Georgia's Kirby Smart says the quiet part out loud about the College Football Playoff and it needs to lead to some changes
Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart hasn't been shy about discussing the College Football Playoff rankings over the last couple of weeks. Smart has used his time in front of the microphone to send various messages to the playoff committee, including after the Bulldogs' win against the Tennessee Vols. On Tuesday, Smart met with reporters […]
Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart hasn't been shy about discussing the College Football Playoff rankings over the last couple of weeks.
Smart has used his time in front of the microphone to send various messages to the playoff committee, including after the Bulldogs' win against the Tennessee Vols.
On Tuesday, Smart met with reporters after Georgia's practice and he was asked what he thinks the playoff committee "values".
While answering the question, Smart said the quiet part out loud about the College Football Playoff rankings. And it's something that should be getting significantly more attention from the national media.
"I think they value wins and losses," said Smart. "And so they place people based on a column — a column of wins and a column of losses, not on the eye test of going to watch them play and see them and see who they played. I just don’t think they — I think they base it on wins and losses. I don’t think they say, well, this is better than that. They just say this record’s better than that. That’s the most simple way to do it. It’s not necessarily the 12 best. So we’ll see what happens."
Did you catch that?
"It’s not necessarily the 12 best."
Smart is spot on. The playoff committee isn't interested in getting the 12 best teams into the tournament — they're interested in the 12 best "resumés" — which is an impossible task because no one in the country is playing the same schedule. Not even remotely close.
If we aren't getting the 12 best teams into the playoff, then what are we even doing?
(That's why the automatic qualifiers are silly….that's a mistake that needs to be fixed moving forward.)
Everyone is arguing about who beat who and what wins are good and what wins are bad. It's a debate that doesn't have a right answer. You can make a great case for Ole Miss to be ahead of Georgia. You can also make a case for Georgia to be ahead of Ole Miss. You can make a case for Alabama to be ahead of Tennessee. You can also make a case for Tennessee to be ahead of Alabama. No one is ever going to agree that the committee "got it right".
Yet we look at the rankings and see Notre Dame at No. 6 and we know that Georgia (which is No. 10 in the rankings), at its best, would absolutely destroy the Fighting Irish on a neutral field. The same goes for Ole Miss, Alabama, and even a team like South Carolina (which is 7-3 but playing some really good football right now).
The playoff should be about getting the 12 best teams into a postseason tournament to battle it out for the national championship (and it should be the 12 best teams at the end of the season…which is why South Carolina deserves serious consideration to be included in a 12-team playoff…who would be excited to play the Gamecocks right now?).
It shouldn't be about the 12 best resumés. This is a massive flaw in the playoff system that needs to be fixed. It was a flaw when it was a four-team playoff (Georgia was undoubtedly one of the four best teams in the country last season…but because of the baffling way the playoff rankings are compiled, they were left out) and it's still a flaw with 12 teams.
If we're going to have a 12-team playoff, or a 16-team playoff in the future, then a fundamental change to the sport needs to happen.
The eye test doesn't lie. We know who is good and who isn't — you can look at the talent on the rosters and easily come to that conclusion. But if we want to make things a bit more "fair", here's the solution.
Overhaul the scheduling process in college football.
Here's my idea:
Every Power-4 team plays eight conference games. Then they play one game against a team from each of the other Power-4 conferences. The last game on the schedule has to be against a team from a Group of Five conference.
The scheduling process would need to be dynamic. We don't need Georgia playing Rutgers — that wouldn't help anything. Essentially, each SEC team would have a home game against a Big 10 team in one season and the next season would be a road game against a Big 10 team. We wouldn't know who the game is against until after the previous season. And it would be scheduled based on where each team finished in their conference. So if Georgia won the SEC and Ohio State won the Big 10, those two teams would play. Second place would play second place and so on.
As for Group of Five teams, they would need to be allowed to schedule more games against Power-4 teams if they want to have a chance to make the playoff — you gotta earn your way in.
If the playoff is going to work, it needs to be the best teams, not the best resumés. The committee shouldn't feel obligated to include a team from a weak conference that plays a weak schedule. That kind of mindset means some of the best teams in the sport will be left out of the playoff in favor of less impressive teams. And that's a major problem for the sport.
