Don’t blame the selection committee for Georgia 65, TCU 7.
In the system created by college football’s commissioners back in 2012, the blowout on Monday was nearly inevitable. Championship weekend left the selection committee with no real choice. The good news is that a system is coming that should give college football a much better chance to create competitive championship games.
Will there still be blowouts once the 12-team College Football Playoff begins in the 2024 season? Of course. The NFL — a league with strict controls built in to promote parity — held a 12-team tournament that it has since expanded to 14. That didn’t stop the Broncos from starting Super Bowl XLVIII with a snap over Peyton Manning’s head and devolving from there in a 43-8 loss to the Seahawks. Blowouts happen.
But they are less likely to happen when the two teams playing for the championship have run a gauntlet designed to weed out the teams may have benefitted from one circumstance or another to reach that point. This is the part where the traditionalists clock out from their shifts at the rotary phone factory and scream THAT’S WHAT THE REGULAR SEASON IS IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL.
No it isn’t. An ACC schedule, a Big 12 schedule, a Big Ten schedule and a Pac-12 schedule all present different challenges. Heck, an SEC East and an SEC West schedule present different challenges. The contrast in conference flavor is part of college football’s charm, but it also makes it difficult to compare teams at the end.
Fortunately, in two years, more of the best teams can be compared by playing in loser-goes-home games. And the teams that survive to the title game will have done so by proving their worth multiple times.
This year’s version of the CFP was set up for thrilling semifinals and a potential snoozer of a title game. We knew that when the bracket came out and Las Vegas set the lines for the semifinals.