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This is why we have a playoff. If the little guy can’t get in now, he never will be able to.
Memphis ripped Ole Miss this season — the same team which defeated mighty (and since, mightier) Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The best team in Tennessee isn’t one of the SEC clubs. It’s those Memphis Tigers.
We’re a long way from this stuff being an actual argument. I understand that. This piece is like being with a girl five dates in and arguing about how many kids you want to have. There’s an awful lot of stuff that needs to go down in the interim to even suggest that’s worth carping about.
That said, Memphis took Ole Miss outside behind the shed, and, along with Houston and Temple (whom the Tigers play later in the season), stand as highly impressive unbeaten “Gang of Five” teams that have a realistic shot of running the table.
Gang of Five sounds like some sort of weak, modern spin-off of “Party of Five,” and all of ’em are just looking for their Jennifer Love Hewitt.
This isn’t to say any of them are definitively going unbeaten. I’m a solid 0-for-whatever I predicted this weekend, so far be it for me to make such claims of grandeur.
This is to say that if by chance, one of them does, the CFB Playoff committee needs to open the door and let them in.
Memphis’s accolades are mentioned above. Temple destroyed Penn State of the Big Ten. Houston hasn’t had a calling-card win, but the Cougars keep plugging along. Eventually, by default, some of these teams will lose.
If this is the BCS and you want to squeeze an unbeaten out of the title game in favor of a one-loss Power 5 conference champion, I can hear your argument out. This isn’t the BCS.
The one virus to the CFB Playoff system is the unbeaten mid-major with a calling-card win or two on its resume. If you leave that team out, you’re saying that a four-team setup is never going to be enough for a fair shake. If you put that team in, you probably, at least from the Gang of Five group, hear no griping about the system going forward.
Memphis wasn’t supposed to knock off Ole Miss. Certainly not this season. If there’s a quarterback you’re thinking about inserting into the Heisman race, it’s Paxton Lynch, the Tigers’ signal caller.
As I said, this is all a long shot. In addition to aforementioned teams Houston and Temple, the Tigers also have Navy on the schedule. It won’t be easy, and the odds are against 13-0 being done.
Houston and Temple have it a bit easier the remainder of the way. That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a shot, however. For years, we’ve wondered whether or not these unbeaten mid-major teams could ever play with the big boys in a one-game vacuum.
We always seem to find ways (read: excuses) to leave them out. That was fine with the BCS. It’s not now. Eventually, an unbeaten Gang of Five team will happen. That team will deserve to get in when 13-0 becomes reality.
