Chip Bremer
As I sat on my couch last month trying to explain to my 13-year-old son why Florida State was excluded from the College Football Playoff after going undefeated in a Power 5 conference while one-loss teams Texas and Alabama made it in, I was unexpectedly at a loss for words.
Here I am explaining the complexities of a sport governed by old men corrupted by bias and television money to my son, who aspires to play Division 1 sports someday, and like all young athletes, has lived his whole life believing that winning may not be the only thing, but it DOES matter. I just couldn’t find the words to explain what we witnessed without completely contradicting the fundamentals of sport.
The reality is that college football is governed by opinions, rather than wins or losses, and those opinions are always tainted by the bias of SEC dominance. In other words, college football is nothing more than a beauty pageant, and the SEC always has the prettiest teams.
I wish it were as funny as it sounds, but unfortunately, it isn’t.
No other sport determines their champions by putting a bunch of people in a room and having them vote for the “best” teams not on the basis of wins or losses, but by how impressive they look and how much television revenue they can bring in. (Just think of how an NFL committee would’ve already ruled the Jacksonville Jaguars out of the playoffs because starting QB Trevor Lawrence was out with an injury.)
Forget all the talk about strength-of-schedule (SOS), FSU’s performance in the ACC Championship game with their third-string QB, and former starting QB Romeo Travis’ season-ending injury. SOS statistics are often based on ridiculous criteria such as point differential and poll rankings (which, I remind you, are subjective and based almost exclusively on opinions of people who don’t even play the game), and Travis’ injury is just a convenient cop-out.
(And shame on Boo Carrigan and the other 12 committee members for propping up Travis’ injury as the key criteria that swayed the voters. It didn’t affect Ohio State’s 2014 national title run to play with a third-string QB. Travis even had to tweet that he wished he could’ve been injured earlier in the season so the world would see how good his team really is. (That’s pathetic.)
No, the more logical explanation is that committee members were subconsciously pressured into ensuring an SEC team would not be left out of the CFP – even at the expense of common sense. We have been conditioned over the years to accept that the SEC is just better at football than the rest of the college conferences.
They have always been in the college football playoff since its inception, and they have dominated the rankings and television revenues over the years. And unfortunately, we’ll never know what a CFP looks like without an SEC team, because the biases and corruption will always be in place to make sure they are never left out (not to mention the 12-team playoff that starts next year, which, thanks to conference realignment, will be made up of 4 conference champions and 8 other teams from either the SEC or the Big Ten).
I dare someone to tell me that if the roles were reversed and it was an undefeated Alabama squeaking out an SEC championship win with a third-string QB because their starting QB was lost for the season, that we would’ve had a different result. Anyone. Please make that argument. Because we all know Alabama wasn’t going to be left out.
Alabama was just one play away–thanks to a completely inept move by Auburn defensive coordinator to not pressure Jalen Milroe–from falling into the not-so-worthy category. But I can spend pages upon pages running around who in my opinion are the best teams or whether SEC teams are truly better than ACC teams. That isn’t the point.
As I said, college football is a popularity contest. It has been since the old days when juggernauts like Oklahoma and Michigan ran up the score and pummeled the Northwesterns of the world by 70 points so they could look better in the polls.
But the thing about popularity contests is that they allow for various opinions, and bias, and ultimately corruption to enter into the criteria. Yes, corruption, because nobody cares about how Michigan allegedly (and very likely) cheated by stealing opponent’s signs. Wealth and power will always allow college programs to escape punishment with a slap on the wrist, and they will always guarantee you a seat at the postseason table – as long as you can generate substantial revenue and network interest.
The CPF committee was tasked with selecting the four “best” teams – not the most deserving, because that would rely too much on actual wins and losses. And while five of the committee’s members were affiliated with current ACC schools, they dare not exclude an SEC team because of either public backlash or because that may negate any chance their school would one day become an SEC member.
Did the committee get it right? Did they select the four “best” teams? We cannot say for certain, because regardless of how many statistics and criteria you throw into this mix, the entire selection process was based on opinions, and those opinions are tainted heavily by SEC bias.
In this age where college players are now paid like professional athletes with NIL money, the transfer portal has opened up the sport to glorified free agency, and television ratings rule overall, it’s easy to see how SEC bias has dominated college football and basically ruined it as a sport. As Deion Sanders puts it, this is “big market” football, and that’s just the way it is.
I wish I had a better explanation for my 13-year-old, or at least one that made sense. But this is the world we live in today, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.
As for me, I think I’d rather watch a sport less affected by bias and corruption – like professional wrestling.