It's not really like me to go back-to-back on topics like this, but things keep happening that I feel compelled to comment on.
Turns out, much of what I preached in my latest column was wrong. Miami did get in. The committee is capable of overlooking bad losses. We really do not know what they are going to do from one year to the next.
I'm frustrated because I have been defending the CFP committee, which is a lonely path indeed. It's not that I think they are great people, incorruptible and above reproach or questioning.
It's that I think you can make a very strong argument for CFP inclusion for somewhere between 15-20 teams. If you cherry-pick your metrics well enough, and/or are a strong enough writer or orator or tweeter, you can absolutely make it sound like leaving out X team is an absolute travesty, an enraging miscarriage of justice.
And that's exactly what people do. For all of those teams. So, the CFP committee cannot win.
Still, even with that sympathy at my core, it was tested when they did not drop Alabama one iota from the penultimate rankings to the final rankings.
That means we have our first 3-loss team in the 12-team playoff. Maybe Alabama is deserving of being the first 3-loss team in the 12-team playoff — this is only our second edition — but they got hammered on Saturday. And, they have the worst loss (to Florida State), by far, of any included at-large team. This is something I spent half of my last column on, how much the committee hates bad losses. But on the heels of that loss, and getting blitzed in their own conference championship game, they don't even fall a single spot. I, uh, do not agree with that.
I guess maybe the got a ton of credit for being in the SEC championship game? But of course BYU got no such love for making their power conference championship game, with fewer and better losses than Bama.
I have a problem with giving special consideration to championship game participation anyway, since so often teams get there by virtue of winning a bazillion-way tiebreaker. That's how Duke got to the ACC Championship Game. That's how both Alabama and Georgia got to the SEC Championship Game.
But this questionable act by the committee absolutely pales in comparison to pushing Miami past Notre Dame when neither of them played Saturday, and neither of them played a team that played Saturday.
That has a lot of people asking what the purpose is of the weekly bracket reveals when, as evidenced by Miami leapfrogging Notre Dame, they pointedly mean nothing.
That's probably the wrong question, though, because although the weekly shows in the run-up to the final bracket reveal really do mean nothing, they will nonetheless continue because they make their backers and controlling interests money.
This, by the way, is why conference championship games will continue forevermore, even if having them damages a conference's chance at at-large bids: making money trumps setting up a member school's hopes of making the playoffs.
Hunter Yurachek, the designated fall guy for the committee, has an explanation, but it's laughable. "We didn't compare Miami and Notre Dame before because they weren't ranked next to each other in our rankings. But since BYU lost and fell, Notre Dame and Miami were ranked next to each other and we could compare them."
Go ahead, look up his quote. I'm only barely paraphrasing.
It's a joke, it's a disgrace, it's unconscionable, it's all those loaded words that are normally thrown around too loosely and casually, which usually makes me recoil. But the shoe fits here. Congratulations, CFP committee, you lost one of your only sympathizers outside your own friends and family.
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