Last year’s first College Football Playoff rankings came out on Halloween. This year’s are on election night. These guys have quite a sense of humor.
And they’ll need it this season, because their jobs are about to be a lot harder.
(Submitted questions have been lightly edited for clarity and length.)
Is it really possible that Georgia could be ranked No. 1 in the CFP rankings at the end of the regular season but not make the SEC Championship Game? — Martin D.
Yep. And it’s not even a far-fetched scenario.
Texas A&M wins its last three conference games to finish 8-0, securing one spot in the SEC Championship Game. Georgia and LSU both win and out and finish tied at 7-1. The two have three common opponents, two of which, Ole Miss and Florida, they would have both beaten. The third is Alabama, which LSU would have beaten but Georgia lost to. LSU goes to Atlanta.
In which case, the No. 1 team in the country would not only be denied a shot at its conference championship but get a No. 5 seed in the CFP, with no first-round bye. That should go over well.
By the way, the same possibility exists for the current No. 1 team, Oregon, albeit much more remote. The Ducks, Penn State and Indiana all finish undefeated (which would mean all three beat Ohio State.) The tiebreaker is best cumulative winning percentage of conference opponents. Most likely the Hoosiers will have the lowest of the three, but, technically possible.
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Who’s to blame for college football’s impending conference tiebreaker nightmare?
Long story short: These conferences are going to rue the day they got rid of divisions. The rationale at the time was to “make sure the two best teams play in the conference championship game,” but good luck figuring out the two best teams in an 18-team conference in which the teams play barely half the other schools. Or a 16-team league with eight conference games.
TV loves it, because they’re getting possibly an Ohio State-Oregon rematch instead of the Buckeyes beating Illinois/Iowa/Minnesota 45-10. But with so much at stake now with these championship games in terms of first-round byes, home field vs. road trip, etc. — this ain’t it.
Which losing coach’s seat gets hotter on Nov. 9th when LSU plays Alabama? — Stephen O.
That depends: Are we talking Finebaum-caller hot seat, or real-life stakes hot seat? Because while Alabama fans are going to have a meltdown of historic proportions as soon as Kalen DeBoer drops a third game, he is in zero danger of losing his job after one season.
Whereas things might get real-life angsty for Brian Kelly should he lose. LSU expects national championships, not three-loss seasons, of which this would be his third straight. (And who’s to say the Tigers won’t lose a fourth.) Perhaps more troubling, though, would be the Tigers losing at home to Alabama with the Tide at their most precarious state in 17 years. Lest we forget, Kelly did knock off Nick Saban in his first season, but 2022 might as well be 1922 in SEC dog years.
I still assume Kelly will be back in 2025 regardless, but I’m not ruling out anything with an athletic director, Scott Woodward, who fired Ed Orgeron 16 games after winning a national championship.
All that being said … I’m picking LSU to beat Alabama, and what a momentum swing that would be. The Tigers get back on track for a CFP berth. All is forgiven for the loss to Texas A&M. And Kelly starts out having won two of his first three Alabama games.
One word: Extension!
How many Big 12 teams, if any, would be favored over Boise State on a neutral field? If they win out, won’t the Broncos be seeded higher than No. 12 — especially with one of the “best losses?” Or projecting even further, and just for fun, how many teams of any conference would be favored against a No 8-seeded 12-1 Broncos on the blue turf? — Don D., Eugene, Ore.
According to The Athletic’s Austin Mock, Kansas State (-6), Iowa State (-3) and BYU (-1) would all be favored against Boise State on a neutral field. Which means on their home field, the Broncos would be about even with the Cyclones and a slight favorite against the Cougars. In total, Austin told me, he has 17 teams as road favorites in Boise.
I’ve been defaulting to Boise as the No. 12 seed in my projections because the committee has historically been lower on G5 teams than AP voters due to strength of schedule. Boise’s has not been bad to this point, what with its games against Oregon (8-0), Washington State (7-1) and UNLV (6-2), but it’s going to get watered down the rest of the way by San Diego State (3-4), Nevada (3-6), San Jose State (5-3), Wyoming (1-7) and Oregon State (4-4).
That being said, the selection committee can invoke the eye test at any time. The Broncos lost by a field goal at Oregon, whipped Wazzu 45-24 and won 29-24 at UNLV. They have the sport’s best running back in years, Ashton Jeanty, and a quarterback, Maddux Madsen, who’s currently got a higher passer rating (146.8) than Georgia’s Carson Beck (146.4), Iowa State’s Rocco Becht (144.7) and Tennessee’s Nico Iamaleava, among others.
Or put it this way: If you’re Kirby Smart, and you’re the aforementioned No. 5 seed, which No. 12 seed would you least want to prepare for: BYU, Iowa State or Boise? We’ve seen the Broncos against the current No. 1 team in the country, and it came down to a last-second field goal. Unfortunately, there’s been no such measuring stick for any of the Big 12’s contenders.
How should Nebraska feel about its showing at Ohio State? Do “moral victories” exist? — Mitchell S.
I’d feel a lot better about that one than 56-7 the week before at Indiana. But Nebraska has been leading the nation in moral victories since the start of the Scott Frost era. We need to see some actual wins in big games. The win over Colorado in Week 2 was definitely one. It turns out the Buffs are pretty good this season, and the Huskers stomped them 28-10. But I don’t know what the heck happened against Indiana, other than perhaps the Hoosiers warning us they’re going to win the national championship.
The last month of the season will go a long way toward determining whether Matt Rhule has the program moving in the right direction. Nebraska should beat 2-5 UCLA this week, which will be win No. 6, ending the Huskers’ inexplicable bowl drought at eight years. But that alone isn’t enough. Nebraska closes at 4-4 USC, vs. 5-3 Wisconsin and at 5-3 Iowa. I don’t expect the Huskers to win out, but we need to see Nebraska beat some of the Big Ten’s good-but-not-great teams.
Even after the debacle at Indiana, Nebraska ranks third in the Big Ten in rushing defense (3.1 YPC). Ohio State couldn’t run the ball at all on the Huskers. If nothing else, there’s an opportunity there to beat Iowa for just the second time in 10 years. Because the measuring stick for Rhule’s program isn’t trying to become Ohio State (yet), it’s to be as good or better than the hated Hawkeyes.
What should the P4 conferences have done to avoid potential tiebreaking nightmares? — Martin D., Detroit
There’s no obvious solution, other than to limit their membership to schools within a specific geographic region, capped at a reasonable number like, say, 10 teams, that then play a round-robin schedule against each other that culminates in the awarding of a championship.
ESPN Radio announcers were discussing how the 12-team Playoff was created to get more people to watch college football as opposed to placing the 12 best teams in the Playoff. They tied this in with a discussion on strength of schedules and how not all conferences are equal in strength from top to bottom. What are your thoughts? — Thomas K.
Well, they’re right (mostly). The main reasons we’re having a 12-team Playoff in 2024 is because back in 2018-20, when a CFP subgroup was exploring expansion, the following themes about the four-team Playoff were becoming evident:
1. A small handful of programs (Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma) were hogging most of the bids, at the expense of the rest of the country.
2. The overwhelming focus on the CFP down the stretch meant the only games of national interest were those involving the six or seven teams still in play.
3. The rest of the bowl season had been so marginalized that star players were opting out of even the Rose/Orange/Sugar/Fiesta, making for an anticlimactic postseason.
All of which led to a new system based on the following principles:
1. Make the postseason inclusive of everyone, from the SEC and Big Ten to the Pac-12 (which still existed) to the Group of 5.
2. Make the last month of the regular season meaningful for 15-25 schools instead of 6-8.
3. Restore some prestige to the other New Year’s Six bowls.
Nowhere on that list is: Make sure the 12 best teams are playing for the national championship.
In practice, though, I don’t think we’re going to see more than one team outside the top 12 make it in a given year. The seedings might look weird in some instances. Using the current AP poll, for example, No. 9 BYU would be the No. 4 seed and No. 3 Penn State would be the No. 5 seed. But they thought it important to reward conference champs.
It’s basically the NFL Playoff format, but with one big difference: The process for making the NFL Playoff is entirely objective. That’s just not possible in college, because, like Thomas said, there’s no uniformity in scheduling between the conferences. So who the heck knows if it will truly be the seven best at-large teams.
Stew: Your mock CFP bracket has Texas A&M playing LSU in a first-round game, which would be the second (possibly third!) time they play this season. Being that this is a made-for-TV event, how likely do you think it is that the committee will arrange the rankings to make sure we don’t get rematches? Or vice versa, if the first game was particularly close and would draw a lot of interest, that we DO get to see a rematch? — Stephen L.
The Tuesday night shows unveiling the committee’s rankings, I would agree, are a made-for-TV event. But I roll my eyes at the conspiracy theories about the actual rankings. The committee members do not work for ESPN. They are not paid anything to come to Dallas every week and debate this stuff for two days, beyond the ice cream bar in the snack room. Whether a certain matchup gets 8 million viewers or 4 million viewers impacts ESPN (and now TNT) considerably, but has no impact that I know of on Jim Grobe, Chris Ault or Kelly Whiteside.
Another thing to keep in mind: Because they publish the set of rankings going into the last weekend, it would be pretty obvious to see if they rigged the last one to produce a certain matchup. This isn’t like basketball, where the one and only full bracket you see is the real one. So I think they’ll rank the teams where they rank the teams, whether or not it means rematches or no rematches.
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Stewart Mandel’s 12-team Playoff projections after Week 9
The one tangible way I do expect to see the effect of a larger bracket — but of course there will be no way to prove it — is the way they approach teams 8-12, simply because there will be far more scrutiny than before. If you look back at last year’s rankings, it didn’t make sense why No. 10 Penn State and No. 11 Ole Miss, with zero marquee wins between them, were above No. 12 Oklahoma, which beat 12-1 Texas. But of course, it didn’t matter. Were the last at-large berth on the line, though …
And taking Liberty, for going undefeated against air, over 11-2 SMU for the G5 spot was arguably the strangest decision of the entire past 10 years. But sending it to the Fiesta Bowl to get drilled by Oregon may have seemed like a harmless reward. This year, that would be for a shot at the national championship.
Imagine a world where college football is governed by a collective bargaining agreement (almost there) that included the right of universities to make player trades (humor me). What hypothetical trade before this season would’ve made the most impact for both teams involved? What trade would you like to see made after this current season? — Reid V.
Fun!
Pretend for the purposes of this exercise that Michigan and Texas weren’t on each other’s schedules this season. The Wolverines desperately needed a quarterback. The Longhorns needed reinforcements at running back and some experience at defensive tackle. Texas trades Quinn Ewers to Michigan (while promoting Arch Manning) for Donovan Edwards and Kenneth Grant. The reaction at the time would have likely been that Michigan gave up too much, but that’s because people hadn’t yet seen the Wolverines’ current quarterbacks or breakout star running back Kalel Mullings, who’s relegated Edwards to second banana (again).
In terms of this offseason — definitely Ohio State getting help on the offensive line. I don’t have an obvious name, but thinking the Buckeyes could afford to trade a receiver or two not named Jeremiah Smith.
With the success of Indiana’s Curt Cignetti and Duke’s Mike Elko, will teams target more coaches who simply win games instead of schemes, recruiters, culture guys, etc.? — Matt P., Downingtown, Pa.
Score another win for the guys with lower-level backgrounds — Cignetti, as the head coach at IUP, Elon and James Madison, and Elko, as a former player and assistant at Penn and assistant at Fordham, Richmond and Hoftstra. They share something in common with Kelly, DeBoer, Lance Leipold, Chris Klieman and others who went on to have success as power-conference head coaches. Though we should also acknowledge that Cignetti (at Alabama under Nick Saban) and Elko (at Notre Dame and Texas A&M) also had ample experience coaching at some of the most highly resourced programs in the country as well.
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Khan: Mike Elko’s structured, detailed approach is just what Texas A&M needed
It speaks more to what I said last week in regards to Oklahoma coach Brent Venables: Now more than ever, you need experience running your own program. Organizational and leadership skills, of which those guys have both, matter far more than splash and scheme. (Recruiting and culture, though, are very much part of the job description.)
You’d think the past couple of cycles would inform ADs in their future hires, but, don’t count on it. There’s still too much of a premium being placed on creating social media buzz and winning the news conference. (Though Cignetti did that, too.) Just hire the best coach for the job. The more experience in that seat, the better.
Incidentally, I’d like to use this opportunity to flesh out a theory I’ve been considering as to why Lincoln Riley and Ryan Day, themselves both offensive coordinators before ascending at Oklahoma and Ohio State, have backslid after such dazzling starts to their head-coaching careers. The surface-level explanation is, well, they got handed the keys to Mercedes-Benz programs when their former bosses left. But Riley was still winning Big 12 titles in his fourth season post-Bob Stoops, and Day was still beating everyone but Michigan well past Urban Meyer’s departure.
It may just be that the jobs are so much different than when they got them. Riley has not adapted well to the NIL era. Day would seemingly be the exact opposite what with his $20 million roster, but even he had to be coaxed into taking on more of a CEO role this season. TBD whether it pays off.
Just a theory. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.
What do you think is going to happen on Nov. 5? — Adam G., Columbus, Ohio
I think half the country is going to be elated, and half the country is going to be steaming mad.
The first CFP rankings are always divisive.
(Photo of Georgia coach Kirby Smart: Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
