© 2024
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
An update has been released for the Android version of the WAMC App that addresses performance issues. Please check the Google Play Store to download and update to the latest version.

Keith Strudler: College Football Limps To Championship Game

Last Sunday, a small group of college football experts was confronted with what was perhaps both the easiest and most complex decision of their current job assignment. These 13 experts, known as the College Football Playoff Selection Committee, were tasked with ranking the top four teams this season that would now the enter the playoffs and a chance to play in the national title game. Everyone else in Division I FBS football, including some conference champions and highly regarded one-loss programs, would be relegated to a potential bowl game, where simply being there is the reward.

This decision process is challenging in the best of times, when this rotating crew of senior athletic administrators, former coaches and players, and assorted football experts have to decide whether a one loss Michigan State is better than an undefeated UCF, or whether Washington or Georgia has a better body of work, as they like to say. These are largely unknowable facts because teams rarely play common opponents. So trying to split hairs between the Midwest and the Southeast is fairly unscientific – leading to the popular acceptance of the term “eye test.” There used to be a more data driven approach to picking championship contenders. It was called the BCS, and it aggregated data from a bunch of different sources and everyone said how awful it was because football is played on the field, not on computers. Which is part of how we ended up here with a whole lot of people now angry at the people who pick teams. It’s a lot easier to be angry at humans than computers.

Of course, if you think it’s rough during normal, non-pandemic years, imagine this trick right now, when the college football season felt a bit like Sherman storming through Georgia. The committee not only had to evaluate teams from different conferences that basically weren’t allowed to play each other this year; they also had to compare teams that played 11 games to some that played six. It’s like deciding whether you like a completed painting more than a rough sketch, even one by a talented artist. Which led the committee to the creative and out-of-the-box selection of Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, and Notre Dame. If that sounds familiar, that’s because of the six years of the College Football Playoffs, Bama and Clemson have each been in five times and Ohio State three. There are 130 teams in football’s top division, and 65 in the Power 5 conferences. And yet here we are, watching the same three teams over and over and over again. And for the record, never has a team from outside the Power 5 made the playoffs, even if they went undefeated all season. That includes Cincinnati this year, who will see the playoffs like all the rest of us – on TV – despite going 9-0 this year. Coastal Carolina went 11-0 and was ranked 12th by the committee, behind three, 3-loss teams. Which means, if you’re wondering, there really was no possible way for either of those programs to play their way into a national title, something that would be incomprehensible if it were part of say, the NFL, where winning games leads to opportunities to win championships.

I am not going to argue that Alabama isn’t the best team in the country, especially as a Florida Gator fan. I won’t argue against Clemson either, and to be honest, I’d guess Ohio State is probably third, as it often is. The fourth is something of a rounding error I suppose, whether it’s Notre Dame or Texas A&M or whomever. I would not argue that Coastal Carolina would beat any of those five teams, as much as I’d like to see them try. And even Cincinnati would struggle against teams that are generally bigger and faster, as is the case with the Power 5 blue bloods. But that said, I think we’re all growing tired of a system that’s clearly not simply stacked against the little guy – it’s completely closed off. I think this year, perhaps more than any, shows that a nine-win undefeated team can’t ever have the same chance as a six-win team from the same state – even though they allegedly play in the same division. That feel wrong, unamerican even – if that still means anything. And it’s probably unsustainable in the increasingly fragile world of college athletics, where change is definitely coming.

What’s the answer? There are many, all fraught with consequence beyond a new playoff system. Finding the best one, particularly when both football and college athletic labor are under a microscope, will be challenging. Certainly harder than finding four teams for the playoffs this year.

Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

Related Content