Indiana's loss to Notre Dame in College Football Playoff changes nothing and SEC fans are fuming
The first game of the playoff on Friday night being the Notre Dame Fighting Irish taking on the Indiana Hoosiers meant that we would be subject to a lot of discussions about how the SEC got screwed if the game script went how many believed it would. Well, it happened and Notre Dame dominated the […]
The first game of the playoff on Friday night being the Notre Dame Fighting Irish taking on the Indiana Hoosiers meant that we would be subject to a lot of discussions about how the SEC got screwed if the game script went how many believed it would.
Well, it happened and Notre Dame dominated the game from start to finish and beat the Hoosiers 27-17 in a game that wasn't as close as the score indicated.
We started hearing the discussions about who deserves to be in the College Football Playoff after Indiana lost 38-15 to Ohio State in November. You could tell the biggest names in college football media received some sort of communication about why the SEC deserved to have Alabama and Ole Miss in the field. We were bombarded with SEC propaganda from that day through Championship Saturday. Then, the discourse shifted into Alabama and Ole Miss got screwed.
Here's the thing: Alamaba and Ole Miss didn't earn their way to make the playoff.
Sure, the strength of schedule for both teams was better than Indiana's, but the Hoosiers weren't playing in Conference USA. They played a Big Ten schedule. It's not their fault they beat both teams who played in last year's National Championship Game and they each had down years. They didn't pick their conference schedule and shouldn't be punished for playing in a top-two conference because they opponents in conference were bad.
What Indiana did was playoff-worthy. I wrote about their case after their loss to Ohio State, and the biggest thing that Indiana had in their favor was something simple: winning football games.
The bottom line is this: winning matters. It's not Indiana's fault they were handed an "easy" Big Ten schedule. It's still incredibly difficult to win your games. The Hoosiers had just a 5.6% chance to start the season 10-0.
Wins have always mattered much more than losses when it comes to determining who the best teams are in College Football. Just 15 years ago, one loss could have eliminated you from even competing for a National Championship. However, with the advent of the 12-team College Football Playoff, we are supposed to praise teams like Ole Miss and Tennessee for having two "quality" losses?
The other big talking point after the playoff committee that Alabama won't be scheduling any tough non-conference games. Alabama's athletic director Greg Byrne said as much after the field was announced.
Well, which power opponent is Alabama not going to schedule: Western Kentucky, Mercer, South Florida or Wisconsin? Surely that's a murderer's row that prevented them from making the playoff.
What about Ole Miss? It must have been Furman, Middle Tennessee State, Wake Forest or Georgia Southern who ruined their playoff hopes.
It was none of those teams. It was their SEC opponents.
The Crimson Tide lost to Tennessee, which was what you would call a quality loss. Losing by one score at Neyland Stadium is nothing to be ashamed about. It was the 40-35 loss at 6-6 Vanderbilt and an embarrassing 24-3 loss to 6-6 Oklahoma.
Ole Miss was a similar story, but their losses are arguably worse.
- 20-17 to a 4-8 Kentucky team
- 29-26 to a 7-5 LSU team
- 24-17 to an 8-5 Florida team
Honestly, this boils down to one thing: people just want to see the SEC participate in the tournament. Here's the thing: they already do. It's called SEC conference play. Other teams also earn spots in the playoff field and they might not be as talented as those SEC teams.
In college football, wins matter. Earning your place in the playoff field matters. Indiana took a team that had 31 players leave and 30 more come in via the transfer portal, and Curt Cignetti took them to the College Football Playoff with the school's first-ever 11-win season.
When you talk about hypothetical games, maybe remember that Alabama and Ole Miss couldn't win the games they were supposed to and failed to earn a spot. All they had to do was beat Vanderbilt or Kentucky. Just one more win gets them a playoff spot, but they couldn't do it. Maybe someone should tell Lane Kiffin.
Indiana earned the right to get whooped by Notre Dame and the result doesn't change that fact.
