CFP nothing more than a Power 5 invitational
Independents like UConn, Group of 5 schools will never have a shot at making playoff
During a December week when Bob Diaco was fired again — this time as Purdue defensive coordinator — who would have guessed football would get on Nickelodeon before a Group of Five school would sniff the College Football Playoff?
(Everybody’s hand shoots up.)
As absurd as it sounded in 2016 when the former UConn coach proposed games alongside SpongeBob and Patrick (Star, not Mahomes), Mr. Fish Cakes proved to be Mr. Clairvoyant. The NFL announced that a wild-card game will be on Nickelodeon on Jan. 10.
But Cincinnati in the four-team national college playoffs next month? You cannot be serious.
Just when you thought the Power Five conferences and CFP selection committee couldn’t make it stink worse, the selection committee said, “Hold my money bags, we’ll go it alone.”
When the lackeys for the unchecked cartel that runs major college football were finished this week, there was poor AAC Commissioner Mike Aresco desperately waving his arms and shouting at a mob that
doesn’t listen. Hasn’t listened for the seven years of its existence.
Aresco went on the SEC Network and said the selection committee needs to do some “soul searching.” Aresco assumed it had a soul. He had the next part half right when he said it was “undermining its credibility with rankings that defy logic and common sense and fairness.”
Central Florida had its résumé ignored in past years, Cincinnati in this bizarre year, etc … the rankings do defy logic and fairness. Yet when it comes to the Group of Five and the handful of independents, it’s incorrect to say the CFP has credibility to undermine. That credibility is gone.
“Seeing the results from the other day and having competed in the AAC, it didn’t surprise me,” UConn coach Randy Edsall said Thursday. “It’s like they don’t want somebody from the Group of Five to be involved in the top four.
“You’ve had UCF. Now you have Cincinnati. I don’t think they want it. When you hear some of the answers that come out, it’s perplexing. It’s very perplexing.”
Very perplexing.
“I never thought I’d say it, but if this continues, bring the BCS and the computers back because it would be a fairer system than what I’m seeing now,” Aresco said.
Coupled with the Knight Commission’s recent recommendation that the best way to fix the NCAA’s “broken governance model” was to remove FBS teams from the NCAA and have them operate as separate entities, I have one question:
Same one I’ve been asking for a number of years.
How can non-Power Five schools in the FBS with designs to continue to play the highest-level football — this includes UConn — conceivably afford to run with the Power Five schools? The deck is so stacked against them it’s obscene. With 80 percent of the billions taken in from television revenue commandeered by the 65 Power Five schools, how can the bottom line not grind the other 65 out of existence?
Last week, the Big Ten simply changed its rules to make sure Ohio State, which hadn’t played the requisite number of games, got into the championship game and a step closer to the CFP. The ACC made sure Clemson and Notre Dame didn’t suffer losses or injuries by ending their regular seasons and sending the two directly to the league title game … to help both get into the CFP.
So there’s Florida, a 23point favorite at home, losing to a 3-5 LSU team, 37-34. A massive loss by any measure for the Gators, any measure except the CFP. Florida dropped to 11 in the AP poll, but only from No. 6 to No. 7 in the CFP. If Florida beats Alabama in the SEC title game, there’s a chance both could make the CFP.
The Big 12 and Pac-12 are power conferences mostly in name only this year. Still, Iowa State, 8-2, moved from
seventh to sixth in the CFP without playing last weekend. Although undefeated Cincinnati is No. 6 in the AP poll, the Bearcats have dropped from seventh to eighth to ninth in the CFP by not playing since Nov. 21. An excellent Cincinnati team is locked out of the playoffs before the league championship games.
As a matter of comparison, Iowa State lost 31-14 to Louisiana of the Sun Belt and won four of its games by a touchdown or less.
Yet undefeated Coastal Carolina (No. 9 in the AP) of the Sun Belt, which beat Louisiana, is back at No. 13 in the CFP.
The Buckeyes, 5-0, didn’t move from No. 4 despite not playing the last two weeks. So COVID is responsible for dropping teams, raising teams or keeping them even. COVID is so powerful evidently it has a vote on the selection committee.
Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic clinched the 2020 Heisman Trophy of Zoom calls the other day when she asked selection committee chairman Gary Barta, “A big-picture question: When Iowa State loses to Louisiana and Florida loses to an unranked LSU team and those don’t play a role in the rankings, what’s the point of playing games?”
Expand the playoff to eight games? Good idea. Cincinnati would still be out.
Look, with varying games played and schedule mishaps, it was going to be a difficult year to rank teams. The conferences made their beds. They came up with their own COVID rules. They decided whether to start early, start late or not start at all. In running through the numbers for UConn, one of three FBS schools deciding not to play in 2020, Edsall said only 20 of his players were untouched by (23) positive tests or contact tracing. There was always going to be a large number of inequities and they will only multiply with 350 teams in Division I basketball.
Yet the unapologetic manner in which the college cartel and the CFP selection committee games the system is unfathomable. Talk about an electoral college that needs to be dumped.
Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News is dead-on when he calls the CFP an invitational. And the Knight Commission’s Arne Duncan was dead-on when he told ESPN all the other NCAA sports look and walk like a
duck and FBS football looks like a pterodactyl. The difference in income and impact is wildly disproportional.
The last thing the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 want is to invite the rest of those irritants to more of their pot of gold.
“Moving forward, I think there will be changes within the structure of college football,” Edsall said. “What they are, I have no idea. But if the Power Five is going to do what they do, they might have their own thing and the Group of Five would have their own playoffs.
“This is the problem with college football. There’s really not one person or organization that controls it. It’s not like the NCAA with the basketball tournament. The NCAA is just a compliance and rules person for college football. Something is going to have to change. Why keep going through this? You know the people in the nonPower Five have no opportunity to get into the playoff system.”
Edsall said he is for all conference champions of the various FBS leagues to get into a playoff. That would mean expanding the playoffs. If not, in his opinion they should separate. Can some equitable deal be struck? Would the Group of Five fall under the FBS or NCAA umbrella?
After spending a year studying college athletics, the Knight Commission, an independent group of athletic and academic leaders, recommended the FBS teams (not the schools) split from the NCAA and the FCS teams (Yale, Central Connecticut, Sacred Heart) remain in the NCAA. The commission pointed out the NCAA will save more than $60 million by removing FBS factors and can use the extra funds to distribute to FCS schools in place of the lucrative “buy” games with FBS powers.
Although the commission did not have a specific recommendation for the Group of Five schools, it did have numbers. The budgets of the 130 FBS schools range from $16 million to $220 million. And while revenues of the non-Power Five schools have risen 47 percent, expenses have risen 92 percent. They’re being bled dry.
Who is going to stop the bleeding?