Two things seems certain.
Every new release of the College Football Playoff rankings will bring a new wave of drama.
And a new rationalization that favors the SEC.
Looking up in the rankings this week to a Georgia team that lost at home to four-loss Auburn, and a two-loss Texas team that lost to four-loss Florida and Oklahoma, IU football coach Curt Cignetti wants to know if bad losses still count in determining which teams will play in the CFP.
He used nine emojis to ask his rhetorical questions.
It’s a fair question from the coach of a one-loss reigning national championship program whose only defeat came at the hands of a then full-strength and No. 2 ranked Ohio State squad — by inches. We all know where any reigning national champion SEC program with one-loss to the No. 2 team would be ranked, right?
At the heart of the disparity seems to be a never-ending belief the SEC is a better conference than the Big Ten, despite a growing wave of evidence to the contrary.
Somehow the SEC gets five spots in this week’s CFP bracket (including four two-loss teams) despite an 0-4 record against Big Ten in the last three CFPs, and no national title game appearances during that span. The Big Ten has outscored the SEC 135-54 in those four CFP games, while winning three consecutive national titles.
Over the last three seasons, the SEC is just 3-8 in all CFP games (excluding intra-conference matchups), including a 2-8 record vs. Power 4 teams.
Why exactly is all of this benefit of the doubt gifted to the SEC?
Yes, it is difficult to compare these teams when they don’t play each other. But perhaps the Committee should give more weight to recent postseason performance, and less to popular helmets? Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that in the modern era of the sport, the SEC is closer to a stew of mediocrity than brutal gauntlet of elites?
But when you start from what is proving to be a false premise that every team in the SEC is good, you end up with a never-ending cycle where a disproportionate number of teams from the league will be highly ranked.
Ole Miss beats LSU? Elevate Ole Miss! Florida beats Ole Miss? Elevate Florida! Missouri beats Florida? Elevate Missouri! Ole Miss beats Missouri? Oh crap, ignore that.
But wait, there’s more.
Kentucky beats LSU? Elevate Kentucky! Tennessee beats Kentucky? Elevate Tennessee! But Tennessee lost to South Carolina? Never mind that. The CFP Committee has the three-loss Gamecocks loaded up at No. 17 ready to pounce. It’s. A. Gauntlet. Here.
And while the CFP Committee finds a couple new SEC darlings every week, the Hoosiers managed to drop five spots in the rankings despite not playing a game. Now No. 9, the one-loss reigning national champs have been backed into an elimination corner for the next three weeks. Indiana was passed by a pair of two-loss, you guessed it, SEC teams in the process. And the CFP Committee says it’s not your fault Indiana, you just were on a bye the wrong week.
Uh huh.
ESPN has exclusive rights to broadcast the CFP, and it is a leading player in the SEC’s media rights deal. The two organizations are inextricably linked, and their financial interests aligned. The more SEC teams in the CFP, the better for both sides.
“That’s why you see all these SEC teams up there, and some good two-loss teams from the Big Ten not quite as high,” Cignetti said earlier this month.
Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti successfully led the charge to a 24-team playoff next year. The impetus for Petitti was the very SEC bias we’ve outlined here. A 24-team field is likely to give more Big Ten teams a chance that the Committee would have excluded in the 12-team format.
But the new format is still likely to disproportionately send the Big Ten on the road, which will only serve to reinforce the bias if the ranked home teams hold serve like they typically do.
Petitti should have pushed to eliminate the Committee altogether, and instead gone back to a field determined by a computer model.
The old BCS algorithm is still functioning, and wouldn’t you know it, in this week’s rankings, IU is ahead of both Tennessee and Texas.
Because when you eliminate the bias, there are bad SEC losses, and they should matter more than logos and helmets.
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