Committee picked the best teams right now
It is probably just a coincidence that the College Football Playoff selection committee chose the four teams that would have the best TV ratings when they play.
What happened to Florida State was a tragedy and it wasn’t being ignored by the committee, but losing quarterback Jordan Travis, who was the heart of the Seminoles offense passing for 2,755 yards and 20 touchdowns and rushing for 417 yards and 7 touchdowns, was too big of a loss.
Travis finished his college career as the program’s all-time leader in offensive yards with 10,676.
FSU was not the same team without him.
After watching the ACC
Championship Game no one other than a die-hard Seminoles fan was looking to watch their next game.
The same can be said about Iowa which emphasized how bad its offense was by getting shutout in the Big Ten Championship.
Michigan just went through the motions in its 26-0 win because it knew the only way Iowa could score would be off turnovers.
So what the selection committee did was pick the four best teams at this point in the season.
It is highly doubtful the Big Ten or SEC champion was ever going to be left out of the playoff because they are the two most powerful conferences in college football bar none.
That said it seemed tacky and classless for the Texas Longhorn fans to boo Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark while he was making the trophy presentation after their team won that conference’s championship.
If the Longhorns win the national championship it will be as a Big 12 member, not the SEC, which it doesn’t join until next year.
By the way, there was no way 12-1 Texas was being left out of the playoff for Georgia or FSU, not after beating Alabama 34-24 in Tuscaloosa, Ala. It doesn’t matter it was on Sept. 9, head-to-head competition still should be the ultimate deciding factor.
Give ’Bama some credit for it, but Georgia played its worst game of the season last Saturday. A 27-24 loss to the Crimson Tide ended the Bulldogs’ quest to become the first team to three-peat a national championship since the polls were created.
Georgia came out like it might walk away with an easy win but Alabama quickly made adjustments and proved its defense was something to be reckoned with too.
Maybe it is another coincidence the bowl folks pitted Georgia against Florida State. If the Bulldogs get their chinstraps off their shoes and play their game it will justify the committee’s decision to leave the Seminoles out.
Of course, one argument against Alabama is they were one play away from being eliminated from consideration when it played Auburn.
Alabama faced fourthand-goal from the Auburn 31. It didn’t matter to the Tide there were only 43 seconds to play, they were in a do-or-die situation and to their credit they ran the perfect play.
Jalen Milroe made the perfect throw to Isaiah Bond who made the perfect catch in the corner of the end zone and the Crimson Tide survived 27-24, advanced to the SEC Championship Game and walked away the undisputed 2023 conference champions, securing their spot in the Final Four.
Had Alabama lost to Auburn and then beat Georgia it might have been the first time since the playoff began in 2015 there would have not been a SEC team in the field.
Instead, for the eighth time Alabama made it and for the first time an undefeated Power 5 conference champion did not, but this is the last time there will only be four teams.
The field expands to 12 teams next season, but the controversy won’t end, not when the top four seeds get a big advantage with a firstround bye.