Eli Drinkwitz critiques selection process amid ‘Playoff or bust’ culture

Eli Drinkwitz is taking issue with the College Football Playoff system, right down to the application of metrics and usage of former coaches on the selection committee.

Drinkwitz, whose No. 22-ranked Missouri team plays host to No. 3-ranked Texas A&M at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, has been a proponent of an expanded playoff system that does not rely on the 13-member committee.

“The reality of it is college football needs to be decided on the field,” Drinkwitz said on the SEC coaches conference call when asked his thoughts on the new committee by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “There needs to be play-in games.

“There’s not another sport in the country that is decided besides NCAA basketball, NCAA baseball, and NCAA football, by committees, like decided on the field, just like pro sports do.”

Under pressure

The pressure to win in college football has arguably never been more amplified, as evidenced by eight Power 4 conference coaches being fired in season, including four from the 16-member SEC.

“Everything right now is College Football Playoff or bust,” South Carolina coach Shane Beamer said on the SEC teleconference on Wednesday. “It’s like, if you don’t make the playoffs, people are ready to fire everybody … That’s what we’ve created.”

The CFP selection committee is working to come up with the most accurate process possible to rank the best 12 teams — with automatic bids included — in a fair and accurate manner.

CFP selection committee chairman Mack Rhoads explained on Tuesday night that a new metric called “record strength” has been added for the committee to consider when ranking the teams, while the strength of schedule metric has been adjusted.

“We introduced the new metric, which is record strength, which measures how well a team performs against its schedule,” Rhoads said, “and that’s a cumulative sum of scores as we progress through the year.

“And then we took schedule strength and we tweaked it … we put more weight on the stronger teams, and so that was the adjustment for schedule strength.”

Change debate

Drinkwitz, however, said on Wednesday he doesn’t see how the added emphasis on schedule strength affected the top three teams in the rankings, No. 1 Ohio State, No. 2 Indiana and No. 3 Texas A&M.

“The top two teams’ schedule rankings and strength of schedule is in the mid-30s,” Drinkwitz said. “A&M’s (schedule strength) is in the top five, and they were ranked (No. 3), so I don’t know what’s changed.”

Drinkwitz, asked about the CFP’s discussion of utilizing the three retired coaches on the 13-member committee — Mark Dantonio (Michigan State), Mike Riley (Nebraska, Oregon State) and Chris Ault (Nevada) — rejected the idea that would ensure fairness and accuracy in the rankings.

“No, I don’t think that matters, (because) every coach has a different taste in what they’re looking for on film,” Drinkwitz said. “Some guys are defensive coaches, they’re going to evaluate defensive strengths. Some guys are offensive coaches, they’re going to evaluate offensive strengths.

“Some people don’t like other people, some people rank their conference better than others. Some people think that because they played in this conference, it’s going to be different.”

New model

Drinkwitz made headlines at the SEC Media Days when he proposed a 30-team playoff replace the current 12-team model that is contracted through this year.

College football leadership has yet to decide what the next playoff format will be, but models with 16-team playoffs have been most widely discussed.

If the SEC and Big Ten can’t agree on a new model to utilize in an expanded playoff format, the field will remain at 12 until otherwise negotiated.

Drinkwitz said his expanded playoff idea is based on the current 12-team playoff and would alleviate some of the controversial decision making that would come if the playoff field is only expanded by four teams.

“The NFL takes 44 percent of their teams into the playoffs to increase the passion or keep the fan base engaged,” Drinkwitz said. “If we’re talking about 12 (college teams in the playoff) that’s 9 percent (of the FBS teams), if we’re talking about 14 that’s 11 percent, (and) if were talking about 16, that’s 12 percent.

“That’s not really changing the math for the fan base.”

Georgia coach Kirby Smart, who shrugged off the first set of rankings and said he’ll continue to focus on what he can control, said in August he would support a widely expanded playoff model “if done the right way.”

“I’m probably like most people in the majority, to be able to expand the playoffs if it’s done the right way, in terms of giving more teams the opportunity,” Smart said at an Aug. 19 press conference in Athens. “I think that’s what fanbases want.”

Smart pointed out that the college football postseason is not ideal, and that he would prefer championships be decided on the field more so than have heavy committee involvement.

“People are not excited about mid-tier bowl games,” Smart said. “I think those bowl games are great experiences, I played in them, (and) I’ve coached in them … that’s an opportunity.

“But the more teams you give an opportunity to decide things on the field, like you do, whether it’s college basketball, high school football, old (Division) 1AA football ... you’re going to get things decided on the grass. So yeah, I’d be for that.”

Fluid process

Drinkwitz, like Smart has done in the past, pointed out there has been a lack of consistency in how the different committees have applied metrics to rank teams in the 11 years since the inception of the four-team playoff field in 2014.

“The problem is we have a human committee that has no standard set of structure, of how they’re going to select,” Drinkwitz said at the SEC Media Days in Atlanta. “They’re all human beings. They all have implicit bias. Now we’re going from seven (at-large) selections to 11 and we think that’s going to solve the problem.

“Until we figure out what exactly the standards are, I don’t think that’s good.”

Drinkwitz suggested that instead of having automatic qualifiers a different playoff format could utilizing play-in games to keep more teams and fanbases involved at the end of the season.

As an example, the Missouri head coach suggested the SEC and Big Ten would have eight teams each compete in play-in games for four spots each in the CFP field, while the Big 12 and ACC would have six teams playing for three spots in the field from each of their conferences.

A Group of Five team would be granted a spot, along with an at-large selection.