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The college football season is over. What does the new 12-team college football playoff bracket look like. What did the committee do right and wrong? Let's take a look!
The College Football Playoff Committee put themselves in an impossible situation. They ranked teams with weak schedules and/or no ranked wins too high and boxed themselves in. They couldn't get out of it and SEC teams kept losing. That's the storyline going around.
What the committee ended up doing was kicking the SEC hornet's nest. They're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore (so they say). We can argue the semantics of this all you want, but I still say that a three-loss team doesn't need to be competing for a National Championship. I will die on this hill.
The fans should be more upset about the seeding. We'll review that and who has a legitimate gripe about being left out in the cold. For the record, a 16-team playoff wouldn't have helped much. It would have still left out Army, Miami, BYU, and Colorado...or three of the four. See? Why are we even arguing about three-loss teams?
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College Football Playoff Bracket
The first CFP bracket is here
Did they get it right? pic.twitter.com/J7MLq7hs8f
— Unnecessary Roughness (@UnnecRoughness) December 8, 2024
First, we should explain how it works. There are five automatic bids to the playoff. The five highest-ranked conference winners are all in automatically. That will be the Power Four conference winners plus the next-highest-ranked conference champion.
The problem with this as the bracket shows is that conference champions automatically get the four byes. That created an insanely tough road for a few of the teams with Championship aspirations.
There are a few glaring issues. First is Oregon's draw. They would have to face Tennessee or Ohio State on a neutral field for their first playoff game. Meanwhile, Boise State, because they are a conference champion, gets either Penn State or SMU. They had a combined one win against ranked teams this season.
The draws given to Penn State and Texas for the schedules they played are pure garbage.
Everyone will talk about SMU/Bama and ignore this robbery in plain sight.
— Wes Rucker (@wesrucker247) December 8, 2024
The undisputed best team in the country should be so lucky. Many claimed that the five seed was the one you really wanted and that may be true. Texas gets Clemson, and if they win, Arizona State. Those are two conference champions, but they are two of the weaker ones. While we're on the subject, Texas didn't beat a ranked team either. It's a weird world.
Oregon has two SEC teams, a Big Ten (18) team, and two conference champions on its side of the bracket. Georgia has two Big Ten teams and an independent that lost to Northern Illinois. On paper, the draw for Georgia looks much easier. Maybe it's payback for shunning the Bulldogs last year.
Another thing that the committee went too far with was head-to-head results. South Carolina lost to both Alabama and Mississippi early in the season but had no bad losses.
Who is complaining And Why:
Alabama:
The Tide have wins over Georgia, South Carolina, and LSU. However, they lost to 6-6 Vanderbilt and 6-6 Oklahoma in their three losses. You know my view on three-loss teams, but losing to the worst Oklahoma team in the last decade is an automatic disqualifier for me. South Carolina had this Oklahoma team beaten within the first three minutes of the game. Alabama lost by three touchdowns.
My prediction had Alabama out and I'm shocked the committee had the stones to do it. However, they almost had to. They forced themselves into a corner. SMU was ranked eighth before the ACC Championship. They are repeatedly on the record as saying the conference championship game shouldn't knock a team out.
Their choice was to drop SMU below an idle three-loss team, thereby punishing them for having to play an extra game, or upset the monster money maker that is the SEC. It was a no-win situation, really. Especially after the Florida State debacle last year.
Mississippi:
Lane Kiffin has been openly critical about the strength of schedule of his team (and Alabama and South Carolina by default). The SEC is so mad that they are discussing paying to opt out of the agreed-upon home-and-home series with Power 4 schools. Never mind that all of the SEC schools' bad losses were within the conference.
I hope the CFP Selection Committee understands the full consequences of the decisions it made.
That group of men and women took a chainsaw to premier non-conference games and perhaps even changed the way leagues will schedule league games.
I don't think people understand that.
— Wes Rucker (@wesrucker247) December 8, 2024
Ole Miss lost to a 7-5 Florida team and a Kentucky team that only won one conference game...AT HOME. That loss should have kept Mississippi out regardless.
South Carolina:
This is the team that I was advocating for. One of the premises for playoff expansion was to let in teams who lost early but were playing well down the stretch. South Carolina won six straight games in the best conference in the country (according to the committee and ESPN) and finished it off with a road win against the ACC Champs.
Another thing in favor of the Gamecocks is that all three of their losses were to ranked teams. In one of those games, they had three touchdowns wiped off the board because of penalties. At least one of those was a bad call. If the referees had gotten the calls right in the LSU game, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
Greg Sankey has no one to blame but himself when the league only gets 3 teams in tomorrow.
If you wanted 4 teams in it was simple…
- Hold your officials accountable
- Don’t make such a massive scheduling imbalance within your own leagueIt was that simple.
— Chris Marler (@VernDumbquist) December 8, 2024
BYU:
The Cougars won 10 games, including handing SMU its only regular-season loss. Lost back-to-back games to a white-hot Kansas team and eventual conference champ Arizona State.
Army:
Their only loss was to fourth-ranked Notre Dame. Army's strength of schedule was higher than one-loss Indiana's.
What Did The Committee Do Wrong?
The fact that Boise State is a 3 seed and Arizona State is a 4 seed tells you everything you need to know about how broken this system is.
— 🅱️🅰️Ⓜ️ (@_bigbam_) December 8, 2024
The automatic byes for conference champions are a problem. It created an imbalance in the playoff bracket that inadvertently puts the only undefeated team in college football this year in a bad spot.
A reminder: The strength of schedule argument is largely on realignment and by association commissioners and rightsholders who consolidated leagues and made it certain that HALF the teams in a league wouldn't play each other. That leaves a schedule that is an annual crapshoot in…
— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) December 8, 2024
While letting SMU in may have been the right move, letting Indiana in may not have been.
#Indiana (11-1) Opponents have a combined record of 57-89. SOS is 87. They have ONE win over teams with winning records: 7-5 Michigan.
— Jeremy Wheeler (@Jwheelz007) December 8, 2024
Again, the committee jumped the shark by ranking Indiana so high to begin with. They determined early on that the strength of schedules would not be a valid argument this year (even though it's listed in the committee bylaws) by ranking Indiana, Miami, and Notre Dame so high.
Indiana played seven of the bottom eight teams in the Big Ten (18). That said, Nebraska and Washington are 6-6 teams. You know...like teams Alabama lost to twice.
The committee completely ignored which teams were playing well at the end of the season. Arizona State played its way in. South Carolina beat Clemson, the eventual ACC Champ, on the road and only moved up one spot. Alabama beat 5-7 Auburn and moved up three slots in the last week of the season.
What Did The Committee Do Right?
Believe it or not, there are some things. We're not all about negativity here. We have to start with some of the matchups. Ohio State-Tennessee is a marquee matchup that maybe only the playoffs can bring. How about Indiana and Notre Dame? That will be the biggest football game in state history!
It let SMU in. I don't think a team should be punished for losing a conference championship game in a playoff in which 12 teams are let in. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but did you really think the committee would destroy all meaning of the conference championship game?
What this committee is doing to protect conference title games and the money generated from them is so, so, so, so, so wrong.
Needs to be called out.
— Wes Rucker (@wesrucker247) December 8, 2024
Pissing Alabama and its fans (and the SEC) off for one season is one thing. Relegating the biggest cash grabs for the conferences useless would have had much larger ramifications.
Be honest with yourself, the CFP is and always has been driven by ratings. When it comes down to it, a team from the 5th largest town in the 24th largest state, although excellent at Football, is not getting picked over the pride of the Dallas metroplex.
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) December 8, 2024
Having the first-round games at home stadiums. The quarterfinals should be played at home too. Otherwise, what's the use of getting a bye? Don't you think Boise, Oregon, and Arizona State would have rather had one more game if it were a home game?
Conclusion:
The argument over 12th, 13th, 14th, etc. was every bit the disaster that I envisioned. This would have been a good year to have four teams. Oregon, Penn State, Georgia, and let the argument be between Notre Dame and Ohio State.
Honestly, 16 teams make way more sense. What would that look like? Oregon would play Army. Georgia would play Mississippi again. Boise would draw South Carolina. How about Arizona State and Alabama? That satiates most of the irate fans.
I will withhold judgment and see how this plays out. I've always been against expansion because I want the regular season to mean something. It did this year, but only because of the novelty of matchups we aren't used to seeing. What happens when that wears off?
Enjoy the month-long college football playoffs? Who do they think they are, the NBA?
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