There were times when the College Football Playoff committee seemed to be making things up as it went along, most notably when chairman Jeff Long attributed Alabama’s No. 1 ranking to its “game control” in its most recent outing and Mississippi State’s placement at No. 4 to the Bulldogs having “never been out of” their weekend loss. He was speaking of the same game — Alabama 25, Mississippi State 20 — and having it both ways.
But that’s the trouble with revealing seven weekly rankings and having to go on ESPN and justify each set: There’s going to be double-talk and doubling back. This is big-time American college football, and as Walt Whitman, the big-time American poet, wrote: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.”
That the committee was willing to contradict itself (in a good way) became evident Sunday, when it dropped TCU, which had been No. 3 in its penultimate rankings, to No. 6 after a 52-point defeat of Iowa State. The longstanding polls — the writers’ Associated Press version and the coaches’ USA Today version — wouldn’t have done that.
When I voted in the AP basketball poll, I had a rule: Never drop a team that didn’t lose that week. My stubbornness was the reason Duke wasn’t a unanimous No. 1 in the final 1992 poll, released before the NCAA tournament. UNLV — ineligible for the Big Dance but eligible for the AP poll — hadn’t lost since December. The Blue Devils had lost two ACC games. I’d bumped the Rebels, who would finish 26-2, above Duke. Doggone if I didn’t leave them there.
That made sense to me then. It makes less sense now. I knew Duke, which would win a second consecutive national title, was the best team, but I stuck to my precedent. This being the inaugural CFP run, there was no precedent. The committee’s charge was to pick the four best teams, even if it had to change its collective mind after a 52-point victory as to which teams those were.
And that’s OK. As much fun as preseason polls are, they’re weightless. Just because you thought a team should be really good in August doesn’t mean it will be. (Anybody seen South Carolina lately? How about Oklahoma?) Trouble is, polls are static things. If you’re No. 1, you tend to stay there.
It was odd seeing the committee drop Florida State — how can you be No. 4 in the nation if you’re the only team that hasn’t lost?— but let’s be honest: For most of the season, FSU hasn’t looked like the nation’s best team. (The Seminoles saved their most focused performance for Georgia Tech.) But the committee actually showed us how it should have been done all along. You come to the end and pick your four, regardless of whether those were last week’s four.
Strength of schedule should matter, and in the end it cost Baylor, which played non-conference games against SMU, Northwestern State and Buffalo. Head-to-head should matter, and it cost TCU, which lost to Baylor. How you’re playing at the end should matter, and it boosted Ohio State, winner of 11 in a row.
Seeing Long dissemble on-camera every Tuesday didn’t fill me with hope, but I take no issue with the final product. I found it hugely amusing that the committee stuck it to the Big 12, which sought to game the newborn system by trying to have two titlists to every other conference’s one, but the CFP charter held that conference championships would matter — that criterion is listed first in the handbook — and it’s no coincidence that the Final Four includes the on-field winners of every Power Five league that staged a title game.
Given its druthers, I’m sure this committee would prefer to operate as the NCAA basketball committee does — to make no announcement until revealing the tournament field of 68 on Selection Sunday. But ESPN is paying the freight and wants fodder for conversation across its many platforms, and those weekly rankings wound up doing no harm.
Come Sunday, the committee did as it needed to do: It took a blank slate and chalked in the four correct names. Having been conditioned to the blundering BCS, I was equal parts surprised and delighted.
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