The College Football Playoff selection committee’s lack of clear criteria is causing confusion.
Teams are running up scores in an attempt to impress the committee with the ‘eye test.’
Metrics like head-to-head results and strength of schedule appear to be inconsistently applied.
When there is no leadership, there are no rules.
When there are no rules, there are no boundaries.
When there are no boundaries, well, Notre Dame scores 70 points on a team so devastated by injury, it’s using a former lacrosse player at quarterback.
Or Vanderbilt plays star quarterback Diego Pavia during a 40-point rout of Kentucky, and keeps chucking it.
Or Miami, having salted away a 10-point win over Virginia Tech, throws in the end zone in the final 90 seconds to make it 17.
All because no one knows what in the world the College Football Playoff selection committee wants. Or how it works. Or what it takes to earn one of the coveted seven at-large spots in the 12-team field.
The committee chairman (whoever it is this week) says things like strength of schedule, game control, efficiency, net rate success and any of the many other nonsensical metric garbage it feeds the breathless looking for answers.
When they know damn well this thing is about the eye test. And as confounding, its hand-in-hand buddy, the prisoner of the moment.
It’s here where we introduce Oregon, the one team — more than any other — who’s resume has been built through the eye test and prisoner of the moment. Prior to Saturday, the Ducks had played one game of significance ― six weeks ago! ― and were embarrassed at home by Indiana.
Not that getting embarrassed by Indiana is such a bad thing, but it most certainly still is a thing that can’t be ignored. Unless you’re one of 12 on the selection committee, which has ranked Oregon among the Top 10 since the first CFP poll earlier this month.
Why? We don’t know, but apparently it has something to do with a big road win at four-loss Iowa — which beat Michigan State on Saturday in Iowa City on a last-second field goal.
The same Spartans that haven’t won a Big Ten game.
This brings us all the way to Oregon playing host to USC on Saturday, a game of two top-15 teams billed as “win or go home.” Or something like that.
Why is USC in this spot, you ask? Well, USC beat Iowa, too, by three points in Los Angeles, and a week after Oregon won in Iowa City.
Maybe the good folks at the CFP should start ranking Iowa in the top 15, by proxy.
Anyway, I’m not done with USC just yet. The Trojans’ big win (outside of that juggernaut Iowa, of course) is Michigan. The same Michigan team whose entire existence this season is the inevitable Ohio State car wreck that may or may not be coming.
So the Wolverines have to be ranked, right? Forget about the loss to Oklahoma in September (in case those two are staring at each other in the final CFP poll), that was eons ago. Just like Notre Dame’s loss to Miami.
It’s not about head-to-head, dummy. It’s about whose losses are better, right Mr. Yurachek?
So Oregon rolls a decent USC team at home, and I’d be willing to bet a few matchsticks the one-loss Ducks will be ranked ahead of one-loss Ole Miss — despite Ole Miss’ win at top-10 Oklahoma, which beat Michigan, which lost to USC, which is now, apparently, the be-all, end-all for Oregon.
The problem for Ole Miss: It didn’t play this week, and other than Lane Kiffin’s self-made circus, is out-of-sight, out-of-mind for the committee. Unless it decides to start using the Kiffin kerfuffle against the Rebels, because a team with uncertainty at the top can’t be trusted.
Isn’t that right, selection committee?
The whole point of this selection committee exercise was to eliminate decades-old crutches used to pick the national champion, or the teams who play for the national championship.
Yet here we are, stuck in the past, with the same tired process shrouded in something called game control. And net YPP (yards per play).
And any other nonsense they can shovel at us to avoid admitting there’s no leadership. No rules, no boundaries.
And apparently, no need for the head-to-head metric. Or the one metric that should be used, but isn’t: Who have you beaten?
Oregon has beaten USC, which beat Michigan, which beat no one.
But buddy, that Ohio State game could change everything.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
