http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...ly-to-be-left-out-of-college-football-playoff
Which Power 5 Conference Is Likely to Be Left out of College Football Playoff?
By Ben Kercheval, College Football Lead Writer Nov 11, 2015
myriad takeaways from the College Football Playoff's most recent Top 25, but nothing stuck out like the Big 12's status in the race for the final four.
Or more specifically, how far behind in perception the Big 12 is. David Ubben of Sports on Earth summed up the situation well:
To reiterate the simple, yet important point: An undefeated Big 12 team is making the playoff. This is not up for debate. Nope, nope, nope—stop. Don't even ask about it. Move along. There are enough quality games in the next three weeks to boost Baylor and Oklahoma State's strength of schedule.
It's getting through that stretch unscathed that's the problem. And that's why the Big 12 is the Power Five conference most at risk of missing the playoff. Anything less than an undefeated season puts a Big 12 champion in a tough spot.
Keep in mind, too, that there will be no more than three undefeatedPower Five teams at the end of the year. It's that difficult.
Much has been made about the Big 12's backloaded schedule. It's been rehashed a million times, but just in case, here are the remaining games for the conference's top four teams:
Key remaining Big 12 games
Game Date
No. 12 Oklahoma at No. 6 Baylor 11/14
No. 15 TCU at No. 12 Oklahoma 11/21
No. 6 Baylor at No. 8 Oklahoma State 11/21
No. 6 Baylor at No. 15 TCU 11/27
No. 12 Oklahoma at No. 8 Oklahoma State 11/28
ESPN.com
Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby told USA Today's George Schroeder that "there was no backloading" of the schedules—at least intentionally—and there's every reason to believe that's true.
As Jake Trotter of ESPN notes, only the Bedlam game between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State—a typical end-of-year rivalry—and Baylor-TCU were purposely slated for the final weekend in November. Everything else is happenstance.
All the same, the Big 12 puts a tremendous amount of pressure on itself by having an easy route leading up to the month of November and then doling out the harshness all at once. Essentially, Big 12 teams are held back for "resume" purposes in the early playoff rankings and then left to beat up on one another when it matters most.
Take a look at the Top 15 from Tuesday's poll. The Big 12 has four teams in the Top 15, tied with the Big Ten for most of any conference.
Yet the Big 12's highest-ranked team is Baylor at No. 6. The team with one of the most impressive wins of team in the entire season, Oklahoma State, is No. 8. The team that just lost to the Cowboys, TCU, plummeted seven spots to No. 15. Oklahoma, with one loss to Texas, is No. 12.
College Football Playoff Rankings—Week 11
Rank Team (Record)
No. 1 Clemson (9-0)
No. 2 Alabama (8-1)
No. 3 Ohio State (9-0)
No. 4 Notre Dame (8-1)
No. 5 Iowa (9-0)
No. 6 Baylor (8-0)
No. 7 Stanford (8-1)
No. 8 Oklahoma State (9-0)
No. 9 LSU (7-1)
No. 10 Utah (8-1)
No. 11 Florida (8-1)
No. 12 Oklahoma (8-1)
No. 13 Michigan State (8-1)
No. 14 Michigan (7-2)
No. 15 TCU (8-1)
College Football Playoff
The committee showed it doesn't have much respect for what the Big 12's "Big Four" has done to date, and that's understandable to a degree.
The signature nonconference win for that group is Oklahoma's come-from-behind victory over Tennessee. The Vols are 5-4. No one's faulting the Sooners for trying to schedule tough, but it didn't work out quite like expected.
However, Baylor is being hit with the "no wins against teams with a winning record" stamp. The thing is, Texas Tech and West Virginia—the Bears' two best wins—both played the Big 12's top four teams in a month's span. The Red Raiders played six straight games from Sept. 26 to Oct. 31, while the Mountaineers got Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Baylor and TCU in consecutive games, three of which came on the road.
Not surprisingly, Tech and West Virginia are 0-8 against those teams.
Go ahead and put a majority of Power Five teams through those same slates and see how they do. Then come back and talk about teams with "winning records." Of all the subjective criteria the committee uses, this is perhaps the most misleading.
Therein lies perhaps the biggest problem for the Big 12. For whatever reason, what's being applied to the Big 12 as punishment either puts the conference at a natural disadvantage or isn't being applied to other conferences evenly.
For example, Stanford's Week 1 16-6 loss to Northwestern is now officially known as the "body clock" game. CFP chairman Jeff Long (h/tUbben) offered a longer explanation for what this means, but in short, the Cardinal are getting somewhat of a pass for playing a noon game in Illinois during what would be morning hours in California.
That's not to say time-zone issues don't exist for athletes, it's just that we've reached peak absurdity with playoff criteria jargon.
And you thought "game control" was bad.
Stanford goes on the road and gets handled—really, go back and watch that game, and you'll see the Cardinal were beat up in the trenches—by a decent Northwestern team and gets the body-clock treatment.
TCU gets handled on the road by an undefeated Oklahoma State team with legitimate playoff aspirations and drops out of the immediate playoff discussion.
The only difference besides the time zone was the style in which Stanford and TCU lost their games. The Cardinal got beat in a defensive battle, whereas the Frogs got hosed in a shootout. No offense vs. no defense. Choose your own method of demise, but abeatdown is a beatdown.
We could go on and on about this. And, to be clear, finding holes in the committee's logic is easy to do. Picking four teams using identical rationale across the board actually isn't as simple as it sounds in theory.
The conclusion is a one-loss Big 12 team will be in a dog fight for that fourth playoff spot, potentially with a one-loss Pac-12 champion or one-loss Notre Dame—and it's far from a guarantee that a Big 12 team will be the one selected.
If the Big 12 is bypassed again, it will raise significant questions about the conference's place in major college football. Yes, there will be further discussions about adding a deregulated conference championship game. In all likelihood, that would be implemented by 2016.
But the other issue is that of consistency. Ubben drove home a correct point not one week ago that the committee weighs wins more heavily than losses. That's the right way to go about this whole thing, too.
Yet if no one gets through the Big 12 undefeated—the last time that happened was 2009—how can anyone realistically say Baylor, Oklahoma State or TCU doesn't have a quality loss vs. as many as three quality wins?
It feels as though we're heading down a path where the Big 12 will be punished for those losses in a way no other conference will be for theirs. Why is anyone's guess, but it's a problem nonetheless.
Ben Kercheval is a lead writer for college football. All quotes cited unless obtained firsthand. All rankings reflect the latest College Football Playoff Top 25.
Which Power 5 Conference Is Likely to Be Left out of College Football Playoff?
By Ben Kercheval, College Football Lead Writer Nov 11, 2015
myriad takeaways from the College Football Playoff's most recent Top 25, but nothing stuck out like the Big 12's status in the race for the final four.
Or more specifically, how far behind in perception the Big 12 is. David Ubben of Sports on Earth summed up the situation well:
To reiterate the simple, yet important point: An undefeated Big 12 team is making the playoff. This is not up for debate. Nope, nope, nope—stop. Don't even ask about it. Move along. There are enough quality games in the next three weeks to boost Baylor and Oklahoma State's strength of schedule.
It's getting through that stretch unscathed that's the problem. And that's why the Big 12 is the Power Five conference most at risk of missing the playoff. Anything less than an undefeated season puts a Big 12 champion in a tough spot.
Keep in mind, too, that there will be no more than three undefeatedPower Five teams at the end of the year. It's that difficult.
Much has been made about the Big 12's backloaded schedule. It's been rehashed a million times, but just in case, here are the remaining games for the conference's top four teams:
Key remaining Big 12 games
Game Date
No. 12 Oklahoma at No. 6 Baylor 11/14
No. 15 TCU at No. 12 Oklahoma 11/21
No. 6 Baylor at No. 8 Oklahoma State 11/21
No. 6 Baylor at No. 15 TCU 11/27
No. 12 Oklahoma at No. 8 Oklahoma State 11/28
ESPN.com
Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby told USA Today's George Schroeder that "there was no backloading" of the schedules—at least intentionally—and there's every reason to believe that's true.
As Jake Trotter of ESPN notes, only the Bedlam game between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State—a typical end-of-year rivalry—and Baylor-TCU were purposely slated for the final weekend in November. Everything else is happenstance.
All the same, the Big 12 puts a tremendous amount of pressure on itself by having an easy route leading up to the month of November and then doling out the harshness all at once. Essentially, Big 12 teams are held back for "resume" purposes in the early playoff rankings and then left to beat up on one another when it matters most.
Take a look at the Top 15 from Tuesday's poll. The Big 12 has four teams in the Top 15, tied with the Big Ten for most of any conference.
Yet the Big 12's highest-ranked team is Baylor at No. 6. The team with one of the most impressive wins of team in the entire season, Oklahoma State, is No. 8. The team that just lost to the Cowboys, TCU, plummeted seven spots to No. 15. Oklahoma, with one loss to Texas, is No. 12.
College Football Playoff Rankings—Week 11
Rank Team (Record)
No. 1 Clemson (9-0)
No. 2 Alabama (8-1)
No. 3 Ohio State (9-0)
No. 4 Notre Dame (8-1)
No. 5 Iowa (9-0)
No. 6 Baylor (8-0)
No. 7 Stanford (8-1)
No. 8 Oklahoma State (9-0)
No. 9 LSU (7-1)
No. 10 Utah (8-1)
No. 11 Florida (8-1)
No. 12 Oklahoma (8-1)
No. 13 Michigan State (8-1)
No. 14 Michigan (7-2)
No. 15 TCU (8-1)
College Football Playoff
The committee showed it doesn't have much respect for what the Big 12's "Big Four" has done to date, and that's understandable to a degree.
The signature nonconference win for that group is Oklahoma's come-from-behind victory over Tennessee. The Vols are 5-4. No one's faulting the Sooners for trying to schedule tough, but it didn't work out quite like expected.
However, Baylor is being hit with the "no wins against teams with a winning record" stamp. The thing is, Texas Tech and West Virginia—the Bears' two best wins—both played the Big 12's top four teams in a month's span. The Red Raiders played six straight games from Sept. 26 to Oct. 31, while the Mountaineers got Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Baylor and TCU in consecutive games, three of which came on the road.
Not surprisingly, Tech and West Virginia are 0-8 against those teams.
Go ahead and put a majority of Power Five teams through those same slates and see how they do. Then come back and talk about teams with "winning records." Of all the subjective criteria the committee uses, this is perhaps the most misleading.
Therein lies perhaps the biggest problem for the Big 12. For whatever reason, what's being applied to the Big 12 as punishment either puts the conference at a natural disadvantage or isn't being applied to other conferences evenly.
For example, Stanford's Week 1 16-6 loss to Northwestern is now officially known as the "body clock" game. CFP chairman Jeff Long (h/tUbben) offered a longer explanation for what this means, but in short, the Cardinal are getting somewhat of a pass for playing a noon game in Illinois during what would be morning hours in California.
That's not to say time-zone issues don't exist for athletes, it's just that we've reached peak absurdity with playoff criteria jargon.
And you thought "game control" was bad.
Stanford goes on the road and gets handled—really, go back and watch that game, and you'll see the Cardinal were beat up in the trenches—by a decent Northwestern team and gets the body-clock treatment.
TCU gets handled on the road by an undefeated Oklahoma State team with legitimate playoff aspirations and drops out of the immediate playoff discussion.
The only difference besides the time zone was the style in which Stanford and TCU lost their games. The Cardinal got beat in a defensive battle, whereas the Frogs got hosed in a shootout. No offense vs. no defense. Choose your own method of demise, but abeatdown is a beatdown.
We could go on and on about this. And, to be clear, finding holes in the committee's logic is easy to do. Picking four teams using identical rationale across the board actually isn't as simple as it sounds in theory.
The conclusion is a one-loss Big 12 team will be in a dog fight for that fourth playoff spot, potentially with a one-loss Pac-12 champion or one-loss Notre Dame—and it's far from a guarantee that a Big 12 team will be the one selected.
If the Big 12 is bypassed again, it will raise significant questions about the conference's place in major college football. Yes, there will be further discussions about adding a deregulated conference championship game. In all likelihood, that would be implemented by 2016.
But the other issue is that of consistency. Ubben drove home a correct point not one week ago that the committee weighs wins more heavily than losses. That's the right way to go about this whole thing, too.
Yet if no one gets through the Big 12 undefeated—the last time that happened was 2009—how can anyone realistically say Baylor, Oklahoma State or TCU doesn't have a quality loss vs. as many as three quality wins?
It feels as though we're heading down a path where the Big 12 will be punished for those losses in a way no other conference will be for theirs. Why is anyone's guess, but it's a problem nonetheless.
Ben Kercheval is a lead writer for college football. All quotes cited unless obtained firsthand. All rankings reflect the latest College Football Playoff Top 25.
