College Football Playoff’s silly early bracket reveal remains ominous for SMU, ACC
Putting aside the utter pointlessness of a College Football Playoff reveal with five weeks to go in the season, there are a few useful lessons to be gleaned from Tuesday night’s shenanigans, most notably the annual update on how much trouble the ACC is facing.
The answer: A lot.
Undefeated Miami was treated fairly at No. 4, but with SMU on the outside looking in at No. 13, the committee has set things up to ensure that only the Miami-SMU winner is invited to the 12-team party from the ACC. Because if Alabama is ahead of one-loss SMU now, and LSU is just behind, Saturday’s winner between those two is still going to be ahead of the ACC’s second team.
It’s actually good news for SMU, which has a wide-open path to a playoff spot by winning out and beating Miami in the title game, but it’s not great news for the ACC, which has very little margin for error as a league.
Miami should be safe, even with a loss to SMU in Charlotte, but there’s no guarantee.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that four Big Ten and four SEC teams made up two-thirds of the initial bracket. That’s not quite as crazy as it sounds since two of the eight are Oregon and Texas, the Pac-12 and Big 12 reps in any previous year, but it’s also clear the committee understands the assignment.
It was always so silly that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey expended political capital to try to obtain extra guaranteed bids for his conference and the other half of the Power 2; it was always going to happen whether it was written in the rules or not.
Which is how Alabama, a two-time loser to Georgia and Vanderbilt, is in ahead of SMU, which has wins over Louisville and Pittsburgh and lost only to undefeated Big 12 leader BYU. And Texas A&M, LSU and Mississippi are queued up next. The SEC’s getting that spot, the only uncertainty is which team.
There are no real criteria here, only ex post facto justifications for whatever the committee decides it wants to do. Conference titles and undefeated records matter? Tell that to Florida State. (Not this year, obviously, although the ACC’s treatment then was certainly a harbinger of things to come.) It’s all arbitrariness cloaked in fake objectivity, waving a card marked “strength of schedule” around like it means everything.
No one can adequately explain how Penn State is ranked ahead of Indiana, and the Nittany Lions don’t have a ranked team left on their schedule. Must be nice. Not that Penn State doesn’t deserve to be in the top 11, but starting at No. 6 sure feels like entitlement, not achievement. It’s a messed-up system when losing to Ohio State is your best alleged data point.
The basketball selection committee may veer a little from year to year in terms of emphasis, but the basic principles are published and by the end of Selection Sunday the criteria it valued are clear. With the four-team CFP especially, but even now, nothing ever is. Part of that’s by design, to make sure the big boys eat first, but in the committee’s defense it’s also harder to make narrow separations among teams playing 12 or 13 games than teams that play 30.
By the time the end of the season rolls around, the committee is going to pick the 12 teams it wants and figure out why afterward.
For now, these ridiculous ratings grabs are useful only as a tool to try to figure out where the committee thinks it’s headed. And the answers are pretty much as expected: The SEC and Big Ten will be protected, whether they deserve it or not, and the ACC and Big 12 will need a miracle to get a second team, whether they deserve it or not.
You don’t have to wait until December for that.
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