Well, it’s here. The doomsday scenario.
When we wrote about this possibility on Wednesday, we anticipated the argument coming down to Texas vs. Alabama. We thought Michigan would be in, the Pac-12 champion would be in, and Florida State would be in. It’s possible that in the committee room, that’s the case. In the discourse, though—on ESPN and FOX and CBS throughout yesterday, and on Twitter and Reddit and in real life rooms where real people talk to one another about college football—the disagreement is broader. If anything, Texas seems to have public opinion the most behind it. At the very least, Florida State is the subject of much debate.
We don’t know whether this is the case in the committee’s conversations or not. We don’t know what the committee thinks. We know the committee is told to pick the “best teams,” and not the “most deserving.” We don’t know how many committee members agree with that charge or intend to obey it.
It’s worth remembering how we got the College Football Playoff. The short version is that schools formed conferences and conferences formed the CFP. Schools built this system, and they negotiated with one another and settled on the word “best.” Much like when the Sun Belt was blaming the NCAA a few weeks ago for what the Sun Belt was doing to JMU, two football teams are going to blame the CFP committee today for what they built the CFP to be.
It’s also worth remembering that the committee traditionally does not choose the best teams. They traditionally choose the consensus top four. What do I mean by this? Well, take this year as an example: Ohio State is very likely better than both Washington and Florida State. Get an honest answer from coaches as to which of those three would be toughest to beat, and the answer would be Ohio State. Ohio State isn’t going to make the playoff, though, and at least Washington is, and everyone’s mostly ok with that. What the committee does is not “choose the best teams.” It’s something like that, though, and in a pinch, the committee can always say: Look. You told us to pick the best teams, ok?
We’re in a situation this year unlike any in College Football Playoff history, and by a significant degree. Traditionally, being an undefeated or one-loss Power Five team is enough to qualify for the playoff, provided the loss is not a bad loss (by margin or opponent). Only two teams who’ve met that description have ever missed the College Football Playoff: TCU in 2014, when the Big 12 lacked a conference title game, and Iowa in 2015, with no conference title and a best win at selection time over #13 Northwestern. This year, three teams who meet that description will miss the field. We have seven qualified teams, and the committee can only put four of them into the playoff.
The way this debate is shaping up seems to be as follows:
- Michigan is in, 13–0 and the Big Ten champions and believed by many to be the best team in the country.
- Washington is in, 13–0 and the Pac-12 champions. Washington is not a spectacular team (Movelor, our power rating system, has them 10th), but they have two top-ten wins, both over Oregon, and they’re playing the same core with which they’ve won all thirteen of their games.
- Ohio State is out, 11–1 and the only contender absent from the action this weekend. The Buckeyes have a strong résumé—their only loss came by a single possession on the road against Michigan—but they’re easy to exclude, their closing argument a loss and only eleven wins to their name. Their best wins are also a little lacking, at least compared to Washington’s or Michigan’s or Texas’s or Alabama’s.
- Georgia is probably out, 12–1 but having lost in their opportunity to play their way in. Like Ohio State, Georgia has a strong résumé and is among the country’s best teams, but they’re easy to exclude, and so they will probably be excluded.
- Texas has a lot of wind in their sails in the public square, but we don’t know what the committee thinks. The Longhorns are 12–1, lost their only loss to the 12th-ranked team (and only by four points), and dazzled each of the last two weeks. It is unclear whether “best teams” means best right now or best, on average, over the course of the year, but accounting for the time Quinn Ewers missed and the win in Tuscaloosa, Texas seems to meet the traditional playoff criteria and enjoy a lot of public support. Texas also might be one of the four best teams. We can be fairly confident Washington and Florida State are not, but Texas has made a strong case these last two weeks with their play on the field. Oklahoma State is inconsistent and mediocre, but Texas did run them off the field, and that’s not easy to do.
- Alabama is the SEC Champion, 12–1 and having lost only to a likely playoff team. They just beat Georgia, the previous top-ranked team in the country. They have wins over #11 Mississippi and #13 LSU and #21 Tennessee in addition to Georgia, and all of those depth wins were at home but all were by multiple possessions. They are among the country’s best teams. But the team they were at the beginning of the season was not this good, and that matters in some regard.
- Florida State is undefeated, 13–0 and the ACC Champion. Like Alabama, they comfortably beat #13 LSU, but beyond that their best wins are over #14 Louisville (who might drop) and #23 Clemson, which isn’t as strong a list as that of the Tide. Like Alabama and Georgia, Florida State struggled at times this season to put mediocre teams away. Worst for the Seminoles, though, is that their star quarterback Jordan Travis is out for the year, and while FSU has answered the bell admirably in his absence, they were already not one of the best teams and they are now at least a little bit worse.
What the committee has to do is one of these three things:
A. Exclude the undefeated champion of one of the five best conferences in the country.
B. Exclude the 12–1 champion of the conference anyone being serious will acknowledge is the best in the country* despite that champion’s lone loss coming to a playoff team and despite the instruction to choose the “best teams,” which applies to Alabama both literally and by its traditional interpretation.
C. Exclude the 12–1 champion of one of the three or four best conferences in the country in favor of allowing entry to a 12–1 opponent they defeated on that opponent’s own field.
Doing any of these three things is nuts. The committee will therefore have to do something nuts.
*A note on the popular anecdote that the ACC went 6–4 against the SEC this year: If you rank each conference’s teams 1–14 as though you’re the CFP committee and then compare those results, you’ll find the ACC team was favored by conference ranking in at least six of those matchups. Clemson beat South Carolina? Cool. Clemson’s the fourth-best ACC team if we’re being generous to the ACC. South Carolina was one of the worst teams in the SEC. This holds for every other ACC win over the SEC besides Miami’s over Texas A&M, where each team would probably be ranked 7th in their league. Meanwhile, SEC 8th-ranked Kentucky beat ACC 2nd-ranked Louisville. The SEC is better based on evidence beyond this, but this evidence is not what Florida State fans want it to be.
It’s easy to say that “the games have to matter,” and to accuse the committee of letting the season come down to spreadsheets if they put Alabama in over either of Texas and Florida State. But the games do matter. Playoff-contending teams have twelve or thirteen opportunities to prove to people and spreadsheets alike that they’re one of the country’s four best teams. It’s easy to say this makes teams “run up the score.” But it doesn’t. The vast majority of the college football world doesn’t think Alabama is better than Florida State because Alabama ran up the score and Florida State didn’t. Alabama didn’t run up the score, or at least not to any extent not also done by Florida State.
The problem for Florida State is not that they didn’t run up the score. It’s that they couldn’t. Boston College took them down to the wire. Clemson took them down to the wire. Miami took them down to the wire. Florida and Louisville took them close to the wire despite contributing plenty of sloppiness themselves in those games. Florida State beat LSU comfortably, but so did Alabama, and Alabama beat Mississippi, Tennessee, and now Georgia, and it beat the first three of those teams soundly. Alabama is a better team than Florida State. You don’t need to consider recruiting rankings or prior seasons to know that. You don’t even really need to consider Jordan Travis. Since Travis went down, Florida State has covered the spread twice. The vast majority of the college football world would still pick all of Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Texas, and Ohio State to beat them. Washington and Oregon, too, if you do take away Travis. The conferences got together and designed a playoff which tells its committee to select the best teams. Alabama is one of the best. Florida State isn’t.
There’s a recency angle which is a fair counterpoint—who was the best over the whole season, on average—but even then…Florida State hasn’t looked like the team that beat up LSU since Florida State was beating up LSU. From their third game onwards, Florida State was clearly a vulnerable team. They had good games and they had bad games, but they were always vulnerable. From Alabama’s fourth game onwards, they were better more often than they were poorer. Alabama turned in four convincing performances this year against quality competition. Florida State turned in one. Alabama did lose once, but is it worse to exclude an undefeated team or worse to exclude a team who scheduled playoff-caliber competition in nonconference play?
I’m not saying that there’s a right or a wrong answer here. I mostly delve into the argument that “the games have to matter” because too often it’s used to say one game should matter more than all twelve or thirteen, which is a literal contradiction of what it says. Whatever the committee does, though, the decision will be right and the decision will be wrong.
I’m personally hoping for Alabama, using my own subjective judgment. I think it’s silly that the ACC gets the same credit as the rest of the Power Five. Take away the official designation, and would we really view this conference as one on par with the SEC or the Big Ten, or even the Pac-12 or Big 12? The SEC is good enough that playing a four-team playoff without any SEC representation is the kind of thing which should land its champion an asterisk. I’m not an SEC fan. My loyalties are with the Big 12. But the SEC is the best conference, producing the last four national champions and 13 of the last 17 (after that you get to the last time we had a postseason disagreement this significant—Auburn vs. Oklahoma vs. USC). Its champion should be in the playoff, and so should be the team that beat them, especially when the odd man out there is an already questionable team who’ll be without its most important offensive player in the postseason.
One thing I don’t think the committee should consider but wonder if the committee will consider is whether excluding the SEC could lead to the SEC pulling away from the rest of college football, or at least make that possibility more likely. Take their ball and go home? You could call it that. When a league wins a championship two thirds of the time and is then excluded while the committee goes in direct contradiction to agreed-upon rules, though, it sounds less petty for the SEC to say, “We don’t really need you guys,” or—more realistically—to start playing hardball a little harder. Again, I think it would be stupid for the committee to consider this angle, and I think the SEC, like Florida State, should be prepared to deal with a consequence of bad luck. But as a little bit of a college football institutionalist myself—someone who wants to preserve this sport in its current beauty—part of the reason I’m hoping Alabama makes it is that I think it would be better for college football. Florida State would be royally pissed, and understandably so, but we’d have a more competitive playoff and a truer champion. On that last note:
Something admirable and charming about college football is that more than any other American sport, it tries to crown its best team as champion. It’s getting away from this a little bit next year, introducing more randomness through the 12-team playoff, but while college basketball stokes madness and Major League Baseball uses seven games to decide a 162-game season, and while the NBA becomes a different sport in May while the NHL plays dice with its universe, and while the NFL grows its single-elimination tournament bigger and bigger…college football’s schools build conferences that form a playoff which instructs its selection committee to pick the “best teams.” People will say the committee is being unfair to Florida State if it chooses Alabama ahead of the ‘Noles. You could also call it unfair to let a team play Louisville and Clemson instead of Georgia and Texas and give them the same shot at the championship as the team who traveled the harder road.
**
Regular readers may have noticed that we haven’t discussed our college football model at all in this discussion. That’s because this situation has broken our college football model. Not literally—it’s still there, you can see its probabilities—but functionally. It’s wrong. It’s going to be wrong. For the sake of transparency and accountability, we’re about to show you what it says, but it is going to need a retooling this offseason. We are going to need to incorporate more horse-race elements (well done to the competitors who do this or did this before Disney killed them). We are going to need to better calibrate its uncertainty, and change how it reacts to how the committee reacts to games on the field. Now. The gory details (and then we’ll get to the games).
Where our model projects this week’s top 25, with its customary “ranking score” where 0.0 is the worst FBS team and 100.0 is the #1 team in the country:
1. Michigan: 100.0
2. Florida State: 96.6
3. Georgia: 96.4
4. Washington: 96.3
5. Texas: 94.2
6. Alabama: 93.4
7. Ohio State: 91.9
8. Oregon: 87.9
9. Missouri: 81.7
10. Penn State: 81.4
11. Mississippi: 79.9
12. Oklahoma: 77.2
13. LSU: 76.4
14. Arizona: 73.7
15. SMU: 69.9
16. Notre Dame: 69.9
17. NC State: 69.8
18. Oregon State: 69.6
19. Louisville: 69.5
20. Tennessee: 68.4
21. Oklahoma State: 68.2
22. Liberty: 68.2
23. Clemson: 67.7
24. Iowa: 63.8
25. Kansas State: 66.1
If we were to take away FPA altogether (FPA is our model’s measurement of how far the committee is deviating from precedent with each team—it sticks with teams as the season goes forward), the top 7 would go:
1. Michigan
2. Florida State
3. Washington
4. Texas
5. Ohio State
6. Alabama
7. Georgia
So, if we were just to not use FPA, maybe our formula would be correct when it comes to picking the playoff teams. But we use FPA. We can’t change the rules now. And while it is extraordinarily close, on paper, between 15th and 23rd in these rankings, we expect our model to get a whole lot wrong in there as well. Sorry to any SMU fans whose hopes we errantly elevated.
**
The games…man, it was a day. A two days, really, though we talked a little about Washington yesterday morning. From the biggest to the smallest, the ten FBS conference title games (we’ll have an FCS playoff update up in the next one or two days, and our SWAC Championship recap is that Florida A&M rolled despite weather delays, as expected):
Alabama 27, Georgia 24
It briefly looked like Georgia was going to outmatch Alabama decisively and end the Saban dynasty once and for all. It looked like for the first time since a stretch involving a year Saban coached the Dolphins, we’d go three seasons without an Alabama national title. It briefly looked like that. Then, Alabama got a stop, and then, Alabama got another one, and then, Alabama kicked a field goal to get back in the game. After that, it was two touchdown drives from the Tide between which Georgia missed a kick of its own thanks at least in part to a delay of game penalty.
That self-inflicted wound from the Dawgs loomed large. In some games, three points comes out in the wash—teams play differently because the three points are or aren’t there. In this one, though, it’s hard to say that happened. Maybe Georgia goes for it on 4th and 7 instead of kicking to make it a one-score game in the 3rd, but they probably kick there, and the game probably proceeds about as it did right up until Georgia—in this hypothetical—ties it with ten minutes to go. Instead, Alabama still had a lead when they got the ball back after that 4th-quarter score, and they were able to reestablish breathing room without the imminent threat of losing the game.
Something I think we’ve miscommunicated about Jalen Milroe over the year—something we’ve accidentally implied—is that he’s dumb. Jalen Milroe is not dumb. Tommy Rees retooled this offense to help Jalen Milroe make fewer reads in the middle of the field, or so it seems to my layman eyes. But that wasn’t because Milroe can’t make good decisions. He makes good decisions, he was just making bad reads early in the year. With that hopefully clarified: What a turnaround from that guy between the Texas game and yesterday. And what a job by Saban this year. Maybe the dynasty’s dead. Winning the SEC again next year will certainly be hard. But Alabama is in the best position its occupied in the SEC since the national championship two years ago. Which is to say, it’s at the top.
As for Georgia: In a normal year, Georgia would be in the 4-team playoff, and in a future year like this one, they might be the 5-seed in the 12-teamer, drawing Liberty or SMU in Athens in the first round. This year, though, it’s dashed hopes, and so goes possibly one of the last teams who couldn’t afford a single loss in their season. Georgia, in the end, had no margin for error. Not if the error came at this time. We’re going to lose some of that next year.
The Dawgs shouldn’t go anywhere, although then again, it’s hard to stay good. This wasn’t UGA being exposed as a good–not–great team, though. This was a very good team losing to another very good team. Possibly a great team losing to another great team, even. It’s fair to believe the top of the SEC isn’t what it’s usually been, but it’s hard to believe Georgia is anything less than one of the five best teams in the country, and a well-oiled machine set up to handle the talent transition heading into next fall.
Washington 34, Oregon 31
Washington won at a good time, saving themselves any and all doubt. Washington is also far more accomplished, though, than Florida State. They beat more better teams. Florida State tried—they scheduled LSU—but Washington did the damn thing, and they kept doing the damn thing, even when we really thought they would have the damn thing done to them.
This team looks poised to be overmatched if they draw anyone but Florida State in the semifinals, but don’t sleep on Kalen DeBoer’s gameplanning, and remember the lesson TCU taught us last year. There’s still some magic in this world.
The Pac-12 Championship was the second-best conference championship of the weekend. It was well-played, it had atmosphere, and it had consequence. It was dramatic and tragic and euphoric. It was a beautiful college football game, and I still feel bad for Bo Nix a day and a half later, but it’s hard not to be equally happy for Michael Penix and Dillon Johnson and the rest of the Huskies. The offensive line stepped up! That’s a hard thing for an offensive line to do.
Texas 49, Oklahoma State 21
Part of why Florida State became the focus of this playoff debate is that Texas shattered Oklahoma State. Texas was a wrecking ball, and Oklahoma State was a fine pane of glass, and Oklahoma State did not play a particularly good game nor was Oklahoma State equipped with a particularly smart gameplan, but even accounting for how bad this OK State team was capable of being, Texas did something impressive, and they did it at a big moment, and unless you’re going to construct your sport in a way with only a regular season, eventually that becomes the name of the game. Texas did not rule the Big 12 during its time in the conference, but Texas ruled it on its final day, and by playing so well these last two weeks, the Longhorns have given us reason to believe they really might compete against Michigan, or in a rematch with Alabama. We didn’t have that belief two weeks ago.
A friend pointed out that the SEC wouldn’t really be left out of the playoff if Texas were included, which does provoke the question of how Texas is going to perform in the SEC. The consistency is going to be key there. That league already forces teams to show up again and again, and Oklahoma and Texas are going to raise the good teams ratio, not lower it. But Steve Sarkisian has built a program in Austin, one of many places it’s been hard these last ten or fifteen years to do that. They’re playing great football in the state said to love football the most.
Florida State 16, Louisville 6
Good heavens, was this ugly. Florida State’s defense played a great game, but Louisville’s offense also played one of its Bad Louisville games, and Pitt can tell you what Bad Louisville games are like. Louisville’s defense turned the heat up on Brock Glenn and just couldn’t quite get the big play. Louisville’s offense looked like a man wearing noise-canceling headphones unwittingly walking through a minefield. Watching from afar was torture, but they looked eerily at peace.
The impotence of Louisville is not a good thing for Florida State, who looked rather impotent themselves offensively. The result is being spun as a defensive triumph, and Florida State’s struggles to move the ball are being compared to Michigan’s against Iowa, but Louisville’s defense is not Iowa’s, and Florida State’s offense was not playing with house money like that of the Wolverines. Florida State needed scores and very nearly didn’t get them, ultimately relying on one humongous play out of the Wildcat and a gift interception from Jack Plummer.
I’m not sure Florida State’s offense is worse with Glenn than it was with Tate Rodemaker, especially with a month of preparation ahead of it. Glenn has better tools. But boy, did Brock Glenn look like a third-string quarterback with little live college game experience. He avoided throwing bad interceptions, but some of that was Louisville missing opportunities.
Mike Norvell has a good thing going in Tallahassee. But not good enough to where we should expect this team to compete with Michigan. Draw Washington, and maybe they make it a game, but against Michigan, they’ll need McCarthy–vs.–TCU Version 2.
Michigan 26, Iowa 0
Michigan pitched a shutout. Michigan took control early and maintained it. Michigan struggled against Iowa’s defense but protected the ball. Michigan decisively won another Big Ten Championship.
Michigan is the best team in the country today, as of this writing. In a month? That’s the challenge. It’ll be easier if Alabama isn’t in the field, but Michigan now has to do the thing they haven’t done the last two years, and that’s get better over the time they’re given.
SMU 26, Tulane 14
SMU is set to really help the ACC, provided SMU holds onto Rhett Lashlee and doesn’t have a ton of upcoming roster turnover I’m not aware of. The Mustangs turned the ball over three times, once inside their own 20 and twice ahead of scoring opportunities, and still won comfortably on the road against Tulane. SMU is the best mid-major team right now, with only South Dakota State a serious challenger for that title.
Liberty 49, New Mexico State 35
NMSU gave Liberty its best, as we would expect NMSU to do. Liberty, though, was too much, and played a clean, effective game, moving the ball all over the field to win Conference USA. If it’s Flames vs. Oklahoma in a New Year’s Six bowl, the Sooners have the athleticism to run all over Liberty, but these guys remain a program on the rise, even if they’re spinning their wheels a bit in the conference realignment game.
Miami (OH) 23, Toledo 14
One of the more fun games of the weekend (I don’t know about you but I was highly stressed during the Pac-12, Big 12, SEC, and ACC Championships) was the MAC Championship, where Chuck Martin’s Miami RedHawks beat the league-unbeaten Toledo Rockets behind a strong start and a ten-point fourth quarter. Miami’s defense is great. Miami’s offense played its best game since Brett Gabbert went down. It wasn’t always pretty, but it was good.
Troy 49, Appalachian State 23
App State was in this entering the fourth quarter, and then they weren’t. Kimani Vidal ultimately ran for five touchdowns on only 26 carries, and Troy confirmed that they are the best team in the best Group of Five league. Better than JMU? By the way we ask the CFP committee to interpret that word, yes. They lost head-to-head, and the line on a rematch would be close, but Troy might really be better, and they won the league while JMU, technicality or otherwise, did not.
Boise State 44, UNLV 20
Finally, the electric Mountain West title game, where the teams combined for 48 points in the first half before Boise State started to close the door. Boise State is only 8–5, which is a bad thing for the Mountain West, because mid-major conferences do best by having one or two really successful teams at their top. At the same time, though, Boise State is probably still the Mountain West’s best bet to be a national player until Oregon State and Washington State get into the league, and the fact the team responded so well on the field after Andy Avalos’s firing is a sign that the talent and infrastructure up there are still pretty good. As for UNLV: Still a lot of progress this year.
Correction: A previous version of this post cited the 2003 LSU vs. USC vs. Oklahoma controversy as the last time we had a playoff/championship controversy this significant. That was incorrect. It was 2004.
