Oklahoma Sooners shouldn't be in 2015 College Football Playoff

The Oklahoma Sooners are champions of the Big 12 conference, and will likely find themselves in the College Football Playoff top four, but that doesn’t mean they should be there.

Oklahoma fans may hate the idea behind this column, and it certainly doesn’t take away from a great season by the Sooners, but the Big 12 representative and Notre Dame should be the first teams out when looking at the playoff rankings.

The idea behind the College Football Playoff was for the committee to select the four best teams in the nation to compete, and to eventually crown a champion. Great idea, if the playing field is level for all teams.

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While the committee doesn’t have a lot of control over who teams play, or how they were ranked prior to the committee’s first ranking, they can look at those and other factors to determine who they believe the best teams in the nation are.

But what about conference championship games?

The fact that the Big 12 doesn’t hold a championship game in their conference was a major contributing factor to both Baylor and TCU being left out of the top four last season, and the same should hold true for Oklahoma this year.

The 11-1 Sooners have had a fantastic season outside of their embarrassing loss to 4-7 Texas, but now they get to sit and heal, while every other team with playoff hopes must engage in a 13th game against a top opponent to decide their conference’s champion.

While on the surface that single game might not seem like much, it really should be significant in the eyes of the committee.

No. 7 Stanford must face No. 20 USC in the Pac-12 title game; No. 5 Michigan State must face No. 4 Iowa in the Big Ten Championship game, No. 2 Alabama has to deal with No. 18 Florida in the SEC Championship game, and the No. 1 Clemson Tigers have to match up with the red hot No. 10 North Carolina Tar Heels.

All the while, Oklahoma can sit on their sofas and watch the carnage.

For those other teams, not only is that 13th game a chance for a loss and being bumped out of the playoffs, but it’s also another opportunity for key injuries, as well as another week of pounding on the bodies of the players.

All things being equal, if the committee is picking between one-loss teams, Oklahoma (or any other Big 12 school) should be the first one out because of this scheduling irregularity. If unbeaten Iowa were to lose the Big Ten Championship game to Michigan State, it would seem more logical to include both of them in the four team playoff with a single loss to quality teams rather than a one-loss Oklahoma team with one less game and the loss being to Texas.

Last season the exclusion of TCU – who was arguably probably a better team than the eventual champion, Ohio State – should have been enough to convince Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby to form a conference title game, and possibly look at adding a couple of worthy teams to the conference.

He did neither, and he were are again.

Maybe locking a rich and storied program like Oklahoma out of the playoffs, and having their massive fan base move to revolt would be what’s needed to wake Bowlsby and the rest of the Big 12 powers from their fall slumber. If you want to be part of the Power-5, then at the very least play the same number of games.

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Oklahoma may be one of the top four teams in the nation right now, but getting to take a week off while everyone else heads into battle means they should fall from grace in the eyes of the committee. I’m guessing every team from Stanford on up in the rankings would agree with that.

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Oklahoma Sooners probably shouldn’t be in 2015 College Football Playoff

By Michael Collins | Dec 3, 2015

The Oklahoma Sooners are champions of the Big 12 conference, and will likely find themselves in the College Football Playoff top four, but that doesn’t mean they should be there.