How the Tennessee Vols were directly impacted by the embarrassing bias of the College Football Playoff committee
The Tennessee Vols were jumped in the College Football Playoff rankings by a couple of teams this week despite their 19 point win against the Mississippi State Bulldogs last weekend. Tennessee remained at No. 7 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings, but they were jumped by BYU and Indiana (Georgia and Miami dropped below […]
The Tennessee Vols were jumped in the College Football Playoff rankings by a couple of teams this week despite their 19 point win against the Mississippi State Bulldogs last weekend.
Tennessee remained at No. 7 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings, but they were jumped by BYU and Indiana (Georgia and Miami dropped below Tennessee after losses last weekend to Ole Miss and Georgia Tech, respectively).
College Football Playoff committee chairman Warde Manuel was asked on Tuesday night about Indiana and BYU jumping Tennessee.
Manuel said the injury to Vols quarterback Nico Iamaleava had nothing to do with Tennessee staying at No. 7 despite their win against Mississippi State. Instead, the Vols were jumped because Indiana and BYU won "big games" against struggling Michigan and struggling Utah.
"I can say no to the injury to Tennessee's quarterback," said Manuel. "It had nothing to do with it. It really came down to the play last week of both Indiana and BYU, both winning big games on their schedule. Tennessee, the offense has struggled some the second half of the season, not being consistent early in the year, and we just felt as a committee that at this time Indiana has been playing very well, a close win against Michigan, but other than that, they've dominated everyone they've played. BYU, obviously undefeated, two wins against top-25 opponents, at SMU and against Kansas State. In looking at it, as we assessed all the teams, we just felt that Indiana and BYU earned the 5 and the 6 slot, and Tennessee stayed where they are."
That's obviously a terrible answer from Manuel. For starters, the comment about the Vols' offense is completely uncalled for. Tennessee has the No. 15 scoring offense in the nation, though that really shouldn't even come into play. The Vols are winning games and they're playing dominant defense (apparently Manuel and the rest of the committee doesn't realize that football is a team sport that requires playing well in all three phases to win games…hopefully someone can educate them on this before their next hangout session which I can only assume revolves around a pizza party while throwing darts at photos of SEC head coaches).
The bigger issue, however, is Manuel's comments about Indiana and BYU's "big wins" — specifically when it comes to Indiana.
Indiana beat a Michigan team is now 5-5 at Memorial Stadium in Bloomington. How is that a "big game"?
Is it just because of Michigan's logo?
Probably.
Manuel, who is currently the athletic director at Michigan, is obviously biased when it comes to the Wolverines (and maybe the Big 10 in general). He is clearly propping up Indiana's win against Michigan because he's incapable of objectively evaluating the Wolverines. And that's a major problem. The only reason Tennessee didn't move up in the rankings this week is because of Manuel's connection to Michigan. There's just simply no way that the Hoosiers' win against the Wolverines is justification for Indiana to move ahead of the Vols after Tennessee beat Mississippi State by 19 points while playing with a backup quarterback for the entire second half.
Just because Michigan won a national championship last year doesn't mean they're an elite team this year (I mean, just listen to former Michigan offensive lineman Taylor Lewan, who joked this week on Bussin with the Boys that Michigan was a "trap game" for Indiana because of how far the Wolverines have fallen this season — Lewan is clearly more objective than Manuel).
SEC Network host Peter Burns nailed it when he tweeted on Tuesday night that no sitting athletic director should be part of the playoff ranking process.
I love the idea of a playoff in college football, but it's clear that the current selection process is deeply flawed. The only way to fix it is to expand the playoff further (there's too much parity to decide which two loss team should be left out — there really isn't a right answer to be quite honest) and to also remove sitting athletic directors from the process completely. Otherwise, teams like Tennessee will continue to get screwed over because of their logo.
