Brando: Tide entitled come playoff time
Tim Brando is never shy with his opinions about college football, and the longtime television host and analyst said last week that he believes the current postseason structure is not serving the game as well as it should.
In an interview on WNSPFM, 105.5, in Mobile, Ala., Brando — who now does college football and basketball playby-play for Fox Sports — said three “blue blood” programs are virtually “automatic” to make this year’s four-team College Football Playoff. That’s not good for the game, he said.
“I submit to you right now that Alabama, Ohio State and Clemson are almost automatic for this year,” Brando said. “So that leaves only one other spot. It could be another team from the SEC, particularly as weak as these conference schedules or non-conference schedules are in the Southeastern Conference.”
As he did in an appearance on the Paul Finebaum Show on the SEC Network last week, Brando cited weak 2018 non-conference schedules for SEC powers Alabama and Georgia. He also noted that with perennial opponent Tennessee currently struggling as a program, Alabama’s SEC crossover games were not exactly worthy tests either.
Brando said one possible fix would be to require all Power 5 conferences to play the same number of conference games. Currently, the Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 play nine conference games each year, while the SEC and ACC play eight.
But the biggest issue, he said, was the College Football Playoff selection committee’s habit of giving the benefit of the doubt to so-called “blue blood” programs after they lose. As an example, he cited Alabama falling only to No. 5 overall (from No. 1) after losing by 12 points in its regular-season finale at Auburn last year.
“If you have a body of work over a long time, and a tremendous history, you’re considered one of the blue bloods of the game, you’re not going to fall as precipitously as others when you lose a game,” Brando said. “Check the numbers on how many spots did Alabama fall? I will guarantee you won’t find them falling more than four spots in any given situation when they’ve lost a game, whether it was the two losses to Ole Miss they’ve had in recent years or the loss to Auburn (in 2017). The committee knew that by having them in the fifth position, that somebody had to lose the Georgia-Auburn game in the SEC championship, so Alabama was poised to be right in that spot.
“Other teams when they are undefeated and lose a game, they drop seven, eight, five spots, sometimes even out of the top 10 altogether. That’s what I mean by ‘privileged’ and by the way, they’re not the only privileged team. Ohio State’s another one, I believe Clemson’s another one. Clemson lost Syracuse, for God’s sake. They were a bad team, and [Clemson] still got in. So, it’s not just Alabama.”