By Noah Gould
This is a historic season in college football. Sunday December 7th was the first selection sunday in the history of the sport. Once only basketball had a selection Sunday and after the first week of December only two teams still had a chance to win a championship. Now four teams will meet in playoff games on New Year’s Day.
The playoff committee was scrutinized every Tuesday since mid October when they started to release their rankings. The committee, while they did make many mistakes over the course of the season, got the final four right. Alabama, Oregon, Florida State, and Ohio State are the four teams that had the most impressive regular seasons according to the criteria that the committee has been using all season. Since Ohio States starting and second string QBs are both injured they would probably lose to TCU or Baylor in a bowl game. That’s not the criteria the committee is supposed to use. They are judging by regular season wins and losses not by who is winning fake football games dreamed up by the committee. Many are upset by Ohio State jumping TCU on the final Saturday. On Saturday, TCU played Iowa State on of the worst football teams in the power 5 conferences. Ohio State picked up their most impressive resault of the year. They played 13Wisconsin for the first time this season and won 59-0. So when the committee sat down on selection sunday Ohio State had beaten 3 top 25 teams 8Michigan State, 18Wisconsin, and 25Minnesota. TCU only had 2 such wins against 11K-State and 25Minnesota.
The arguement for TCU is that their loss is to a top 5 team while Ohio State’s is against a terrible Virgina Tech team, and they beat the common opponent shared with Ohio State, Minnesota, by 16 more points. All season the committee’s rankings have showed that quality wins are the most important stat. This does incourage teams to schedule better opponents, but it also penalizes teams for their opponents being worse then expected before the year. The committee also might have accounted for a slight learning curve. Ohio State is clearly a better team now than they were when their freshman starting his second ever game lost to Virginia Tech. Also Minnesota played a lot better at home against Ohio State in week 11 then they did against TCU in week two. And Ohio State was actually up more that 7, the final margin of victory, for most of the game. While, both sides have valid and complex arguments on both counts it seems like the committee does value number of top 25 wins above almost everything including who a team lost to or common opponent.
Another issue everyone seems to have with the final committee ranking is the committee’s flipping of TCU and Baylor at the 11th hour. While, pundits and people in bars across the country argued about TCU-Baylor and the value of head to head for months the committee knew what they were doing the whole time. Baylor had a game against top 10 K-State, the best team in the big 12 besides TCU and Baylor, scheduled for the last week of the season. Baylor’s big win against K-State would have vaulted them over TCU no matter when it happened. By ranking Baylor ahead of TCU they have set a precedent that head to head is the ultimate tie breaker.
There are five power conferences in college football and of course only four playoff spots. So one of the conferences every year is going to have the disgrace of watching from their living rooms on new years day. It seems like the conference realignment of 4 years ago killed the Big 12. They only have 10 teams now, so they aren’t allowed to have a conference championship game. Ohio State played Wisconsin in the Big Ten championship game and picked up a 3rd top 25 win in their 13th game. If Baylor and TCU had played a second time in a Big 12 title game the winner would probably be in the playoff. Based on the reaction of the Big 12 commissioner and many fans I would expect the Big 12 to attempt to add a few teams in the coming seasons. Conferences should have 12 teams and a championship game and the Big 12 will probably go to that format as a knee jerk reaction. However, if Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia Tech or Arizona had won one of the championship games a Big 12 team would be in the playoffs and everyone would be talking about the genius of the Big 12 not having a championship game.
Whether you think the committee got the final four right or wrong everyone can agree on somethings. The playoffs have made college football more fun and more exciting and the post-season is going to be the most fun in history.
