours from their campus! Have fun!”
-I don’t want to listen to any USC talk. They are a good team, but they lost to Washington State and got blown out by Notre Dame. Both teams didn’t look particularly great to end the season. USC’s best win is over Stanford twice (once at home and once on a neutral field), that’s nowhere close to Ohio State’s two best victories.