I have been traveling most of the month of December so I haven’t been really able to update the site as much as I’d like to. I had this post typed up in my notes app after the CFP Final Four was announced, and I just never got around to editing it and posting it. But I want to get it posted here before the actual playoff games start.

Normally when I’m brainstorming for a post I just do a bulleted or numbered list and start rattling off thoughts, and I’m basically just going to copy and paste what I have in my notes here with a bit of editing.

The CFP

1. The committee made the right call. People are rightly pissed that a 13-0 undefeated Florida state team was left out of the playoff but the committee was put in an impossible situation. No matter what they decided it would be met with immense blowback.
2. The committee is restricted by the fact that only four teams can make the playoff. The real problem here is with the playoff format—the system itself. It’s idiotic for this sport to be so far behind every other sport in terms of its he postseason, and it’s getting fixed next year, but we still have to deal with the reality that only four teams are allowed in.
3. Florida State is 100% leaving the ACC and Clemson is right behind them.
4. So really I think the committee made the right call because Bama is a better team than FSU, but at the time Florida State has every right to be livid. And Bama fans would have had every right to be livid if FSU got in over them. 
5. Texas had to be in. So it couldn’t have been a debate between FSU and Texas, because if you put FSU and Alabama in and leave Texas out, then that’s a massive outrage because Texas beat Alabama. 
6. People saying “the games don’t matter” are missing the fact that Texas’ win over Alabama is what put them over the top and got them in. Texas is seeded ahead of Alabama because of the head to head win.
7. The real outrage is that The Cheaters are in, but Alabama will right that wrong four weeks from now. I wonder if the cheating scandal played a role in getting Alabama in—the committee would never admit this publicly, but there’s no way anybody wanted Michigan to get an easy matchup with FSU.
8. There was a video going around of the Michigan team’s reaction to learning that they’d be playing Bama instead of FSU. The disappointment was palpable in the room. You could tell the initial reaction was like “Shit…” but then they started clapping, as if they realized they were being filmed and they had to project confidence. But the initial reflexive reaction said it all. They were really hoping to play FSU, not Bama. And they are not thrilled to be playing Bama, to say the least. 
9. And that really tells you the committee chose the better team. Who did Michigan want to play? FSU, not Bama. Michigan didn’t want to play Bama, therefore putting Bama in was the right decision.
10. Then again, in that situation, it wasn’t about right or wrong. Putting in Bama wasn’t “right” because Florida State was wronged in the process. And if they’d have put in FSU, Bama would’ve been wronged In the process.
11. People have kind of turned this into a partisan issue (shocker), where you’re either on FSU’s side or Bama’s side, but in reality they are both deserving teams. Both of them deserve to be in the playoffs, yet only one of them could get in, so whichever decision the committee made was both right and wrong.
12. The tiebreaker, however, went to Bama because we all think Bama is the better team. People are saying “You can’t use ‘best team’ as your criteria because it’s rooted in opinion.’ Essentially there’s this idea that the committee just more or less lets Vegas decide the playoff field, and that this is wrong because sometimes underdogs win. 
13. Like how Oregon was a 9.5 point favorite over Washington in the Pac 12 Championship and yet Washington won the game, so that proves that just because team A is thought to be better than Team B, you cannot use that as your justification for putting Team A in the playoff, because upsets happen. Selection has to be based on “most deserving” because it’s tangible—it’s like “showing your work” on a math test.
14. But it’s a completely false assumption to say that FSU was the “deserving” team and that Bama only got in because they’re Bama and the committee just has this strong gut feeling that Bama is better.
15. Bama is deserving. They have a great, tangible resume. They won the SEC. They have wins over 4 ranked teams (Georgia, Ole Miss, LSU, Tennessee). They played a tougher schedule. FSU only has wins over 2 ranked teams: LSU and Louisville. Bama has by far the strongest win, having beaten the back-to-back National Champions. Bama ended Georgia’s 29 game win streak. 
16. Let’s not act like Bama is this undeserving team because they have one loss and Florida State is undefeated. Bama didn’t just get in on name brand alone. Bama played a tougher schedule than FSU did. Bama has a loss because they played a much tougher out of conference opponent (Texas) than FSU did (LSU). FSU’s most impressive win of the season was the week 1 game against LSU, but Bama has also beaten LSU. Bama just lost to Texas early in the year, but now Bama has improved quite a bit since then.
17. Let’s not act like Bama is undeserving here. If it was only about the committee’s subjective feelings on who was the better team, then there would have been much more consideration for teams like Georgia and Ohio State. Who doesn’t believe Georgia and Ohio State are better than Washington, for example? Or Texas, even? But Georgia and Ohio State never got any serious consideration for that last playoff spot, did they? No, because they had really similar resumes: they lost narrowly to the teams that went on to win their respective conferences. Georgia and OSU were not seriously considered because they didn’t have the solid, tangible RESUMES to make the playoff.
18. Bama was taken over both of them because Bama is a conference champion and they’re not. Texas was taken over both Georgia and Ohio State in large part because Texas won their conference, while Georgia and Ohio State did not. All three teams have one loss. But only one of the three is a conference champion. A big part of it is also that Texas beat Bama while Georgia lost to Bama, and the Texas win over Alabama is now officially the best win of any of the four playoff teams. (Technically the best win of the season belongs to Oklahoma for when they beat Texas, because Texas is currently the highest ranked team with a loss, a spot ahead of Alabama).
19. But do you see what I mean here? There’s very valid reasons you can point to for why the playoff field is what it is. The games matter. Texas beating Alabama mattered. Alabama beating Georgia mattered. Michigan beating Ohio State mattered. Do you think if Ohio State had beaten Michigan that Michigan would still be in? Come on. The game they played determined who got into the playoff. 
20. So miss me with this “Muhhh the games don’t matter” bullshit. It’s the most fake woke thing I’ve seen all season. It’s what all the fake smart people have rallied around—the same fake smart people who told you the Big Ten didn’t really want to punish Michigan, they only pretended they were going to to appease the other 13 schools in the conference. Fake Woke Bullshit.
21. But we’re getting distracted from the real issue here; They should’ve expanded the playoff to 12 teams this year. There are four really good teams that are left out this year: Georgia, FSU, Ohio State, Oregon. Plus you have teams like Missouri and Oklahoma and LSU that would be worthy in a 12 team playoff.
22. This year makes it so undeniably clear that we need the expanded playoff yesterday. Is there anybody against the 12 team playoff now? Anybody against playoff expansion has been brainwashed by the idea that the rankings are all powerful. In the BCS only two teams got in. So it would be Michigan vs. Washington for the Natty. Could you even imagine? What if the Natty ends up being Bama vs. Texas? 
23. The 12 team playoff allows you to include the teams you know are the best, as well as the “most-deserving” teams. And by the way, most deserving just means a team that punched above its weight class—an overachiever.
24. We were brainwashed to think only two teams should have a chance to win the championship, and then we were brainwashed to believe only four teams had a chance to win the championship. When they expanded to four teams, we were expected to be grateful about it—oh, you want even MORE teams in the playoffs now? Well for Pete’s sake, buddy! Anything else we can get you? A cup of coffee? A foot rub? A big titty woman to warm your bed at night?
25. We get 68 teams in the college basketball tournament, we had for many years 12 teams and now 14 teams in the NFL playoffs. We have 16 teams in the hockey and NBA playoffs. 
26. But we’re greedy and we don’t care about the players if we want more than a couple teams in the college football postseason?
27. The great Mike Leach said it best several years back: If having a 4 team playoff field determined by a committee is such a wonderful idea, why aren’t any other major sports leagues trying to copy it? Why isn’t the NFL ditching their system and adopting the college football system?
28. The real issue here is we have Florida State fans mad at Alabama, and if the situation was flipped we would have had Alabama fans mad at Florida State. Shit, we already do have Bama fans mad at Florida State fans just because Florida State fans are mad at Bama.
29. But the real problem is that the sport is 50 years behind every other major sport in America. Don’t lose sight of that.
30. On those lines, the big wigs in charge of college football don’t get much credit from me for finally getting with the program and giving us a real, genuine postseason. I mean, sure, better late than never but still—if somebody owes you money for 20 years and they finally pay you back, you’re still pissed at them for taking so damn long in the first place!
31. A real issue here that people aren’t talking about is that the committee had Alabama under-ranked and Oregon over-ranked for much of the season.  As someone who does power ratings, I understand full well why they liked Oregon so much: Oregon was the most statistically impressive team in the country. But the CFP rankings are based on more than just statistics. It’s a small nit to pick but Oregon should’ve been behind Bama and Texas this whole time. I still think nobody would really care where Bama was ranked before they jumped FSU, because the real beef that people have here is that FSU is undefeated and Alabama has one loss.
32. I’ve been saying it for years: every team in America, from the SEC down to the G5 conferences, should know going into each season that if they win all their games, they will be National Champions.
33. And look, as an Ohio State fan, I definitely feel for FSU here. I watched Ohio State win a National Championship with a third-string QB. Granted, Cardale Jones was a heck of a lot better than Brock Glenn, and Jones led Ohio State to an emphatic 59-0 win in the Big Ten Championship over Wisconsin whereas FSU won its Conference Championship game just 16-6, but I’m sure a lot of people back in 2014 wanted Ohio State left out of the postseason because they were down to a third string quarterback, and who in the heck wants to watch Cardale Jones get his ass whooped by Alabama? Shit, people even wrote Ohio State off before the season when Braxton Miller went down, because who in the heck had ever heard of a true freshman quarterback named JT Barrett?
34. So I get it. I totally get it. And Ohio State back in 2014 had one loss—an ugly loss early in the season to Virginia Tech. Florida State is 13-0. Nobody’s beaten them this season, and yet still Ohio State got into the playoff in 2014 and Florida State is left out?
35. That’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.
36. Again: the real problem is that college football has a joke of a postseason format, and lags 50 years behind every other major American sport when it comes to how it decides its champions. Florida State and Bama should both be in–we shouldn’t have a four team playoff to begin with. But we do. And we’ve gotta live with it.
37. Random final thought about the playoff: Perhaps Oregon couldn’t expose Washington’s defense, which nobody trusted all year, because Washington’s defense is only really exploitable on the back end and Bo Nix just doesn’t throw it downfield all that much. Texas should be able to exploit that, though.

So what would the 12 team playoff have looked like this year?

Your four teams on bye would be the four highest ranked conference champions: Michigan, Washington, Texas and Bama. By the way, this is where the controversy and debate is going to come from when things move to 12 teams—it won’t be over the 13th team that gets left out, it’ll be over who gets the bye in a situation like we have right now, where FSU is undefeated but wouldn’t qualify for a bye because they’re not one of the four highest ranked conference champions. The outrage will be over Bama getting the bye over FSU, because it’s still ultimately determined subjectively—by the committee’s rankings. It won’t be as much over what would’ve been the snub this year—Oklahoma and LSU being left out for Liberty.

It’s the 5 highest ranked conference champions now, not 6, because the Pac 12 is cooked. So it’s 5 conference champs and 7 at large bids.

Again, the only thing FSU would have to be pissed about under the 12 team playoff is missing out on the bye, but they’d have wound up playing Liberty in a home playoff game in Tallahassee, and then, hey, you win that game, you get to play Bama at a neutral site—go show everyone you’re better than Bama! We’d all love to see you prove it. (And I mean that seriously—I wish we could see Bama play FSU just to put everything to bed).

But the bottom line there is that Florida State is still in and still gets the chance to compete for a National Championship. They’re not bitching about being excluded from the party altogether—they’re just bitching that they weren’t on the VIP list and had to wait in line and pay cover.

Now I will say that I do think in a 12 team playoff situation, the committee would scramble these rankings up a little bit to avoid rematches whenever possible. It’s not relevant where Ole Miss and Penn State are ranked this season, but if we had these same rankings next year, we’d have a rematch of OSU-Penn State and UGA-Ole Miss, and nobody wants that. Just flip those two teams—Ole Miss plays at Ohio State, Penn State plays at Georgia—and we’re good to go.

Oregon vs. Missouri looks good to me, and then that FSU-Liberty matchup is probably pretty typical of what you’d get most years in that 5 vs 12 slot: you’d get that one G5 team that overachieved like crazy.

I think the reason a lot of talking heads are against the 12 team playoff is that it takes so much of the speculation and tea leaf-reading out of the equation. Everything is going to get proven on the field and they’re going to actually have to talk about the games themselves and know their shit about football, instead of just coulda woulda shoulda-ing all day long. 

There’s a lot of people who would prefer to spend the next 20 years bitching about how FSU would’ve won the whole thing this year but they got screwed. They’d rather it not get proven on the field—they’d rather it remain a mystery, a hypothetical, a proverbial “bloody shirt” that they can point to as proof that they were done dirty and everyone’s out to get them.

People like to milk being the victims, they like to be outraged, and a lot of people would rather make excuses than take the risk and potentially fail in the process.

But once the dust settles here and tempers cool down, that’s exactly how Mike Norvell is going to play this. It’s going to be a “Florida State against the world” mentality in that program; nobody respects us, the system is rigged against us so let’s just dominate and bring the whole diseased temple down on their heads, etc.

Again, it’s their bloody shirt that they can point to now and use it as a rallying cry. We got screwed! The big wigs don’t want us in there! SEC BIAS!!!!!

And of course this will also be used to rally the big donors to pony up whatever amount of money it takes to get FSU out of the ACC.

Obviously Florida State isn’t happy about this at all—they’re all livid.

But if you’re one of the big wigs, and you’re looking at this with a long term perspective, this is the tipping point for gaining enough financial support to leave the ACC. You appeal to your boosters and say, “We can’t be in this conference anymore. For one thing we’d make a lot more money in the SEC or the Big Ten, but now the committee is showing that they don’t respect the ACC as a conference at all, and it’s just cost us a chance to compete for a National Championship. We’ve gotta get out of here now.”

So Florida State will get through this. They’ll figure out how to turn this negative into a positive. And if this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back and gets them out of the ACC, then that’s a nice silver lining.