Three tigers enter a room before the evening circus. They appear equally fierce. Two are sent to the big tent. The third? His pedigree is called into question, and he is sent off to a sideshow.
Clemson, LSU and Memphis are all undefeated and in pole position to win their respective conferences. All have home wins over top-25 teams. And, yes, all three are called the Tigers.
So it was notable when the College Football Playoff selection committee released its first rankings of the season Tuesday night and, as expected, Clemson and LSU were ranked No. 1 and No. 2, but Memphis ended up at No. 13.
While Clemson (ACC) and LSU (SEC) are in so-called power conferences, Memphis is outside them, in the American Athletic Conference, one of the so-called Group of Five conferences.
The discrepancy suggested that even though the playoff expanded from two teams to four teams last season, it would remain extremely challenging for teams outside the power conferences to make the cut.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for the committee,” said Mike Aresco, the commissioner of the AAC, which had three members in the top 25, including Memphis. “Would I have liked to see Memphis higher, and do they deserve to be higher? I think so.”
There are five more weeks to go, including the conference championship games. Memphis already beat Mississippi, which was ranked 18th by the committee, in a 37-24 home game on Oct. 17.
It will host Navy (6-1) on Saturday and then face Houston, ranked 25th by the committee, and Temple, ranked 22nd, on the road. Memphis could then beat another ranked team (potentially Temple) in a neutral-site championship game to go 13-0.
At that point, Tuesday’s rankings suggested, it would have a strong playoff case, although it would still depend on some floundering among other conferences’ top teams.
“It’s very surreal and wonderful and exciting for the kids, this coaching staff, and this head coach — an affirmation and respect for what we’ve done,” Memphis’ athletic director, Tom Bowen, said.
Four of the five power conferences had at least two teams — including several that have lost a game — ahead of Memphis. (One, No. 4 Alabama, lost to Ole Miss.) Unlike Memphis, many of those teams may have their most impressive wins ahead of them.
“The victory over Ole Miss and Ole Miss’ subsequent victory over Alabama really helped move Memphis into that consideration” of being ranked higher than No. 13, Jeff Long, the selection committee chairman, said in a conference call.
The playoff is owned by the 10 conferences in the Football Bowl Subdivision (as well as Notre Dame, which is independent). They signed a $7.3 billion deal with ESPN to broadcast the playoff and associated bowl games for 12 years. All 128 FBS teams may qualify.
During negotiations, the so-called Group of Five conferences — those not considered a power conference — received one automatic berth: Should its highest-ranked conference champion not make the playoff, it will be placed in another playoff-affiliated bowl game. Last year, Boise State, the Mountain West champion, played in the Fiesta Bowl (and won).
It is difficult not to notice certain structural inequities. For instance, the initial 13-member selection committee contained one athletic director from each of the five major conferences (Southern California’s Pat Haden is not participating because of his health); the chairman, Long, is the athletic director at Arkansas, of the SEC.
And there is no getting around the higher profiles that many of the blue-chip teams from major conferences like Alabama and Ohio State enjoy.
That prestige could be seen in the introduction to ESPN’s broadcast of the releasing of the rankings Tuesday night. An animation showed two billboards with conference logos: in the foreground was a power conference’s; in the background was a Group of Five conference’s. An announcer mentioned metrics the committee could weigh: “Strength of schedule. Early-season losses. Power of conferences. And pedigree of programs.” (In fact, program pedigree is not listed as a metric for the committee to consider.)
“What we can control is how we build our programs, how we recruit,” said Bowen, adding, “The rest of it is somewhat uncontrollable because of the national attention given to what we call the Autonomy Five.”
Bowen’s terminology suggested that more was at stake in the playoff rankings than the glory, exposure and financial windfall associated with being one of the top four teams in the committee’s final rankings.
The NCAA implicitly sanctioned a split between the five wealthiest conferences and the rest of Division I last year when it granted those conferences substantial governing autonomy.
It is no coincidence that these conferences — the ACC, the SEC, the Big Ten, the Big 12 and the Pacific-12 — are also the ones whose champions automatically qualify for playoff-affiliated bowls and receive the largest share of annual playoff revenue — $51 million per conference, not including additional sums for placing teams in bowls, compared to roughly $79 million for the Group of Five conferences together.
In other words, as a member of the Group of Five, Memphis steps onto the field at a disadvantage. The hope is that what happens on the field would be unhindered by those dynamics.
This anxiety was also apparent during the 16-year era of the Bowl Championship Series, when teams from outside the conferences that qualified automatically made strong cases for inclusion in the national title game but never got in.
One frequent would-be BCS bracket-buster, Texas Christian, was subsequently absorbed into the Big 12 even as realignment splintered what had been the sixth power conference, the Big East. Some former Big East teams, like Cincinnati and Connecticut, ended up in the AAC.
Several Group of Five institutions have seemed to angle for the TCU route: a spot in a power conference. Memphis is frequently mentioned as a prime candidate for the Big 12.
“We really can’t control the chaos that is the constant chatter about realignment,” Bowen said.
But if some individual universities could be tempted by an if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them approach, Aresco noted that AAC teams have eight wins this season against power-conference squads and offered up an alternative.
“The best way for us to become a Power 5 conference,” he said, “is for us to become a Power 6 conference.”
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