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Let’s get straight to the point and not dance around the main topic as we wait for the College Football Playoff Committee to release its playoff bracket on Sunday morning – multiple programs are going to get screwed. There is no way around it. No matter how loudly some schools have beaten the drum and advocated for their teams to make the postseason, it’s been a campaign that would make the writers of House of Cards proud, but deliver the unfortunate results of a season finale straight out of Game of Thrones.
Here is what we know: Indiana, Georgia, Ohio State, and Texas “Money Well Spent” Tech are in the playoffs and will have a first-round bye. Oregon, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma are the next tier of programs that are probably in. I used the word probably because even though those teams are a sure bet, I have more faith in finding parking at Zilker Park on a Saturday morning than this playoff committee. Assuming the committee does not penalize Oregon because someone in that brain trust prefers Adidas over Nike, those teams should be locks to make a playoff appearance next weekend.
That leaves Miami, Notre Dame, Alabama, BYU, Vanderbilt, Tulane, James Madison, and Texas competing for the final playoff spots (sorry, Duke). Each program can make a closing argument that would make Adam Loewy shed a prideful tear about why they deserve to be in the playoffs. There isn’t a scenario that would truly shock me at this point — not from a committee whose weekly rankings have already been baffling enough. The problem is the fallout — there will be ramifications that lead to retribution for whichever program, or programs, get left out.
Sunday won’t deliver peace – only fallout.
Get ready for chaos.
Let us begin with the first potential fallout.
Alabama.
Alabama walked off the field Saturday looking nothing like a team ready for the postseason. Georgia didn’t just beat the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship Game — the Bulldogs handled them in a way that gave me flashbacks to the Texas game a few weeks ago. It was rough, plain and simple.
But here’s the real issue: if the committee decides to punish a 10-win SEC team for one ugly afternoon in a conference title game, the coaching community is going to explode. The message would be unmistakable — playing in this game is more risk than reward. Greg Sankey would be furious and fire off every threat in his Rolodex, but the damage would be done. And Alabama? They’d be staring at back-to-back years outside the playoff, all because they showed up to the wrong game at the wrong time.
Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer said:
“You look at the games we played throughout the season. If you’re really looking at this game, it was a 14-point game with seven and a half minutes to go and we had the ball. You can look at things that didn’t go well. We gave them four short fields.
“I don’t want to take anything away from what Georgia did. The field position battle is part of it. Four short fields, that’s a testament to our defense being resilient. One of those touchdowns, if we’re really worried about the score, probably punt it on your own 11.
“I’m here to win a SEC Championship. If you lose by one or you lose by more, it’s still a loss. That’s what I was caring about. We’re here to win a SEC Championship. We can’t get worried about how much do we lose by… That’s what it was about. We’re here to win. That’s how we play. Again, it was a 14-point game. We had the ball with seven and a half minutes to go against a really good team that knows us well and we know them well.
“I thought our defense did a heck of a job going against them. One thing we didn’t really do is take the ball off ’em. The one turnover they got, short field.
“Again, that’s football. That’s the way I looked at this game. If this game applies to and takes away from our résumé, I don’t think that’s right. I really don’t. I think the precedence has been set. I don’t know how you can go into a conference Playoff game when you’re the No. 1 seed, did all these things throughout the year, and playing in this game against one of the top teams in the country, as well, how that can hurt you and keep you out of the playoffs.
“Again, we’ve done what we’ve done all year.”
BYU was also handled in the Big 12 Championship Game.
Yeah, I was being generous.
Texas Tech didn’t just beat BYU — the Red Raiders delivered the kind of reminder you got when your teacher called home to report you were “disruptive” or “disrespectful” in class. Kids today joke about “Belt to ***,” but they have no idea what that era was like (and honestly, thank goodness for that).
The committee previously said it did not want to punish teams for playing in a championship game and reward programs that were sitting on the couch that weekend. However, BYU’s playoff hopes are now in jeopardy.
BYU coach Kilani Sitake said:
“I think if you look at what Texas Tech has done, they’re the best team in the country for a reason. Their only loss came when they didn’t have their starting quarterback. And so that’s difficult, and on the road. But you look at when they’re a full-strength team, they’re dangerous.
“So, I’m not on the playoff committee, but I can tell you one thing, who has played the best team in the country twice? We have. Does that mean that you’re not one of the best 12? I have no idea. I’m not in that committee. I don’t make the decisions. But others will find out.
“That’s the great thing about the playoffs, everybody else will find out what we had to go against. And I’m really proud of our team, so I can’t really speak for everybody else.”
Then there is Miami and Notre Dame.
Yahoo Sports writer Dan Wolken outlined this situation:
“Notre Dame, a team many experts believe is good enough to win the whole thing, started 0-2 before winning 10 straight but had a lot of bad teams on its schedule this year. Its only significant win, over Southern Cal, leaves the Irish without a lot of résumé heft.
“Miami beat Notre Dame to open the season and was cruising toward the playoff before a midseason lull that resulted in close losses to Louisville and SMU. Those weren’t good losses, to be sure, but they weren’t calamitous like the Alabama loss to Florida State.
“The problem is, the committee’s first set of rankings on Nov. 4 had Miami at No. 18, eight spots behind Notre Dame. As Miami played better football toward the end of the season and other teams lost, they’ve moved closer to each other — close enough that the head-to-head may well come into play now with Notre Dame at No. 10, just two spots ahead of Miami.
“The team in between them? That was BYU, which got blown out of the Big 12 championship game.
“So this is a real pickle for the committee.
“- Ignore one of the key head-to-head results of the season?
“- Snub a Notre Dame team that passes the eye test with flying colors?
“- Or risk enraging the SEC to the point of possibly seceding from the Union?”
All of that madness before we even get to Texas.
Longhorn Nation does not understand why its wins against Top 10 opponents, head-to-head success, and strength of schedule are not being factored into their rankings.
In fact, Georgia football coach Kirby Smart used his postgame platform to bang the drum for Texas after beating Alabama.
If Texas does not make the playoffs, Steve Sarkisian made it very clear the program will reevaluate its nonconference schedule.
Sarkisian said:
“Yeah, you know, I think there’s a couple things. There’s layers to this. Bear with my answer.
“First of all, we’re going to honor Ohio State and Michigan. You know, we went there — we went to Ann Arbor, went to Columbus. We’re going to honor those return trips. So, for the next two years, we know what our non-conference schedule is going to look like, and that’s the right thing to do. We made the commitment to play them; now we’ll honor that commitment for them to come play us here.
“I think anything beyond that is up for discussion. We need to — and CDC and I have already had that discussion — we need to take a good, hard look at what our non-conference schedule looks like beyond the next two years. Because you’ve got to remember, you know, so much of the non-conference scheduling was when we were in the Big 12, and those schedules were made when we were in the Big 12. Well, there’s a little bit of a different shift now that we’re in the Southeastern Conference, and another shift now that we’re going to nine conference games.
“And so we’ve got to be mindful of, one, putting our players in the best position to have success and to have growth; and two, we’ve got to be mindful of how the committee is going to evaluate to put the best teams into the College Football Playoff.
“Now, the goal is to go win the Southeastern Conference every year. And when you do that, you don’t have to worry about what the record looks like, and you probably have a good record if you’re in that game and winning it. But I also need to look at what the committee has shown me over the last two years since we’ve expanded to 12 games. They care about your record. And so we’ve got to be mindful of that as we go, and we’ll see what that looks like.
“Again, we’re going to honor Ohio State and Michigan. We’re excited to play those games. They’re going to be great environments in DKR, and our players are looking forward to it. Our coaches are looking forward to those games. It should be highly competitive ballgames with great teams, great players, great coaches.
“But beyond that is where we’ve got to have some real discussions of what our non-conference schedule looks like after that.”
Sunday won’t deliver peace – only fallout.
Get ready for chaos.
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