Follow TSS on Twitter @TheStudentSect
Author @TheCoachBart
The College Football Playoff committee got it right. No, this article was not written under the influence.
I admit I was a little surprised, the way you go into a date with a pretty girl that you’re sure has no personality and then, halfway through the evening, starts yelling at the television because her football team is losing and then asks if you have any Schlitz at home to share for the second half.
At any rate, since the decision to pluck Ohio State from the depths of the “on the fence” category and bump out Baylor and TCU, people have been raging on about what the committee “should” be evaluating and if they did it right. If you’re in Texas, you think they suck. If you’re in Ohio, you want to buy them the first 10 rounds.
If you’re everywhere else, you simply evaluate.
Is it resume? Is it head to head? Is it conference championship games? Is it worst losses, best wins, injuries, or conference perception?
I don’t know what it “is,” but I do know what it “should be”: common sense, y’all.
Is common sense always head to head? Nope, but when both teams have one loss, yes, it is. TCU people said that “We beat West Virginia at their joint! Baylor didn’t!” Tough onions. Head to head works when the argument is realistic betwixt two teams, such that “Ugh, this is hard to decide. If only they’d played one another.”
Uh … they did. Short of that, you’re talking about ignoring head to head because TCU thumped Minnesota out of conference and Baylor didn’t try. Common sense. If that’s the argument you want to use, fine, but Ohio State thumped them with their backup quarterback in Minnesota in the snow.
TCU’s argument was moot despite a great season.
Now, on to Baylor. The chief argument against Ohio State was the same one from that harrowing 2011 season when Oklahoma State defeated six top 25 teams but lost to Iowa State on the road in a very emotional game, considering what had happened to the university just prior to that game. And they did it on a really questionable missed field goal call.
You know what? When the chips are down, I’m more interested in who you can beat, and Ohio State proved it could win tougher games. Sorry, beating top-10 Michigan State in the Spartans’ place at night is tougher than anything Baylor did. Destroying top-15 Wisconsin with your third-string quarterback? That’s the sign of a good “team,” not just a good quarterback.
And isn’t this about the teams?
In the end, the criteria for this committee was common sense. Nothing more, nothing less. Head to head works when it’s close … but doesn’t when one team proves it can’t be counted on week in and week out, like West Virginia.
Common sense is that yeah, resume matters, but let’s not make one thing out to be too much, and putting a team in because it scheduled Minnesota at home is a bit too much. People were mad that Baylor didn’t even try out of the conference, but hey, that’s why they’re not in, either.
If you don’t try out of the conference, there, too, should be where common sense kicks in.
And spare me the “but they lost to …” stuff. OSU lost to Virginia Tech with redshirt freshman quarterback J.T. Barrett starting his second game only three weeks after finding out he was the guy because a Heisman contender was in front of him before that. Common sense dictates a struggle in that spot. Look at what happened after that, and the Bucks picked up their undercarriage and moved on.
So cheers to the committee, which exercised its right to use common sense. It shouldn’t ever be about “only resume, eye test, head to head,” and so on. The members of the committee messed up a lot this year. At some point, they probably need to watch a few games outside the South. They used convoluted logic that only appeared to matter to the teams they wanted in and not the ones they wanted out.
But they got it right in the end, and if you’re an ends justifies the means type, you’ve got to be happy. I’m not totally, but considering the tire fire this was for the better part of the process, I’ll take it. And so should you…
Baylor and TCU fans excluded.
