College Football Playoff Committee Rewards Losing
As we approach the semifinals of the College Football Playoff at the end of the week, we can examine how the brackets were set up and see that the playoff committee rewarded losing.
Both Penn State, ranked sixth, and Texas, ranked fifth, lost in their conference championship games. The Nittany Lions lost to the Oregon Ducks, while the Longhorns lost to the Georgia Bulldogs. Both Georgia and Oregon are out of the playoffs, but if you look at the road Penn State and Texas took to the semifinals, they were rewarded for their losses.
However, the committee punished the other teams in the College Football Playoff, like SMU and Indiana, for their losses. SMU, for example, lost in the last second of the ACC Championship, its second loss of the season and the only one in the conference.
Meanwhile, Indiana’s only loss in the regular season came at the hands of Ohio State. Again, Indiana had to go on the road against Notre Dame. Similar to Tennessee going on the road to the Horseshoe to play Ohio State, if you look at the path for Penn State and Texas, they were given the easiest roads to the semifinals.
Penn State played SMU, while Texas hosted Clemson. However, if you look at the regular season and these teams were not Penn State and Texas, say they were Tennessee and Indiana, they would not have been given the fifth and sixth seeds in the College Football Playoff.
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That is just a fact. But because they have the brand recognition and the pedigree, does that make it right? No, but that is how the committee works. Their decisions are inconsistent, and, to be honest, they lack logic.
Based on the results, Texas and Penn State should have gone on the road to start the College Football Playoff. We see this all the time in the NFL. With College Football becoming a professional sport, good teams must go on the road to win games and win a title.
Now, could Penn State and Texas have been in the semifinals anyway? Sure, they could have gone on the road and won games, but their path would have been a lot tougher. Maybe one team would have to play Georgia, or another would have to play Oregon. We don’t know because that scenario never happened.
Instead, both teams got an easier path in the playoffs because the College Football Playoff Committee rewarded losing instead what actually happened on the field.