SMQ: Expanding College Football Playoff remains as mythical as ever

Revisiting the 2015 College Football Playoff

When Alabama lost in September to Ole Miss just a few weeks into the 2015 season, it had the potential to mark a shift in the balance of power in the SEC West. Instead, Nick Saban’s team rattled off nine straight wins to claim the division crown and then toppled Florida in the SEC championship game to comfortably claim a No. 2 seed in the second edition of the College Football Playoff behind undefeated ACC champion Clemson.

What was so remarkable about this season was just how unremarkable it was to gloss over an early defeat for the Crimson Tide. Recency bias is nothing new in college football, and a selection committee is no less immune to the phenomenon than a group of coaches or media members turning in ballots to an aggregated poll.

The big debate in 2015 was not whether Alabama deserved a spot but rather who should fall behind them in the pecking order. The Big Ten championship game that season served as a de facto College Football Playoff quarterfinal, with 11-1 Michigan State taking down 12-0 Iowa to claim one of the last two spots behind Alabama and Clemson.

The final spot was much harder to decide for the committee. Iowa remained in the mix despite losing the Big Ten title tilt, given they were one of only four power conference teams that boasted a dozen victories in the regular season. Big 12 champion Oklahoma also sat on one defeat — an early October collapse in the Red River Shootout at the Cotton Bowl against a Texas team that won only four other games over the course of the season.

Then there was Stanford, the Pac-12 champion that also claimed 11 victories but also suffered a pair of defeats. The Cardinal illustrate the flip side of losing early in the season, as it narrows the margin of error substantially for College Football Playoff contenders. Stanford’s season-opening stumble against Northwestern, coupled with a later defeat to fellow divisional juggernaut Oregon, proved too much for the committee to overlook in the end.

Oklahoma went on to suffer a 20-point loss to Clemson in the semifinal at the Orange Bowl. Michigan State was blanked in a 38-0 shutout against Alabama. Stanford went on to pull off a resounding rout of Iowa in the Rose Bowl, leaving everyone to wonder whether the Cardinal would have fared better against either of the top two seeds.