Fox Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt believes the College Football Playoff Selection Committee did a “horrendous” job in straying from their own “process” to put SMU in the playoff over Alabama.
Following last weekend’s thrilling slate of college football gridiron action, only one real controversy emerged: Who would the committee choose? SMU? Or Alabama?
SMU’s loss to the Clemson Tigers forced the committee to choose between the two. Ultimately, the committee chose SMU, which Klatt calls “horrendous.”
“I do believe that they manipulated what their process actually is to get SMU in this playoff,” Klatt said on his podcast, The Joel Klatt Show. “They put them in at 11, which is one spot higher than the team that actually beat them, which also doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. But that’s what they gave us. It’s an artificial floor. They’re pulling the levers of power in order to create something that wasn’t going to be created if they did it right.”
“It sounds good in theory, but it hurts the playoff overall. And it hurts the integrity of the playoff. I believe that what the committee gave us sounds really good in theory, and you can defend it in theory. It sounds good on social media, and in a lot of ways, they kind of played to the masses. Let them eat cake. Because the sentiment was on SMU’s side… I don’t disagree with that, other than the factor that you have to manipulate it to make it happen.”
Klatt’s point is not without merit. Alabama had more wins against top-25 teams and significantly better strength of schedule than SMU, even though the Tide’s out-of-conference scheduling was Charmin soft.
However, Alabama was a three-loss team, and SMU was a two-loss team. Moreover, two of Alabama’s three losses came against non-ranked teams in which they were heavily favored. Not to mention that in their final loss against an unranked Oklahoma, the Tide lost by 21 points.
Conversely, SMU was remarkably consistent all year, with their only regular season loss coming against an extremely tough BYU team and their loss in the ACC Championship coming on a last-second 56-yard field goal.
Whether the committee “manipulated the process” is something that only the committee and possibly Klatt know. However, what is known is that from the outset, the 12-team bracket leaned heavily on prioritizing the conference championship games. Had the selection committee chosen Bama over SMU – a team that did not compete in a conference championship game – it would have sent a message that the conference championship games aren’t all that important because they’re ultimately going to choose who they want.
Maybe the committee’s “process” isn’t synced up with the playoff’s stated intent, and if that’s true, it needs to be fixed. However, it does seem that the committee followed the “spirit of the law” of what the 12-team playoff is supposed to be about, even if they didn’t follow the “letter of the law.”
