How novel: The CFP committee rewards wins

Alabama couldn't get away with unsightly losses, not when SMU was showing consistency.

SMU coach Rhett Lashlee

Strength-of-schedule was the big topic Sunday morning, as it always is when playoff selections are made and axes are ground. The acronym is SOS, which seems apropos. If the College Football Playoff committee had chosen Alabama instead of SMU and based it on strength of schedule, someone might have called 9-1-1.

Teams should be judged on what they can control and how they handle it. SOS is not one of those things. Unless you graze on a steady diet of Mercers and Massachusettses, you can’t really tell how good your non-conference opponents will be.

A team that scheduled Arizona State, for instance, could be accused on picking on the underprivileged in September, since the Sun Devils were picked 17th in the 17-team Big 12 and ranked 67th nationally by Athlon Sports in preseason. Arizona State then went 9-3 and won the Big 12 championship in shattering fashion over Iowa State on Saturday.

But a team that scheduled Florida State would be in line for sympathy cards, since the Seminoles were forecast to win the NCAA and were ranked 12th by Athlon. They lost to Georgia Tech in the opener and stumbled to 2-10, with wins over Cal and Charleston Southern.

Teams also change during the season. Baylor was pretty bad in September. It lost to Utah, 23-12, and found itself 2-4. Then it won the next six and finished 8-4. Utah, meanwhile, was the preseason Big 12 favorite. It started 4-0. It finished 5-7.

The argument for Alabama, which finished 9-3, was that it played better teams than SMU, which finished 11-2. Duh. Alabama is contractually obligated to play better teams than SMU, because it belongs to the SEC and SMU belongs to the ACC, and the SEC is better and deeper.

But there shouldn’t be guilt-by-association and there shouldn’t be worthiness-by-association either. Alabama did beat Georgia and broke the Bulldogs’ 42-game regular-season win streak. Other quality wins came against Missouri and South Carolina. What the committee also recognized was that Alabama had two landmark losses. One was at Vanderbilt, which had never beaten a top-five team in the wire-service rankings. The other was at Oklahoma, which limped to a 6-6 season but, on this night, beat Alabama, 24-3. Those were bad, disqualifying performances. Even in a 12-team playoff format, there is no room for such inconsistency.

Nick Saban works for ESPN now, and it is not surprising that he made a limited case for Alabama on Sunday. He is generally objective and reasonable about such issues, considering that he won seven national titles at Alabama. Here, he seemed to argue that strength-of-schedule should win out, that teams might want to re-think the non-league schedules they play if wins are the only criterion. He also said that the Pittsburgh Steelers aren’t kicked out of the NFL playoffs if they lose to the Cleveland Browns, as they did recently, which even he must know is preposterous. The NFL doesn’t choose its playoff teams by committee.

Alabama wasn’t rejected because of its non-conference games. The Crimson Tide beat Western Kentucky, South Florida, Wisconsin (on the road) and Mercer. Saban also reminded people how hard it is to get through the week-to-week SEC grind, that coming down from the Georgia game and then winning at Vanderbilt is no routine feat. But that never seemed to be a problem in the past. Besides, most SEC teams know how to juggle the off weeks. Alabama and Georgia had two weeks to prepare for each other, and Georgia made sure it got a bye between Texas and Florida.

Meanwhile, SMU was ranked 31st nationally by Athlon in preseason and seventh in its first ACC season. It scored with 1:18 left to beat Nevada, 29-24, in its opener. The next week it lost, 18-15, to Brigham Young, on a field goal with 1:58 remaining. Nothing to see here…until Kevin Jennings became the quarterback and SMU squashed TCU, 66-42. The Mustangs were undefeated until the ACC title game against Clemson, when they came all the way back from a 31-14 deficit, tied it 31-31 in the last minute, and lost on a 41-yard kickoff return and a 56-yard field goal. Clemson hadn’t returned a kickoff that far or kicked a field goal that long all season.

It’s true that SMU did not play Clemson or Miami in ACC play. The league has 16 teams and there are only 12 regular season dates (for now). That type of thing is going to happen. But Pittsburgh was 7-0 when it came to SMU, and it left with a 48-25 welt from which it never recovered. SMU also beat a 9-3 Duke team on a night when it had six turnovers, and it beat a credible Louisville team, 34-27. Again, the standard here was consistency. At no point did the Mustangs have a moment in which they looked undeserving.

Fearful that SMU would be victimized by the committee, and also ESPN/ABC and its preference for the Alabama brand, coach Rhett Lashlee said the Mustangs might have been smarter to turn down the ACC title game. Alabama wasn’t in the SEC game, he reasoned, and thus couldn’t hurt its resume. What’s clear is that the conference champions should not get automatic bids. It’s even clearer that those conference champions should not get automatic byes and high seeding slots if they don’t have the proper resume. Arizona State is playing as well as anyone, and Cam Skattlebo is a major handful and armful for any defense anywhere. But the Sun Devils lost a 5-7 Cincinnati team on the way to going 10-2. They get a week off while Tennessee, Ohio State, Penn State and Notre Dame play in the first round, and Tennessee actually has to travel to Ohio State.

If eighth-seeded Ohio State beats Tennessee it will play Oregon in the second round. Oregon beat Ohio State, 32-31, on Oct. 12. It was one of the most influential games of the season and it shouldn’t be a possibility so early in the bracket. And that’s not a knock on third-seeded Boise State. The Broncos have Ashton Jeanty, the nation’s best runner, and a 12-1 record that was marred only by a 3-point loss at Oregon.

Selecting these teams has become a year-round enterprise. Adjustments will be suggested. The first year of the Diluted Dozens will be examined thoroughly. And the membership of the committee will change. But their work over the weekend was promising. As an SEC member, Alabama got $51 million of revenue from the conference pot last year, and it reported $199.9 million of total revenue. It has everything it needs. It doesn’t need excuses.