With everything that went down last year, the College Football Playoff committee only had one job to do this year.
It was not to pick 12 teams that should be in the newly expanded playoff; any of us could have done that and it would have been fine. People needed to trust the system again because a panel of judges still decides which made-for-TV show is worth billions of dollars.
It did not because it made a huge mistake in the process. Two, to be exact.
It brought up the idea of a conference championship as a possible punishment for the loser, and it ignored the direct matches that did happen.
That is not how the rankings for the College Football Playoff are meant to work.
This is so important that I can not say it enough: I do not think Alabama should even be able to watch the College Football Playoff this season, let alone be in it. I also have no problem with SMU making it to the finals from a fan’s point of view.
In other words, I am not here to campaign for Alabama. The College Football Playoff process needs to be better from now on, I am making the case.
It needs to be carefully looked over, consistent, and so sure of itself that it clears the air for people who are looking for any reason to doubt the methods or legitimacy.
The people in charge of the College Football Playoff can do whatever they want.
Boise State, Army, Marshall, Ohio, Jacksonville State, and seven MAC teams could have been in the top 12. No, there are not any hard and fast rules anymore besides including the five best teams from each conference.
The CFP rankings were not the same as the AP or Coaches polls when they were first made in 2014. Every week, they started over. They threw out and forgot about the previous week’s rankings and carefully went line by line, spot by spot, making an argument for each one in a way that was like Team A vs. Team B vs. Team Q.
There was a new way to do things that is still used today. There was a time when people had to choose between two teams, and the transitive theory did and still does play a role in that.
And using the same method worked really well the year before. The process worked just when it was needed, because a lot of naive (I am being too nice) people who believe in conspiracy theories did not like the end result. (But I have failed 13 times in a row to persuade anyone of that.)
When the format changed to 12 teams, the CFP had to follow the rules it had set for itself, but wow, the committee forgot the very thing that saved it in 2023.
Yes, it would have looked bad to have 11-2 SMU out and 9-3 Alabama in, but historically and technically, it would have been the right call. That is why the committee members are there: it is not easy, it is hard.
Instead, the answer we got for why SMU was ranked higher than Clemson was pretty much “because.”
Everything went wrong when committee chair Warde Manuel said that teams that were not playing in conference championships would not move and teams that lost in conference championship games would not be “punished.”
I understand why he did that. A loss in the conference championship game could hurt a team’s rankings, so the CFP tried to stop that idea before it started.
That is not how this works, though. The next-to-last rankings should not be set in stone. The process is meant to be fluid, and the committee forgot what it was supposed to do in the first place.
They are in charge of putting things in order based on all the facts and data they have access to. Through its ranking system, the CFP can not tell other groups how to run things.
Manuel should have said the same thing that every other committee chair has said since the start of the CFP.
“We will wait to rank until the conference champions are known.”
Committee for the College Football Playoff, here are the parts. Things like injuries, opt-outs, transfers, wins, losses, records, who you beat, who you lost to, who you lost to that another team beat, and so on. Put it all on the table and make something after the conference championships.
This put the committee in a tough spot because there were data points for teams that were not in a conference championship.
The CFP also went by them for everyone else.
The CFP put Ole Miss at number 14. Why is that? After everything else was over, Ole Miss beat South Carolina. That was the right answer.
14. Ole Miss, 15. South Carolina, and 16. Why is that? Since South Carolina beat Clemson two weeks ago. That was the right answer. But then the committee did something crazy: they put SMU 10th, one spot ahead of Alabama, because of how things stood before the conference championship games.
There was no smell at all.
I can show why Alabama should be higher on the list than South Carolina, which is higher than Clemson. I know why Alabama should be ranked higher than Clemson.
There is no good reason for SMU to be ranked higher than Clemson. Neither could the College Football Playoff committee.
Still, it is fine from a practical point of view.
It is good that SMU is ahead of Alabama on the field, at least this season. The College Football Playoff committee needs to make us all believe that from now on.
More importantly, the committee must be completely clear about why it ranked the things it did, with no room for interpretation. You should judge the teams based on how they play. That is it. And that is all you need to do, CFP.
It will not matter, and the tournament will be great, but…
College Football Playoff committee, make this more strict next year.
