- The CFP committee watched Georgia trample Alabama and then pretended it never happened.
- CFP committee deploys chicanery to reach the bracket destination it desired.
- Alabama and Miami in, Notre Dame out. That’s fine, but process so messy.
I swear the SEC championship game happened. More than 77,000 fans attended it. I covered it. Millions more watched on TV as Georgia body slammed Alabama and sucked out the Tide’s soul.
If only we had known we were watching a pointless scrimmage.
The College Football Playoff committee watched that 28-7 trampling, and it didn’t move either the victor or the loser an inch in its final rankings.
It’s as if the game never happened.
I swear, it did. I swear Georgia put Alabama in a vise and limited the Tide to negative-three rushing yards.
The committee saw it, evaluated it, and decided it meant nothing.
Georgia enters the bracket at No. 3.
Alabama goes in at No. 9.
Same as they were ranked before the game.
In ranking Georgia and Alabama this way, the committee declared the SEC championship game a glorified exhibition.
SEC championship game has never meant less than it does now
The late commissioner Roy Kramer’s revolutionary brainchild of a conference championship game has never been more meaningless than it became this weekend.
It’s a cash grab. Nothing more. A once-great idea, it no longer offers utility to the current playoff structure.
You’re familiar with trophies awarded for rivalry games and bowl games. Now, we’ve got a trophy awarded to the winner of a scrimmage at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
The committee’s seeding decision revealed that, no matter what the playoff’s rules say, the SEC receives two automatic bids to the bracket: One for its conference champion and another for its runner-up.
“We evaluated all of those conference championship games,’ CFP selection committee chairman Hunter Yurachek explained on ESPN, ‘and felt like, in the end, regardless of Alabama’s performance yesterday, their body of work in those first 12 games” was sufficient for selection.
Coincidentally — or maybe not — Yurachek is the athletic director at Arkansas, an SEC member.
Let me translate Yurachek’s quote: No matter the result, the committee never had any intention of rejecting the loser of the SEC championship game from a 12-team bracket.
Maybe, you think that’s the way it should be, but that opinion doesn’t change that the committee told you this game was a meaningless exercise, at least in terms of playoff selection and seeding.
CFP selection committee devalues SEC Championship
You’ll hear the argument that, if the committee had booted Alabama after its woeful performance, that would devalue conference championship games. That’s a false narrative.
In fact, the committee devalued the SEC championship by pretending it never happened.
Again, maybe you’re OK with that. You can make the case Alabama shouldn’t drop in the rankings for getting blown out by one of the nation’s best teams, while Notre Dame and Miami sat at home.
But, then, why did Brigham Young drop behind inactive Miami in the rankings after the Cougars were blown out by one of the nation’s best teams in the Big 12 championship?
If the committee wants to pretend the SEC championship didn’t happen and that Alabama didn’t get blown out, shouldn’t they also pretend the Big 12 Championship didn’t happen and BYU didn’t get blown out?
We know the reasoning behind this.
The committee believes the SEC’s runner-up deserves an automatic bid, even if the bracket rules don’t specify this. That preservation of a bid for the SEC’s runner-up does not extend to the Big 12.
This seeding tells us Alabama had qualified for the CFP before it stepped onto the field in a rematch against Georgia.
Alabama already had suffered two losses, one of which came against a bad ACC team that finished 5-7. The Tide advanced to the SEC championship game thanks in part to the conference’s tiebreaker rules. Reaching Atlanta required Alabama to play only 50% of the conference’s membership.
Then, Georgia carved out the elephant’s eyes in delivering a third loss.
But, presto! It never happened!
Alabama becomes the first three-loss at-large qualifier in CFP history. Two years ago, the 12-1 Tide displaced undefeated Florida State, marking the first and only time a 13-0 Power Four champion didn’t make the four-team playoff.
By not dropping Alabama after this blowout loss, the committee avoided the blowback that would have erupted from Greg Sankey’s powerful “It Just Means More” pulpit.
Do ends justify means of reaching this CFP bracket?
I won’t argue the committee’s selections of Alabama and Miami or its omission of Notre Dame.
Alabama touted the best strength of schedule metrics of that bubble trio. It also owns the best win, by beating Georgia on the road in September.
Alabama possessed the same record as Miami and Notre Dame through 12 games. The Hurricanes and Irish didn’t play a 13th game. So, I understand the Tide’s case, bad though they looked Saturday.
I also understand choosing Miami over Notre Dame. They own identical records, nearly identical metrics, and Miami won a head-to-head matchup.
But, my goodness, the chicanery deployed to achieve this destination was all so ridiculous and unnecessary, and it makes this whole process look like a clown act.
Yurachek is no magician deftly operating smoke and mirrors to pull the wool over fans’ eyes. He’s just an awkward AD. He’s fooling nobody.
Alabama stayed at No. 9 because the committee wanted to preserve a spot for the SEC’s runner-up. Meanwhile, BYU dropped one spot, because the committee decided to push Notre Dame and Miami next to each other in the rankings and finally acknowledge Miami’s head-to-head advantage.
Selecting Miami gave the ACC a playoff representative after five-loss Duke won the conference and foiled the ACC’s automatic bid. In an odd twist, Virginia losing to Duke probably delivered a fatal blow to the Irish. The committee couldn’t justify taking Duke, so it created a spot for Miami and booted Notre Dame.
Here’s how it should have went down, to avoid this messy eyesore: The committee should have ranked Alabama No. 9 and positioned Miami at No. 10 in the penultimate rankings. That would have given advance notice that the committee no longer would pretend the Irish didn’t lose to Miami.
Then, after Georgia trounced Alabama, the committee could have moved Miami up to No. 9, dropped Alabama to No. 10 and not acted as if the SEC championship game didn’t occur.
Instead of doing that, the committee head-faked for a month that it preferred Notre Dame to Miami, only to realize the stupidity of that, because Miami beat Notre Dame and they owned matching 10-2 records and similar metrics.
There’s logic in the final at-large choices, but there’s no lucidity in the path the committee charted to reach this destination.
Facing a tough decision, the committee chose to pretend the SEC championship game didn’t happen. In doing so, it devalued a once-revolutionary contest that used to mean so much.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.