College Football Playoffs Round One: Blowouts galore, the NCAA is at fault

We finally got what we always wanted: an actual playoff in College Football. What took so long? Every other level of College Football has had a playoff for years, but not the highest level of the sport. As you know, we have a twelve-team playoff, and everybody is mad because all the first-round games were blowouts. It all falls on the NCAA selection committee. Did they pick the wrong teams? Let’s look at what happened over the weekend and why it’s the selection committee’s fault.

The seeding was done wrong

The College Football Playoff committee judged Mountain West champion Boise State as their ninth-ranked team, trailed by 12-ranked Arizona State from the Big 12 and 16th-ranked Clemson in the ACC, respectively. Yet both Boise State and Arizona State received first-round byes over higher-ranked Texas, Penn State, or Notre Dame.

If the teams had been seeded the way they should have been, the first round would have looked like this.

– No. 9 Boise State at No. 8 Indiana

– No. 10 SMU at No. 7 Tennessee

– No. 11 Arizona State at No. 6 Ohio State

– No. 12 Clemson at No. 5 Notre Dame

The above matchups would have given us at least two competitive games, if not more.

If the home teams had won all of the above games, the quarterfinals would have looked like this:

– No. 1 Oregon vs. No. 8 Indiana

– No. 2 Georgia vs. No. 7 Tennessee

– No. 3 Texas vs. No. 6 Ohio State

– No. 4 Penn State vs. No. 5 Notre Dame

Instead, we have possibly the two best teams in the country, Oregon and Ohio State, playing in the quarterfinals. That is not right, especially for the Oregon Ducks, who earned the number one seed by beating everybody they played, including Ohio State, Penn State, and Boise State. In all actuality, Penn State was given an easier road to a National Championship than Oregon, which beat the Nittany Lions. In what world does this make any sense?

Indiana did not belong? Alabama should have been in!

Like everyone else in the United States, even Kirk Herbstreit threw this out during the game, saying that the Hoosiers did not belong. If you watched on Saturday, you must have noticed that SMU and Tennessee looked worse than the Hoosiers did on Friday night. Should Alabama have been in instead? If you believe this, then you are crazy and a Bama fan! Remember, Tennessee looked like they didn’t belong in Columbus on Saturday night, then remember that same Tennessee team beat Alabama 24-17 not so long ago. Also, remember a month ago when a bad Oklahoma team dominated Alabama in Norman. So no, Bama didn’t belong; they played themselves out of it.

I would say South Carolina and Ole Miss had better arguments than Bama. As for the people saying that the Miami Hurricanes should have been in, remember that Clemson and SMU finished ahead of the Canes in the regular season. Indiana belonged; Notre Dame was just a better team on Saturday night; SMU and Tennessee are the two teams I would question. Clemson was at least mildly competitive with Texas and gave Dabo Swinney, who has a history of winning playoff games.

The four-team playoff was no better competitively.

The four-team playoffs and championship games were usually not competitive, but people have short memories. Check this iut!

Here is the average margin of victory over the 10 previous years of CFB playoffs (2015-last year)

20 semifinal games: 17.8

10 championship games: 20.0

Overall: 18.6

Remember, we recently had a championship game decided where the margin was 58 points!

It’s not like the four-team playoff gave us any balance either, so remember that during your bitching about the twelve-team playoff.

If you want a sixteen playoff, do you still want to do it after this weekend?

If the NCAA can correct how they seed this tournament, we will have what we want.

Another thing for all you SEC fans: Notre Dame will beat Georgia, and Texas is about to have its hands full with a highly underrated Arizona State.