There’s been a lot of blowback from last night’s initial
CFP release – some of it justified, some of it noise.
Up front I will say that I am NOT an Alabama fan, nor I do
particularly care if the Tide lose all of their games. But I respect the hell
out of Nick Saban and think that the reaction to Alabama being slotted at
number two is a bit over the top, for a couple of reasons.
First -- it’s not like they have a shitty resume. Most thought the choice for No. 2 would come down to Bama or Michigan State. The Spartans have been great this season and were resilient and fun to watch and gritty in beating what is a pretty good Michigan team -- a top 10 team by the committee’s own admission.
Sparty is unbeaten, which is great – but is not by itself an automatic reason to make them No. 2. Alabama has the edge in SOS (13 to 50), Game Control (2 to 10) and ranked wins (2 to 1, albeit none in the top 10). MSU holds a slight edge in Strength of Record (2 to 4). Even efficiency metrics, which the committee doesn't use, give Alabama has a big edge.
People are acting like putting the Crimson Tide at two was a crime
worse than Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. It wasn’t. Alabama could have been
three or could have been two. The gap wasn’t that big, and Bama checks more
boxes than Michigan State.
So there’s that.
The other part of the equation – the dumber part – has been furthered by media types, mostly on the radio. I won’t name names, but one is a former player and the other is a regular sports talk host. They uttered maybe the single most inane thing I’ve heard in a long time – that the committee put Alabama at 2 so that if it loses a close contest to Georgia in the SEC title game it can sneak it into the playoff.
To these folks I say – have you been asleep in class for seven years?
History lesson time: since the advent of the CFP in 2014 there have been seven two-loss conference champions in the mix. Chronologically, they are:
Stanford 2015, Strength of Record 5, Strength of Schedule 13
Penn State 2016, SOR 5, SOS 40
Oklahoma 2016, SOR 6, SOS 15
Ohio State 2017, SOR 7, SOS 36
USC 2017, SOR 8, SOS 11
2019 Oregon, SOR 10, SOS 35
2020 Oklahoma, SOR 5, SOS 19
Wanna know what they all have in common? NONE OF THEM MADE THE CFP.
And yet media types believe that a two-loss NON-CHAMPION is in line to sneak into the proceedings?
Alabama is at two right now, which is fine. Yet lurking in the weeds are Michigan State, Oregon, Ohio State and Oklahoma, any or all of whom could be one-loss conference champions. If that happens, there are your other three teams. No Bama.
The committee chair speaks in double talk as well as anyone, and should probably come out to the ESPN interview wearing a clown nose so that we can be on alert to not believe anything he says. The committee moves the goalposts, isn’t transparent and uses stats favorably for some teams and the same stats negatively for others. That’s just how they operate.
Be that as it may, it has been VERY consistent about a couple of things – it has valued league championships (only two of the 28 berths were non-champs), and it has pretty much dismissed two-loss teams. Even when they finished at 5 in the final rankings the committee said they really weren’t that close because of the extra loss.
So believe what the committee does, not what it says. History is a great predictor, and history says that if Alabama loses twice, and the second loss is in the SEC title game, it isn’t getting into the playoff. It actually has a better chance getting in if it loses to Auburn then beats Georgia for the league crown. Why? Because it’s a champion.The Tide will probably end up with an SOS somewhere in the area of 10-15, and could be anywhere from 2-5 in Strength of Record, depending on whom it beats down the stretch. Similar resumes have been left on the outside looking in, because championships and single losses have been the magic formula.
I don’t expect that to change.
There will be those who counter with “it’s Bama.” Those people I cannot help, as they won’t bring research or logic to the table. “It’s Bama” isn’t an answer. I mean, it IS, but not a good one.
Could I be wrong? Sure I could. And if the committee somehow
chooses a two-loss non-champion Alabama over a one-loss Oklahoma or one-loss
Oregon or even one-loss (non-champ) Michigan State, I will admit that I was
wrong. Question is, if two-loss non-champ Bama DOESN’T get selected, will the
folks who said it was "guaranteed" to happen be as willing to issue a mea culpa?
