Couch: CFB Playoff's flaw is the eye test - we all see it differently
Listening to College Football Playoff selection chairman Kirby Hocutt defend and explain his committee’s rankings is like listening to an attorney defend a guilty client.
Sometimes the details work out in the four-team playoff’s favor. That doesn’t make it right.
The playoff escaped another year without a revolt Sunday. The only team arguably left out was Penn State — which beat Ohio State, won the Big Ten title, and was rolling at the end of the season. But the Nittany Lions have warts on their resume and a dark recent past that makes causing a stir unbecoming.
Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Washington are the four teams that’ll play for the championship. They are perhaps the best four teams. Maybe the most deserving. Maybe not. But they’re a foursome that won’t rock the boat.
Again, dodging disaster doesn’t mean it’s a well-reasoned format. There is no good argument for the four-team playoff as it pertains to determining a true national champion.
It’s simply too small a sample size in a sport that begins judging teams harshly in September. This is a year when there appears to be a clear best team, Alabama. But should anyone other than the Crimson Tide win the national title, we won’t actually have a champion. Like we didn’t in 2014, when Ohio State won the title, but TCU didn’t get its chance and deserved one.
The whole point of going to a playoff system was to eliminate the ambiguity of the national championship. That can’t happen as long as there are five power conferences and four playoff spots — the sort of math that should have stopped the four-team tournament in its tracks — and as long as the debate between “deserving” and ‘best” includes the almighty “eye test,” which is nonsense, because most folks don’t know what they’re looking at.
Best example: the 2010 Butler basketball team, which was given a No. 5 seed in the NCAA tournament. As the Bulldogs made their run to the championship game, pundits were stunned by Butler’s wins over top-seeded Syracuse, 2-seed Kansas State and fellow 5-seed Michigan State, before losing at the buzzer to another top seed, Duke. Butler simply did not pass the “eye test.” We now know that isn’t true — Butler had two NBA players on its roster, Gordon Hayward and Shelvin Mack, both of them still in the league. The only NBA player on MSU’s roster: then-sophomore Draymond Green.
What Butler didn’t have at the time was a sizable brand. I fear this is where the college football committee gets mixed up, too. After all, Penn State beat Ohio State, won the East Division, then the Big Ten title and dominated their only common late-season opponent, MSU, while the Buckeyes escaped the Spartans by a single point.
Ohio State vs. Penn State, in the committee’s eyes, is not an “eye test.” It’s early season perception. It’s brand recognition. Penn State’s football brand is still on the mend. Meanwhile, the Buckeyes are college football. I don’t believe Penn State is a better football team than Ohio State. Just as I don’t think Ohio State is better than Michigan. By my eyes, Michigan was the best team in the Big Ten, the league’s best chance to compete with Alabama.
But Ohio State was more deserving — by head-to-head win and strength of non-conference schedule — just as Penn State is at least as deserving as the Buckeyes, for beating them, pounding a common foe at the end of the season and winning the conference. If it’s all “eye test,” Michigan is in. If it’s who won the actual games and earned the right to be there, it’s Ohio State. And if it’s Ohio State, it’s Penn State.
If Penn State had scheduled similar to Washington in September — if they'd played Slippery Rock instead of playing Pitt — the Nittany Lions might be 12-1 instead of a 11-2 and this is a whole lot more messy.
Here’s the playoff we could have and should have had, based on the committee’s final rankings, involving eight teams, beginning just before Christmas on campus sites, before the regularly scheduled semifinals and championship:
1 Alabama vs. 8 Western Michigan
2 Clemson vs. 7 Oklahoma
3 Ohio State vs. 6 Michigan
4 Washington vs. 5 Penn State
Five major conference champions, two at-larges and the best of the non-power-five schools. It ain’t brain surgery. It’s 11th-grade logic. No one deserving is left out — not if a conference championship leads directly to a playoff bid and there’s both wiggle for room for imperfection and a spot for the little guy.
Who wouldn’t want to see that playoff, that 3-6 matchup especially?
The argument from school presidents against it is that two teams might be playing as many as 15 games. That should be a concern. But it wasn’t when college football expanded from 11 to 12 regular season games in 2006, or began adding conference championship games in the early 1990s, or the four-team playoff in 2014. If student-athlete welfare is the concern, well, spare me.
The argument that an eight-team playoff would destroy the bowl system is more valid. It would weaken it, but not kill it. Four of the teams would be headed for the semifinal, as they are now. So four top-tier teams would be removed from other bowls.
Let’s take this year as an example. Under this eight-team idea, Penn State is gone from the Rose Bowl, Michigan from the Orange, Oklahoma from the Sugar and Western Michigan from the Cotton. Wisconsin then slides into the Rose Bowl, Oklahoma State the Sugar, with Louisville and Colorado willing and worthy replacements in the Orange and Cotton bowls. There is a trickle down to lower-tier bowls, but it’s worth it.
The real argument for the current format begins with acknowledging that the four-team playoff is a subjective farce. From there, argue this: The debate leading up to it is engaging, the other four New Years’ Six bowls are intriguing matchups and more teams and fan bases have the opportunity to end the season feeling good about life. As a matter of theater, I can’t wait to see Penn State-USC and Michigan-Florida State.
Even in Western Michigan’s case, is taking a stab at Alabama really the healthiest way to end an otherwise remarkable and perhaps once-in-a-generation season? Probably not. Playing Wisconsin in the Cotton Bowl is plenty a big deal.
Yet, if this is truly an FBS championship, crowning a true champion, there should be a path for everyone. And if this is a true champion, the path can’t rely so heavily on the “eye test.” We all see it differently.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.