The only way to attack this stupidity is with reality.
If Oregon were playing James Madison in September, and Mississippi were playing Tulane at the same time, we’d call them body-bag games.
Show up as the low-tier fodder you’re paid to be, take your $1 million check (or more) and return home with an ugly loss.
Instead it’s December, and 12 people who were simply following equally stupid rules, made them College Football Playoff games.
Seriously, what are we doing here?
Instead of a CFP first-round weekend of Texas at Oregon, and Notre Dame at Ole Miss, we get charity games. Everyone gets a trophy, baby.
How absolutely preposterous can this be?
College football has never been more front of mind in the American sports culture, an explosion of popularity unlike anything we’ve seen this side of the NFL. Through all its unintended problems over the past four years of paradigm change, the sport has only gotten stronger.
It’s damn-near bulletproof.
And here we are, at the showcase moment of the season, are we’re still allowing stragglers to disrupt and damage the way college football determines a national champion.
It’s bad enough the postseason is run through a CFP selection committee of inherently biased personalities (see: former coaches, and current athletic directors). It’s worse that the committee is given archaic guidelines counterproductive to the health and growth of the sport.
At the top of the list: a guaranteed spot for at least one Group of Five champion. This season, there are two — because 12 people on that committee actually looked at ACC champion Duke and James Madison and thought, yeah, let’s go with another Group of Five team.
Only in college football can you be penalized for playing at the elite level of the sport, and rewarded for playing in the low-rent district. It makes zero sense until you realize who’s running this thing.
The same fine folks who were willing to spend tens of millions in legal fees in an attempt to keep money from players, who were willing to eat one of their own (the Pac-12) in a blatant money grab to supplement the cash they knew they’d lose in the legal battle with players, are the same people who gave us this monumental joke of a “playoff.”
That would be the presidents and chancellors of the power conferences, who send walking orders to the conference commissioners, who then try to explain the nonsensical ideas to you, the consumer — who spend millions upon millions to be part of the annual four-month, white-knuckle escape from their daily lives.
The very least those presidents and chancellors can do is give consumers a postseason that’s worthy of the regular season. And that’s the key to this utterly comical way of determining a champion.
The best 12 teams — however they are determined — won’t be suiting up for the CFP. But why?
If the presidents and chancellors are willing to take players to the mat in a legal fight, they surely aren’t concerned about the Group of Five schools threatening legal action.
If the presidents and chancellors can’t convince Congress to get involved to fix the unbridled free agency in the sport, they can’t be concerned that the most dysfunctional body on the planet will get involved if the Group of Five is told you have to be ranked in the top 12 to earn a spot in the playoff.
If the presidents and chancellors aren’t concerned about the public relations disaster of players and coaches changing teams annually picking away at the integrity of the game, they surely won’t care about public trust when Group of Five loyalists start whining about access.
You want access? Be one of the best 12 teams in the sport, according to the selection committee. Or however they decide to rank the teams moving forward.
Because right now, we have two Group of Five teams — both of which have coaches who have already taken jobs with power conference teams — on the verge of getting their doors blown off in what should be college football’s marquee moment.
The only way to attack stupidity is with reality.
And end this charity program beginning next season.
