Alabama’s College Football Playoff pick will accelerate move to 8-team playoff

The College Football Playoff selection committee chose Alabama over Ohio State for the No. 4 spot. It will soon lead to the committee picking 8 teams.

On the first Sunday of December, the College Football Playoff selection committee made the best argument possible for why four teams is four too few. Four teams will always be a fashion show instead of a legitimate playoff. That is especially true when the selection process involves an ever-shifting target.

We might as well go back to the BCS rankings, which for all their faults were at least transparent in their methodology. Now we are subject to the doublespeak of a dozen selectors who make things up as they go to fit their preconceived biases.

Back in 2014, TCU and Baylor were pushed down the list in favor of Ohio State. To justify that decision, the committee declared that a definitive conference title and a 13th data point were the most critical factors for selection.

More from College Football Playoff

• College Football Playoff: Projected top 4 after Week 2
• College Football Playoff: Projected top 4 after Week 1
• College Football: 1 of these 5 teams will make the playoff for the first time in 2023
• The best college football game for each week in October
• Who’s The Next Group of Five Contender?

2015 was a relatively clean selection process, though there was some controversy about whether Stanford deserved a spot in the field. But at that point, two losses was declared a disqualifying blemish on their case. But that belies the fact that Auburn would have been put into this year’s College Football Playoff field had they won against Georgia for the SEC championship.

This year, the committee selected SEC West runner-up Alabama over Big Ten champion Ohio State to make this year’s semifinals. Just as they did last year, the College Football Playoff selectors effectively stated that conference championships mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. What matters most is the eyeball test, apparently, at least when it comes down to a battle between popular powerhouses.

Any logic can be applied when there is zero transparency to the process.

It was argued that Alabama’s loss to Auburn was less damaging to their case than Ohio State’s two losses. This mirrors the 2015 argument — except for the fact that, if conference championships don’t matter and quality losses are more important than quality wins, Wisconsin had as good a case for College Football Playoff inclusion as either team.

The Crimson Tide lost to the No. 7 team in the committee’s final rankings by 12 points on the road. The Badgers lost to the No. 5 team in the committee’s final rankings by six points on a neutral field. By most other indications, the two teams played comparable schedules when the preconceived notion that the SEC is a juggernaut is taken out of the equation. (And this year, at least, the SEC was hardly the behemoth of years’ past.)

In 2011, the rematch between Alabama and LSU precipitated the collapse of the BCS system and the move toward a four-team playoff. The selection of two teams from the same Power Five conference for this year’s field will accelerate the drive to increase the field from four to eight teams.

The standard litany of arguments seems disingenuous when players at lower levels of college football already play four or five playoff games en route to a championship. The 24-team FCS playoff field does not seem to adversely impact academics, especially when considering that the lower subdivision has less money to spend on academic support than Power Five leagues can pony up.

But it also matters how those eight teams would be selected.

Alabama Crimson Tide Football

An eight-team playoff field would provide the opportunity for each of the Power Five conference champions to gain admission to the College Football Playoff field. It would also afford a team like UCF, the only undefeated team left in the country after the regular season, a shot at a title. And teams like Alabama and Wisconsin, which pass the eyeball test, would not have to sweat out a single loss to get into the field.

It would require the return toward a composite structure of selecting teams. Leaving the selection process to a dozen supposed experts making things up as they go will never afford the level of transparency that contenders deserve. Complaints about the computer-aided model of the BCS rankings ignored the fact that the systems were clear, calculable, and consistent from season to season.

The problem with the BCS was less the way that teams were picked than the fact that only two teams had a shot at the title at the end of the season. Yes, the process fluctuated over its first decade of existence, but once the final structures were locked in after 2006 there was a level of transparency and balance that is sorely lacking from the current system.

No system will ever be perfect. But it can certainly be better than it is now.

Fans will always have reason to complain if their favorite team is left out of the final field. But eight teams mitigates that complaint by ensuring that conference championships once again take on meaning. When teams that fail to even win their division are shoehorned into the truncated field ahead of champions, it reveals the lie that the regular season actually means something.

It would also end the charade that Group of Five teams are undeserving. After all, they were 4-1 as BCS Busters during the previous era (setting aside the 2010 Fiesta Bowl that pitted Mountain West champion TCU against WAC champion Boise State). With automatic access into a New Year’s Six bowl for the top Group of Five team, mid-majors have gone 2-1 in the current system. To argue that they are wholly undeserving of a chance to play for the national title does not bear weight against the actual results.

As recently as five or six years ago, the common conception was that there would never be a plus-one system. Now that we have reached the fourth season of the College Football Playoff, the argument has merely shifted to the fallacious statement that eight teams would be too many. But that too is merely a myth that will come to pass.

Next: 3 reasons the Tide deserved their Playoff spot

Thanks to the selection of Alabama this year, we will see that time come sooner rather than later. The Crimson Tide’s national championship in 2012 led the push to double the number of access points. Their selection to the 2017-2018 College Football Playoff field will accelerate another doubling of the field from four to eight.