USA TODAY International Edition
Clemson unworried not being in Top 4
Dabo Swinney did not know where his Clemson Tigers would land in the initial College Football Playoff Top 25 when he met with reporters Tuesday afternoon. But he was ready.
“It just doesn’t matter,” he said, in a statement that was probably parroted by every other coach in college football – and which should be echoed by every fan but won’t be.
“If we’re 2, 3, 4, 15, it doesn’t matter,” Swinney went on. “It’s not worth the brain cells.”
True enough. But for the record, Clemson is No. 5 in the first rankings. The top four are Ohio State, LSU, Alabama and Penn State.
Two Big Ten teams. Two Southeastern Conference teams. All over college football, brain cells buzzing, because again the results appeared to have been derived by a curious amalgam of methods.
This team is ranked here because of the eye test. That team is ranked there because of its resume. It’s a moving target, with wildly inconsistent reasoning from one team to the next. Just like it’s always been, from the beginning. Just like it’s designed to be.
Oregon athletics director Rob Mullens, the selection committee chairman, has a thankless, basically impossible job. Each week, he gets sent out to answer questions and explain – sort of – how the rankings shook out like they did. The problem is there’s likely never a real consensus among the 13 members as to why. But Mullens is tasked with saying something, and so we get comments like these:
“Alabama is No. 3,” Mullens said Tuesday night, “because committee members are impressed with its overall performance and quality of play on both sides of the ball. Penn State is No. 4 because of its strong play, which includes wins over Michigan and Iowa. Penn State’s strength of schedule gave it an edge over an impressive Clemson, which we ranked No. 5.”
This is where we have to reiterate Swinney’s point: Simmer down, y’all.
Yeah, it’s odd and sometimes infuriating, how the selection committee evaluates one team compared to another. But the committee itself suggests these rankings don’t matter. For the next four Tuesdays, these are fun but ultimately pointless exercises, made- forTV programming.
Only the final Top 25 holds real meaning. It comes out Dec. 8. ( That final ranking, when the actual four- team bracket is set, is the first time the committee can apply “conference championships won,” one of the stated criteria to determine among similar teams.)
But yeah. We know. Someone’s going to howl, each and every preliminary week, at the snapshot of how the committee sees college football. Or the reasons they arrived there. This time, it’s Clemson’s turn.
Everyone understands that if Clemson keeps winning, the Tigers will be in. They could move up as soon as next week, after LSU and Alabama play each other. But that doesn’t make the initial ranking any easier to figure.
Somehow during the first two- thirds of the season, a distorted perception of the Tigers has crystallized into consensus. In September, they escaped North Carolina 21- 20. If Mack Brown had gone with a different two- point play, the Tigers might not have. But they did. Their other eight games have been routs.
Yet it sometimes feels like, in the conversation about Clemson, that narrow win over the Tar Heels is being conflated with inconsistent performances by sophomore quarterback Trevor Lawrence – up and down instead of steadily spectacular – as though the entire team has struggled, all season long. Add a soft Atlantic Coast Conference schedule, and a picture has been painted that bears little resemblance to how Clemson has actually performed.
The Tigers’ average margin of victory is 32.6 points. Their offense ranks third nationally; their defense ranks fourth. Quite simply, Clemson is very good.
That brings us back to Swinney, who was asked Tuesday afternoon whether Clemson might need style points to impress the selection committee – never mind, again, that it is scoring 44 points per game and allowing less than 12.
“It’s the same ol’ spin,” he said. “I mean, who has beat Alabama in the SEC? Who’s beat them? How many games have they lost in the last five years in their conference? You’ve got to really think about that, don’t you? It ain’t many.”
It’s two. In the last four- plus seasons, Alabama is 38- 2 against SEC opponents. In that same span, Clemson is 40- 2 against ACC opponents.
But never mind who’s beaten Alabama over the last few years. This season, who has Alabama beaten?
If we’re taking shots at Clemson’s schedule and the ACC as a whole, that’s fine. Fire away, because it’s way down and Clemson’s nine opponents are a combined 38- 40 (. 487). But Alabama’s eight opponents are 28- 41 (. 405).
Meanwhile, Penn State ( 8- 0) is ranked No. 4 based on resume. The Nittany Lions have beaten Michigan and Iowa ( ranked 14th and 18th).
“At the end of the day, when the committee watched Alabama, what they saw is a team that’s being dominant against that schedule,” Mullens said, “and that was the difference between Alabama and Penn State.”
Apparently between Alabama and
Clemson, too. It’s hard to figure what the committee did not see when it watched Clemson, which has been dominant against its schedule. But if your brain is beginning to boil, Tigers fans, just keep repeating Swinney’s mantra: For now, at least, it just doesn’t matter.