As more and more people come down hard on the College Football Playoff for moving forward without unbeaten ACC champion Florida State — or defend it with certitude on the grounds that Alabama was more deserving of the fourth playoff spot — I wonder how so many can miss the point.
Since 2014, it was almost inevitable that an outcome as messy as this one would occur. It’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner.
That year — the first of the four-team playoff — TCU fell from third in the next-to-last playoff rankings to sixth without playing a game, let alone losing one. How did that happen? Mainly because the Big 12 was the only Power 5 conference without a championship game at the time. Other contenders improved their résumés on the first Saturday of December; TCU (and Big 12 mate Baylor, in a similar position) did not. The Big 12 rectified that going into the 2015 season, since which time there always has been the potential for at least five teams, full-fledged conference champs all, to be richly deserving of playoff inclusion.
This season, there actually are six teams — at least six — that would have expected their records to be good enough, based on playoff selection history, for top-four spots. Unbeaten Michigan, Washington and FSU are the three most obvious ones. One-loss conference champs Texas and Alabama would have been no-brainers in nearly every playoff preceding this one. One-loss non-champ Georgia would have made it at least as often as not, on the strength of the committee’s “best four teams” directive, and fellow one-loss non-champ Ohio State is in a similar boat.
To think there are four definite right answers here is to give the current system — which ends after this season — more credit than it deserves. The four-team format was fatally flawed from the start; we’re just now seeing how nonsensical it is. Expanding to 12 teams will do away with this particular problem.
Anyway, that’s college football.
Do you know whose rankings never fail to be far more illogical and foolish? College basketball’s. It took me a while to get there, but, yes, this column is at least as much about that.
We can start almost anywhere — with who’s in the Top 25, who isn’t, who’s high, who’s low — and find utter nonsense.
For example, there were 14 unbeaten teams left in major college basketball entering Tuesday, but only eight of them were ranked. Four of the six that were unranked — Ole Miss, South Carolina, TCU and Cincinnati — come from elite conferences. Does it mean anything that 7-0 Cincinnati destroyed Georgia Tech, a team that recently beat mighty Duke, by 35? Apparently not. A fifth unranked team, Princeton, was in the Sweet 16 in March.
Can anyone out there explain why 6-2 Marquette is eighth in this week’s poll, while 6-2 Wisconsin — to which the Golden Eagles lost 75-64 over the weekend — is 23rd? If it were football, such hypocrisy would be outrageous. In basketball, it’s somehow normal.
I have Wisconsin 14th and Marquette 15th on my AP ballot. I also have Colorado State 10th and Creighton 12th. Why the Rams before the Bluejays? It’s not complicated: CSU is 8-0 and blasted Creighton by 21 on a neutral court. Yet Creighton is 10th and CSU 13th in the current poll. What planet are we on? I’d lay into my fellow voters even more for that, but I’m sure I’m as nonsensical as they are in other cases.
If somebody can tell me why Miami should be at No. 15 days after being blown out 95-73 by Kentucky, which is at No. 16, I’m listening.
I ranked Florida Atlantic ninth even though it dropped a home game to four-loss Bryant. Who? Exactly. Upon review, I’m not particularly proud of that one.
Illinois is ranked, but Northwestern isn’t. (Both were on my ballot.) How much sense does that make considering the Wildcats were the better team last season and already have beaten No. 1-ranked Purdue this season?
“That game ranks right up there with the highest-level games I’ve ever been a part of,” Wildcats coach Chris Collins said after Friday’s 92-88 overtime upset of the Boilermakers. “I think people saw we’ve got a good group.”
Did they see it? Because they voted like they didn’t.
Tennessee is ranked even after losing three in a row. Duke is ranked despite three losses, two of them coming in its last two games against unranked Arkansas and Georgia Tech.
Dick Vitale is a fellow voter. With all due respect to the wonderful Dickie V, his ballot is neither scintillating nor sensational. Vitale has Tennessee 12th, Duke 13th, Villanova 19th … wait, Villanova? The same Villanova that has lost to fellow Philadelphia schools Penn, Saint Joseph’s and Drexel? Villanova might not be the 19th-best team in Philly.
You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t find the football playoff rankings to be as nutty and wrong as some of you do. I think the best four teams probably are, in whatever order, Michigan, Alabama, Georgia and Texas. But I’m happy to see Washington — after two wins against Oregon — in it. And I’m bummed for FSU, but somebody had to be the unlucky No. 5.
NOTE: Chicago State University has accepted an invitation to join the Northeast Conference in the fall of 2024. The NEC’s membership will consist of eight schools, the others being Central Connecticut State, Fairleigh Dickinson, Le Moyne, Long Island University, St. Francis (Pa.), Stonehill and Wagner.
AP Top 25
1. Arizona, 2. Kansas, 3. Houston, 4. Purdue, 5. UConn, 6. Baylor, 7. Gonzaga, 8. Marquette, 9. North Carolina, 10. Creighton, 11. Florida Atlantic, 12. Texas, 13. Colorado State, 14. BYU, 15. Miami, 16. Kentucky, 17. Tennessee, 18. James Madison, 19. Oklahoma, 20. Illinois, 21. Texas A&M, 22. Duke, 23. Wisconsin, 24. Clemson, 25. San Diego State.
(Click here to see the poll in more complete list form.)
My ballot
1. Arizona, 2. Kansas, 3. Houston, 4. Purdue, 5. UConn, 6. Baylor, 7. Gonzaga, 8. North Carolina, 9. Florida Atlantic, 10. Colorado State, 11. BYU, 12. Creighton, 13. Texas, 14. Wisconsin, 15. Marquette, 16. Ohio State, 17. Clemson, 18. Illinois, 19. Oklahoma, 20. James Madison, 21. San Diego State, 22. Kentucky, 23. Miami, 24. Northwestern, 25. Virginia.
(Click here and then on “all voters” to see each voter’s individual ballot.)
