Ohio State Football: Eye Test an Absurd Way to Pick CFP Teams
There shouldn’t have been a debate whether Ohio State or Alabama was the fourth best team.
Ohio State lost an eye test battle against Alabama for the final spot in the College Football Playoff.
Strange thing about those eye tests when it comes to sports. Many times the underdog wins.
No one except Herb Brooks thought the Americans would beat the Soviets in 1980. Few outside of Ohio thought the Buckeyes would beat Alabama in the inaugural playoff.
Most thought USC would dismantle Texas in the 2006 Rose Bowl.
The New York Giants beat the mighty New England Patriots, not once, but twice in the Super Bowl.
Did anyone besides the Duke faithful believe they would beat UNLV in the 1991 NCAA Tournament Semifinals?
The answer is no one knows how Ohio State, USC, Penn State, Wisconsin or UCF would have performed in this years’ playoff.
I am amazed at why the college football world is so accepting of an absurd model to crown its champion.
First the champion was determined by polls, then it was the Bowl Coalition, followed by the Bowl Alliance only to be morphed into the Bowl Championship Series and finally a playoff.
Want to have an eye-tearing laugh? Go watch Mike Leach’s epic rant on the playoff.
The inability of the powers that be to create a legitimate post-season system is ludicrous.
I wrote about it earlier this week.
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It is not complicated. Make it eight teams. The Power Five champions plus three at-large. The Committee can select the three at-large plus the seeding.
I could be persuaded to make it 16, but having eight removes most of the subjectivity. The teams that finish No. 9 and No. 10 will complain, but that is a lot easier to swallow.
Imagine for a moment that this system was in place this season. The quarterfinals would be phenomenal and college football would own that weekend.
A plus is you could have a home game for the top four seeds.
Instead, we are left with an imperfect playoff system with one side desperately trying to substantiate its merits while the other just scratches its head wondering why it must be so difficult.
You know which side I am on.
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I guess I’ll go watch a replay of the greatest defense ever in college football get ripped to shreds by Deshaun Watson in the second half again. The experts didn’t think that would happen either.