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For a week, I’ve been taking a lot of heat from people who didn’t agree with my playoff predictions coming into this weekend’s college football championship week. This is not to brag or rub it in the faces of those who thought I was wrong on one count and crazy on the other. I’m not vying for a job at a sports news outlet, either. I’m happy where I am.
Here’s what I posted last week:
8 teams vie for 4 spots: The college football playoff breakdown
My prediction for the four big games:
- Clemson over Miami
- Georgia over Auburn
- Oklahoma over TCU
- Ohio State over Wisconsin
If I’m right, the final playoff picture will look like this:
- Clemson
- Oklahoma
- Georgia
- Alabama (or Ohio State if they win big)
In that scenario, I see Oklahoma playing Alabama in the championship game, unless Ohio State wins big. If they do, then it’ll be Oklahoma versus Clemson.
The Georgia pick wasn’t hard. I thought they were at least equal to if not better than Auburn, and it’s very difficult to beat a great team twice in the same year. The part that got the most abuse from detractors was picking Alabama to take the fourth spot over Ohio State. I was told about the conference title “clause” (as one person called it) in the playoff formula. People screamed “strength of schedule” a lot (though Ohio State’s wasn’t great). They pointed to the committee not wanting two teams from the same conference.
All of those are factors, but what everyone, including most on sports television, failed to notice were two important components. First, the goal is to put in the best four teams that deserve to be in. The tiebreaker are there to help when comparable teams are in the mix for a spot. I didn’t think Ohio State and Alabama were truly comparable, and neither did the committee.
The most important component, however, is consistency for the sake of the process itself. The committee has a tough job. They have to weigh all of the different factors, but at the end of the day they don’t want to appear to be biased for or against a team. Last year, Ohio State benefited from being the better team despite not winning their conference championship. This year, they learned what it was like being on the other end of that scenario.
Had the committee put in Ohio State this year, it would have appeared they were picking their preferences based upon which side of the equation Ohio State was on. By picking Alabama, they can say they did the same thing this year as they did last year. It helped Ohio State then and hurt them now. That’s consistency. That’s fair.
We’ll see how the rest of my predictions pan out next month. In the meantime, get ready for bowl season!
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