SMQ: Expanding College Football Playoff remains as mythical as ever

Revisiting the 2014 College Football Playoff

Entering the first season of the College Football Playoff in 2014, there were three clear teams to make the newly-expanded postseason system. All season long, Alabama and Oregon, even with a loss each, appeared to be on a collision course to finally meet one another in a high-stakes showdown after years of coming close to squaring off in championship tilts. Defending national champion Florida State, winners of the final Bowl Championship Series title game, was the lone undefeated team among power conference champions.

And then there was a big debate as to who deserved the final spot behind this trio. TCU and Baylor were crowned co-champions of the Big 12 after both teams finished 11-1 — even though the Bears had defeated the Horned Frogs head to head in a 61-58 shootout back in October. Baylor subsequently went on to lose their only game against a West Virginia squad that finished 7-5 in the regular season, and the College Football Playoff selection committee struggled to justify putting in either team as the fourth semifinalist.

None of the other choices were really that great, though. The only other team with a single loss on their record, Ohio State, suffered an even worse defeat than the Bears. Taking the field in front of more than 107,000 partisan fans at the Horseshoe in Columbus, Ohio State went out and dropped their second game of the season by two touchdowns to a Virginia Tech squad that went on to a perfectly mediocre 6-6 regular season.

The College Football Playoff committee, convening for the first time after the BCS formula was scrapped in favor of the subjective deliberations of a panel behind closed doors, opted for the Big Ten champions over either of the Big 12 co-champions. The decision was ostensibly vindicated when the Buckeyes upset Alabama in the Sugar Bowl semifinal and then toppled Oregon in the inaugural CFP championship game.

Baylor’s loss to Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl helped vindicate that decision further, especially given the Bears held the head-to-head win over TCU. At the same time, the Horned Frogs went on to crush Ole Miss by 39 points in the Peach Bowl. There is no knowing how Gary Patterson’s 2014 roster would have fared in the College Football Playoff, but they proved on the field that they were the match of any opponent — even the Baylor team that pipped them by just a field goal, a far better loss than those suffered by either of the other teams in the debate at the end of the year.

Ohio State proved that a September loss is not a death sentence for a team trying to reach the College Football Playoff. Their victories over the Crimson Tide and the Ducks proved that a low-seeded challenger could sweep through a playoff field and claim the national championship. TCU proved that there are no easy decisions in a subjective system, and that one different decision by the selection committee could have easily yielded a different mythical national champion.