The College Football Playoff selection show is just over an hour away, and two questions remain to be answered, the first being whether Ohio State and TCU are indeed the third and fourth teams in the field, and the second being who plays whom.
Our model sees the Ohio State & TCU question as quite clear (and quite clearly in favor of Ohio State and TCU), but our model was recently very wrong, so let’s hash out the arguments.
The argument in Alabama’s favor is that Alabama is a better team than TCU and USC. There’s a lot of noise surrounding Alabama’s losses and how winning games is part of being a good team, but TCU didn’t play anyone as good as Tennessee this year, and they didn’t play in Baton Rouge, and while winning games is part of being a good team, Alabama is just a better team than TCU. They beat comparable teams to those TCU beat. They did it more convincingly. One of their losses was to a better team than beat TCU, and the other wasn’t inexcusable. Alabama is the better team. Sorry. They are.
The arguments in TCU’s favor are that 1) TCU has a better résumé than Alabama and 2) Alabama has already missed its opportunities against the best. Alabama finished well behind Georgia in the SEC. It missed two chances to keep the deficit there to a game. It had its opportunities and it missed them, and it did that multiple times. (The same argument applies to Ohio State, and to USC, and to Utah and Kansas State and Clemson and Tennessee and etc., but the “multiple times” part doesn’t apply to Ohio State, which is a fair enough tiebreaker when schedules are similar enough in heft.)
The arguments in Ohio State’s favor are that 1) Ohio State is a better team than TCU and USC and maybe even Alabama and 2) that the Buckeyes have only lost once and it was to the second-ranked team in the country, whereas they beat a top-ten team in Penn State and a top 25 team in Notre Dame and they rolled through much of the Big Ten schedule, which isn’t nothing. These are good arguments.
The argument in USC’s favor isn’t really an argument in USC’s favor so much as it’s an acknowledgment that the committee really adored USC as recently as Tuesday night, and maybe that love’s still there, and maybe the committee can say Caleb Williams was hurt on Friday so the game doesn’t count as much as it should.
In the end, it seems to be Alabama vs. TCU, with Ohio State already in, and TCU is expected to take the spot. Because the committee doesn’t choose the best teams. It chooses the four which make the most sense. Which is, in the end, all we really want it to do anyway.
Our model sees the seeding question as eminently unclear. Accounting for what the committee has shown us so far, most recently in its disparagement of Ohio State on Tuesday, our model expects Georgia to be the top seed, Michigan to be the second seed, TCU to be the third seed, and Ohio State to be the fourth seed. Not accounting for anything the committee has shown us this year, and going purely off of precedent, our model expects Michigan to be the top seed, Georgia to be the second seed, Ohio State to be the third seed, and TCU to be the fourth seed. How’s that for a hedge?
Really, to many, the question boils down to whether the committee would (or should) rematch Ohio State with Michigan in the first round. It’s an idea that provokes a lot of emotion but has little reasonable argument on either side. “Ohio State just played Michigan, why should they play in back to back games?” Why shouldn’t they? And the games are six weeks apart, for goodness’s sake. “Michigan already beat Ohio State.” Well, too bad. Ohio State’s one of the four playoff teams (we assume). If they’re in the playoff and you’re in the playoff, you might have to play them. That’s how this works.
A friend of mine said, a few years ago, that there’s always this last-minute argument and that the committee always then does the common-sense thing. This is almost assuredly what’s happening here again. The committee didn’t call Nick Saban and tell him to start stumping. Saban and ESPN did that together, one with a vested interest in sticking up for his guys and the other with a vested interest in the existence of controversy. TCU vs. Alabama, in all likelihood, isn’t a debate for us because it’s a debate for the committee. TCU vs. Alabama, in all likelihood, is a debate for us because ESPN wants people to tune in. All’s fair in love and war and sports media.
