The CFB Playoff committee will get on television one final time this season and act as though the end result of picking this year’s playoff participants was akin to splitting the atom, much like a bad auto mechanic using a bunch of terms he thinks the customer doesn’t understand to drive up the price of work when it’s really code for, “it took me $15 of parts and 10 minutes of work to fix it.”
The reality is, once again, college football does that thing it does every year – figures itself out.
There is no drama on who will be in, only where they’re seeded, and really, that doesn’t matter all that much. You won’t hear a media constantly starved for controversy, trophies for everyone, and socialism in sports point out the obvious after two years of this stuff, which is that four teams is plenty good and we’re where we always wanted to be.
The four teams that will get in are (in the order I’d put them): Clemson, Michigan State, Oklahoma, and Alabama.
Much like last year, only a card-carrying homer for the next in line would suggest anything other than those four. This is how it ideally should be. All the conference champs don’t need to get in every year. Rarely, if ever, will there be five worthy teams to play for the championship and that vetted itself out this year.
College football always does this, and to be honest, mostly did it during the BCS era, too. There were outlier years that happened too often with only two teams, which is how we got to the place we’re in now.
There are no outliers here. Stanford, the lone conference champ left out this year, lost twice, including a game out of conference to Northwestern. In the end, that was a playoff game way back in September, we just didn’t know it yet.
Moreover, further proving the worth of this system, the championship game-free Big 12 will get a team in, proving the notion that a conference title isn’t a skeleton key to the playoffs if you earn it ahead of time. This is good for college football, because conferences should be able to set their own rules. Again, less socialism in college football, more capitalism.
No one will say it, but an eight-team playoff would have been a gas fire this season. There aren’t eight deserving teams to play for a championship. It only would include teams getting a free pass for already losing a playoff game.
Ohio State lost their playoff game to MSU.
North Carolina lost theirs last night to Clemson. Ditto for Iowa to MSU, who seems to be a one-team wrecking crew of dream shattering. They’re Freddy Krueger.
When this system was set up, this is ideally how they had it in mind. The CFB Playoff committee probably laughed, eased back into the rocking chair, and sipped on some of that egg nog and spiced rum as Clemson walked away with that final win deep into the Saturday night, knowing that there wouldn’t be inboxes full of fan insanity over who gets in and who gets out.
Furthermore, the message was sent (again) that winning your conference and playing a decent out of conference schedule (or at least trying) is the gateway to an invite. Oklahoma went on the road to Tennessee. Alabama took on Wisconsin. Michigan State danced over Oregon. Clemson bested Notre Dame.
Take notes, Baylor, who was chaffed at being left out last season when Ohio State jumped them. The right message is being sent in college football, and we’re getting the correct amount of teams in, finally, no more, no less needed.
All the hand-wringing and paralysis by analysis probably wasn’t envisioned back in 1869 when they first laced ’em up for this little football game, but all these many years later, as over-important as we have made it, college football has gotten it right.
The regular season is still the playoffs. Four teams are perfect. Away we go, free to kvetch about something else, I suppose.
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