Tennessee fans aren't buying what CFP committee chairman said about the Vols not hosting a playoff game
The Tennessee Vols will play on the road in the first round of the College Football Playoff. Tennessee learned on Sunday that they'll face the Ohio State Buckeyes in Columbus in the first round of the playoff on December 21. The Vols had a case to host a playoff game over Ohio State — Tennessee's […]
The Tennessee Vols will play on the road in the first round of the College Football Playoff.
Tennessee learned on Sunday that they'll face the Ohio State Buckeyes in Columbus in the first round of the playoff on December 21.
The Vols had a case to host a playoff game over Ohio State — Tennessee's opponents had better wins than Ohio State's opponents and the Buckeyes lost at home to a not-very-good Michigan team — but the playoff committee ultimately decided to rank OSU one spot higher than UT.
College Football Playoff committee chairman Warde Manuel claimed on Sunday while speaking with reporters that the committee didn't consider who would or wouldn't host a playoff game while compiling the rankings.
“Ultimately as a committee and as we voted these teams, Ohio State was one ahead of Tennessee,” said Manuel. "But we didn’t look at it as, well, if we put Ohio State at 6 and Tennessee at 7, one is going to host and one is not. We never [did that]. I can assure you, and everybody on this call, we never even talked about it until after the top 25 was ranked."
“I made sure in this room that was not a point of consideration,” continued Manuel. “That was not something for us to do. The commissioners asked us to rank the best 25 teams from 1 to 25 and that’s what we did.”
That sounds good, but there's no way that's the case. The committee knew that the No. 6 and No. 7 teams in the rankings, because of automatic byes for the top four ranked conference champions, would be an important talking point because of the home/away draw.
So in that sense, Manuel, who is an acting athletic director at a Big 10 program (Michigan), and the committee knew that ranking Ohio State one spot above Tennessee would give the Big 10 two College Football Playoff home games (Penn State is hosting SMU) and the SEC would have just one (Texas is hosting Clemson).
Now, whether or not Ohio State deserves that home game is up for debate. I can see the argument for both teams to host.
What's not debatable, though, is that the committee was absolutely aware that the order of the rankings, especially at No. 6 and No. 7, would determine whether or not Tennessee hosted a playoff game in Neyland this winter.
No one will admit it, but it feels obvious why the Tennessee Vols didn’t get a home playoff game
Rough outcome for the Vols
