Two things have been true of the College Football Playoff committee’s first eight years of selections.
First, the committee has almost certainly gotten the top four correct on every occasion. For any debates over Ohio State in 2014 or Alabama in 2017, the eventual results — a national championship for both — served as the final word in any argument.
But the second detail worth noting about the committee’s process is that, in the end, the decisions have almost entirely been easy. Even those mildly controversial choices actually represented the easiest possible solution for the committee. For all the griping and hand-wringing over every rankings release leading up to the final ballot, the stars have always aligned in the end.
That’s not the case this season.
On a championship weekend that seemed to have little chance of disrupting the status quo, TCU and USC threw wrenches into the works. With Ohio State and Alabama relaxed on their respective couches, feet up and a bowl of chips on their laps, they somehow were pulled from the playoff scrap heap, dusted off, and found to be playoff caliber teams after all.
On Friday, Utah demolished USC 47-24, hanging a second loss on the Trojans’ résumé — all because they had to play an extra game that Ohio State, Alabama and Tennessee did not.
On Saturday, Max Duggan‘s heroics fell six inches shy of a win, and TCU’s case is now in the committee’s hands, where it’ll judge the Horned Frogs’ one loss in overtime to Kansas State against Ohio State’s lone defeat vs. Michigan — a blowout from a week ago that now feels like ancient history.
USC has two losses — but it has lost to just one team, same as Ohio State. It lost in a blowout to a highly-ranked conference rival, same as Ohio State. It has a Heisman Trophy-caliber quarterback, a cadre of elite receivers, a shaky defense and an impressive win over Notre Dame, same as Ohio State.
TCU took the L, but didn’t that frenetic comeback offer a reminder of the excitement the Frogs have given us all year? (And if it didn’t, just stare deeply into the Hypnotoad’s eyes.) A goal-line stand in overtime was the difference in TCU’s 31-28 loss to Kansas State, but the Horned Frogs remain this season’s Cinderella, even if the committee is now looking back at Alabama’s wicked stepmother in the latest version of that Twitter meme.
0:46
Kansas State stuffs TCU at the goal line in overtime.
The committee will need to weigh putting teams with more talent (Ohio State or Alabama) against teams that almost certainly are more deserving (TCU, USC, Tennessee). They’ll need to weigh whether to punish teams that were so good in the regular season that they earned a spot in their conference title game or admit that everything that happened this weekend ultimately had no impact. They’ll have to weigh whether there’s more value in giving upstarts entry into the most exclusive club in sports or play to the TV ratings and create arguably the biggest battle of name brands in the playoff’s brief history.
So, what’s the right answer?
To watch Duggan drag the Horned Frogs back from the abyss and into overtime, bent over, bleeding and gulping for air like he’d just survived Black Friday at Walmart, only the most callous of voters could cast a ballot ignoring TCU’s 12-1 season. The man ran for 95 yards on an 80-yard touchdown drive, after all.
And yet, the committee has never functioned on emotion. Committees, by design, are heartless entities.
To watch Caleb Williams limping through an unimaginably bad second half Friday night, blanketed by an unrelenting Utah pass rush, but still capable of genuine magic on the football field, would anyone fault the committee for punching a ticket for the country’s most exciting player and, in the process, offering the west coast its first taste of playoff football in six years?
And yet, there’s virtually no case to be made that USC’s defense would hold up against Georgia or Michigan in any playoff matchup.
Would the committee really punish Georgia with a Peach Bowl matchup against Ohio State just to avoid a first-round rematch between the Buckeyes and Wolverines?
Would the committee really hand an invite to 10-2 Alabama over a Tennessee team with the same record and a head-to-head win?
Would the committee really be ready for the blowback of putting Alabama into the playoff at any cost? Wouldn’t that only give confirmation to all the conspiracy theorists who already believe Nick Saban is the puppet master directing the whole sordid affair to begin with?
Yeah, filling out this year’s dance card isn’t going to be easy. The committee should probably send Shane Beamer and South Carolina a nice thank-you card and Edible Arrangement for ensuring this debate isn’t even more complicated.
2:06
Heather Dinich breaks down what USC’s loss means for College Football Playoff hopefuls, Ohio State and Alabama.
Then again, if championship weekend did little to settle the season’s top four teams, Georgia’s utter annihilation of LSU might’ve offered a more important lesson: The king is still the king.
For all the sound and fury over TCU and USC, Tennessee and Alabama, Ohio State or virtually any other team in the country, the real monster looming on the horizon is a 5-11 former walk-on who just hung 50 on the 14th-ranked team in the country. To think, Brian Kelly’s spent the past year chugging sweet tea, pretending to like jazz and using “Bless his heart” in casual conversation and this is all he has to show for it. Sad, really. Wouldn’t it just be simpler to let Stetson Bennett choose his next victim, like picking a lobster from the tank at some chain seafood restaurant? “Yes, I’ll take TCU… and keep the biscuits coming.”
Georgia remains the elephant in the room (unless Alabama gets into the playoff, too, in which case there’d be two elephants, which would be awkward). But why look so far ahead? Perhaps the real takeaway is spending Saturday worrying about Sunday was to miss the good stuff.
Duggan may have earned his share of Heisman votes in a loss. It was as gutty a performance as we’ve seen all year. It was college football at its finest.
Lincoln Riley’s rebuild at USC was no less impressive because it ended on a sour note. The Trojans — and the Pac-12 — were relevant into December for the first time in years. And still, the old-school portion of college football got the last laugh, as throwback Kyle Whittingham and his built-from-scratch Utes staved off the future of NIL-bought championships for at least another year.
Georgia dominated as we’ve come to expect, but it was still Bennett’s first SEC championship. His storybook career would’ve been no less astonishing without it, but it still would’ve felt like reading a novel knowing a chapter was missing, “War and Peace” without the peace.
The committee will figure out where the chips fall. It will require more tough choices than it ever has, and days or weeks or, perhaps, years of righteous outrage will follow.
But Saturday was still the fun part. It always is.
Tulane wins American
In 1998, Tulane went 12-0 and won Conference USA. For the next 23 years, the Green Wave went without a conference title, and there were no celebrations in New Orleans as far as we’re aware.
But that torment came to a rollicking end Saturday as Tulane demolished UCF in the American Athletic Conference championship game, securing a New Year’s Six bowl bid in the process.
Michael Pratt threw for 394 yards and four touchdowns, and Tyjae Spears rushed for 199 yards and a score in the 45-28 win, earning revenge after UCF won their regular-season matchup three weeks ago.
Tulane racked up 649 yards in the game, its second-most since that 1998 season, according to ESPN Stats and Information, and the bludgeoning could’ve been even worse. The Green Wave turned the ball over three times and failed to convert a fourth down deep in their own territory that led to a UCF touchdown.
Tulane now enters its bowl game with 11 wins for just the second time in its history, just one year after a miserable 2-10 campaign.
We only hope the Green Wave will be able to find a few establishments willing to host a party.
Unbelievable scenes. UCF’s swan song from the AAC ends in a 45-28 loss to Tulane in the championship game pic.twitter.com/Mikus2WmXl
— Danielle Stein (@Danielle_Stein9) December 4, 2022
What might have been
As the committee’s highest ranked team from the Group of 5, Tulane is set for a bid to a New Year’s Six bowl, but if one of the year’s most iconic plays hadn’t happened way back in Week 3, it might be Troy celebrating this week.
The Trojans dominated Coastal Carolina in the Sun Belt championship on Saturday, 45-26, despite the return of Chanticleers QB Grayson McCall, who had been out since Nov. 3 with an injury.
Troy is now 11-2 on the season and has won 10 straight, each of the past three by at least 21.
So, why isn’t Troy in the conversation for a New Year’s Six bowl? Blame Chase Brice.
Back in Week 3, Appalachian State had just pulled off a stunning upset of Texas A&M and hosted College GameDay, but the Mountaineers trailed Troy 28-26 with just 2 seconds to play. That’s when Brice heaved a Hail Mary that Christian Horn caught short of the goal line, looped around to the sideline, and found the end zone for a chaotic 32-28 win.
It was the last time Troy lost, but it was also likely enough to keep them well behind Tulane in the Group of 5 pecking order this season.
And yet, Troy isn’t likely to even be the biggest story about a Trojans team nearly missing out on a top bowl invite.