LIVE ’DOGS
TWO-LOSS GEORGIA DESERVES PLAYOFF SHOT AFTER TAKING ALABAMA TO LIMIT
FORGET the metrics and ignore the numbers, even if they are mostly tilted in Georgia’s favor. Trust your eyes. If you watched Georgia and Oklahoma play Saturday, if you followed both schools this season, the College Football Playoff committee’s choice is simple.
The Bulldogs, after nearly upsetting Nick Saban and supposedly unbeatable Alabama, are not only one of the four best teams in the sport, the argument can be made they are No. 2. One-loss Oklahoma can’t reasonably make that statement. Neither can Jekyll and Hyde Ohio State, which needed to prove last week’s rout of Michigan wasn’t a fluke and instead struggled to put away four–loss Northwestern in the Big Ten title game until midway through the fourth quarter. The point of the playoff is to take the four best teams. Not the team with fewer losses because it plays in a weaker conference. The committee can’t be held prisoner by league champions or number of losses. Saban gave them the answer to what shouldn’t be a difficult question by saying he didn’t want to see Georgia again.
Georgia entered Saturday ranked fourth by the committee. How does losing by a touchdown scored in the final minute merit moving down? If anything, the Bulldogs should move up and switch places with No. 3 Notre Dame despite having two losses.
They gave mighty Alabama all it could handle, outplaying the Crimson Tide for most of the SEC Championship, holding a two-touchdown lead for large stretches of this classic showdown, before dropping a 35-28 heartbreaker. It was better in the trenches, and it had the playmakers to match Alabama, the team most experts have virtually handed the national championship for weeks, the powerhouse that entered beating the opposition by an average of 35.2 points per game.
Yes, the Bulldogs have two losses,
including an ugly 36-16 loss at 10thranked LSU on Oct 13. A two-loss team has never reached the playoff. But those two top-10 games are two more than Oklahoma played this year.
Georgia has been a different team since the LSU defeat, hammering No. 9 Florida and No. 14 Kentucky by a combined 36 points and significantly outplaying Auburn. At the moment, Oklahoma and Georgia both have three wins over top-25 teams in the committee’s rankings and Georgia two. But after No. 23 Iowa State nearly fell to FCS foe Drake, it’s likely the Sooners will have just two. Georgia has eight wins over teams .500 or better. Oklahoma has one less.
There will be plenty of complaining from the other power conferences, particularly the Big 12 and the Big Ten, if the SEC gets two teams again. Perhaps, this would lead the powers-that-be to make the right decisions and expand the playoff to give a non-Power Five program an invite because right now those schools have no chance at being included. Central Florida just completed its second straight perfect season and isn’t even in the discussion.
The committee needs to ask itself this: Can they see Oklahoma giving Alabama a game like Georgia just did? Can they see the Sooners’ 109th- ranked defense, a unit that allowed 40 points to Kansas, limiting Alabama? As impressive as Heisman Trophy candidate Kyler Murray and Oklahoma’s offense has been, averaging 50.2 points per game, they’ve done that damage in the defenseless Big 12. Their best wins have come against No. 14 Texas and No. 16 West Virginia, neither of whom can boast a top-50 scoring defense. That’s a far cry from the teams Georgia has piled up points against.
Georgia didn’t finish off Alabama on Saturday afternoon. It blew a 14point lead. This isn’t about rewarding that. But that performance — at least — proved the Bulldogs are among the four best teams in the country.
Leaving them out would be a disservice to the playoff.