FAMILIAR FOES IN FINAL 4
CFP missed unique 2020 shot to make things interesting
IT’S CLEMSON-OSU AND ALABAMA-ND IN CFP SEMIS
THIS was the year. This was time. This was the opportunity. The College Football Playoff could’ve added excitement and intrigue to its event. It had the chance to use the fractured season as a test run for an extended playoff, to follow MLB, the NHL and the NBA.
Instead, the powers-that-be stood still. They didn’t make any changes. They kept the stale status quo.
And so Sunday’s announcement gave us the same predictable teams with the same predictable championship game feeling inevitable. For the sixth time in seven years, Alabama and Clemson were invited, seeded one and two, respectively. For the fourth time, No. 3 Ohio State will be one of the four teams. For the second time, fourth-seeded Notre Dame will be included. So it is teams from the SEC, ACC and Big Ten, though the traditionally independent Irish are spending just one year affiliated with a conference.
Yet again, an undefeated nonpower-conference team was left out. This time it was Cincinnati playing the role of Central Florida, the little guy with no shot. In the seven-year history of the playoff, a Group of Five program has never been included. It hasn’t even finished in the top seven. Cincinnati was ranked eighth on Sunday, behind three-loss Florida and two-loss Oklahoma.
If you line up the résumés, it’s understandable why the Bearcats weren’t really part of the discussion. They had just one win over a top-25 team and their best victory, over No. 24 Tulsa, could hardly compare to Notre Dame defeating No. 2 Clemson and No. 13 North Carolina, or Texas A&M beating No. 7 Florida, or Oklahoma knocking off No. 10 Iowa State and No. 20 Texas.
“No matter the name of the school or the name of the conference, the committee watches the games and fills those four spots with what the committee believes ... are the best four teams in the country,” said Gary Barta, the committee chair.
Barta said had this been a regular year, BYU could’ve been the rare non power-conference school to reach the playoff, since it was scheduled to play five power-conference programs. That, of course, didn’t happen.
He was asked several times if he was concerned that power conferences programs have a monopoly on the playoff, that the sport lacks a Cinderella, and he danced around the question each time. His answer, ultimately, was it is the committee’s job to pick the four best teams.
He’s right. That is its job. The problem doesn’t land with the committee. It is the archaic system that doesn’t allow the committee to include a David, only Goliaths. It gives us the same teams every year. If Alabama and Clemson win their semifinal contests as expected, they will play for the title for the fourth time in five years.
That’s not to say eight teams would lead to a different championship game or even different semifinal pairings.
But maybe we wouldn’t have. Maybe we get an upset. Maybe we get different teams playing for a title. At least, some new programs would have a chance. In this system, only a handful of teams can really dream big.
The playoff could have decided, in the interest of fairness, it was expanding this year, because it would be so hard to evaluate teams fairly due to so few non-conference games and a differing amounts of games being played. On Sunday, Barta brought up the difficult nature of evaluating teams without crossover games.
This could’ve been used as an experiment, to see what an eightteam playoff would be like, to grant bids to the five power conference winners, the highest-ranked Group of Five team and add two wild cards.
College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock told The Post the idea of expanding for just this season was discussed. but the management committee decided it wasn’t the right thing to do.
“Looking back, it was the right thing to do,” Hancock said. “I’m glad we’re not sitting here trying to get in seven playoff games. Getting three played will be plenty of a challenge.”
North Carolina coach Mack Brown and Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher, whose team finished fifth behind Notre Dame, both said Sunday the playoff should be expanded, and use bowls in that expansion. There has been a recent trend of star players sitting out meaningless bowl games to protect their professional interests. This could somewhat solve that problem.
This year, of all years, screamed for innovation and flexibility.
We saw plenty of it during the regular season.
Games were scheduled on the f ly, teams played significantly shorthanded, and players made sacrifices.
But that can-do attitude didn’t extend to the playoff. College football will get more of the same on New Year’s Day and
Jan. 11, the date of the title game. The sport missed a golden opportunity.