Bernie: The CFB Playoff Selection Committee Showed Spine By Picking SMU Over Alabama.

We have our first upset of the 2024 national college football playoff tournament: SMU defeated Alabama. Not on the field, off course, but in the committee meeting room where the panel chose the 12 teams that now have a chance to pursue a national championship.

Of course, five spots already were accounted for. Those slots were set aside for conference champions: Georgia (SEC), Oregon (Big Ten), Clemson (ACC), Arizona State (Big 12) … plus Boise State, the group of five designate.

Based on last week’s College Football Playoff rankings, we could safely assume that the field would include a bunch of teams that didn’t notch a conference title but established sufficient credentials to impress the committee. We’re talking about Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Tennessee, and Indiana.

The only remaining suspense centered around a choice between Alabama vs. SMU. Who would be the last team into the playoff bracket?

SMU won!

This all came down to the outcome of Saturday’s ACC championship clash between SMU and Clemson.

To receive a bid to the tournament, three-loss Alabama team needed one of two things to happen:

1. An SMU victory that slapped Clemson with its fourth loss of the season. No team would have qualified with four defeats. But Clemson survived to enter the playoff as an automatic, conference-champion qualifier.

2. Even with Clemson winning, idle Alabama still had a chance to make it … but only if Clemson pummelled SMU into an easy submission. And it sure seemed like a possibility when Clemson led by 17 points at the half, and 17 after three quarters. SMU would have lost a lot of credibility by getting smashed by a Clemson squad that just lost at home to South Carolina last week. South Carolina is probably the fifth or sixth best team in the SEC.

Clemson didn’t deliver the necessary knock-out punch in Saturday’s duel, and SMU was able to charge back with a 17-0 barrage that tied the game (31-31) with 16 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter. The competition was headed to overtime before Clemson intervened with a 41-yard kickoff return, 17-yard pass, and a thunderbolt 56-yard field goal to win it. But SMU earned significant respect and support with its late show of determination, defiance, and big plays.

SMU’s spirited comeback didn’t end in triumph. There was no ACC title or automatic entry into the playoff. But the Mustangs’ rollicking rally was impressive enough to bounce Alabama from consideration.

The committee made the right call.

Here’s why I believe that:

– The committee had SMU at No. 8 last week, three spots ahead of Alabama. SMU shouldn’t be booted for losing the conference championship game by a 56-yard field goal at the wire. A team that was good enough to go unbeaten (8-0) to finish first in the ACC’s regular-season standings shouldn’t be penalized by a narrow defeat … not with the other contender, Alabama, hanging out in Tuscaloosa to watch the game on TV. Having to wrestle through a 13th game can be perilous. There could be injuries (ask Georgia) or heartbreak. Putting yourselves at risk by playing an extra game should mean something.

– It’s wrong to penalize a good team that loses a conference championship game by a foot. (The Clemson kicker’s foot.) As others have said, that would really create a bad precedent. What’s the point of competing in a conference title game if it will be used against you by the committee? If the committee really thought Alabama was the better team, it shouldn’t have ranked the Crimson Tide three spots lower than SMU last week. In the competition for a slot in the 12-team playoff, conference championship games should matter, and those who lose them shouldn’t be automatically banished.

– Sure, Alabama has a better set of wins than SMU this season. But that was also the case last Tuesday, when the committee put 11-win SMU above nine-win Alabama. Why would a last-second loss change that? SMU has two losses, and Alabama has three. But Alabama had a humiliating 21-point loss at Oklahoma. That non-competitive stinker was much worse than SMU’s losses to BYU and Clemson, each by three points.

– Had the selection committee gone with Alabama, the decision would have raised questions about the integrity of the process. Bumping SMU to give preferential treatment to a flawed, three-loss Alabama team would fuel the widespread suspicion that the committee exists (in part) to protect traditional name-brand powers like Alabama … and also make decisions at the behest of Disney-owned ESPN and ABC.

Alabama delivers higher ratings, added prominence, and by extension a larger load of revenue … and the committee can’t betray a powerful business partner like the SEC, right? Skeptics firmly believe that double standards apply here. Surely, Alabama would be escorted past the velvet ropes and into the highly exclusive club. And SMU would be shunned and told to stay outside on the sidewalk, in the cold – simply because the Alabamas in the sport make the money flow and the ratings go. The Mustangs are not a VIP, and Alabama is college football royalty with all the perks and privileges that come with it.

And hey, that’s just how it goes. This is a big business. And Alabama is immensely bigger than SMU. Remember, how SMU gained admission to the ACC for 2024? The invitation was offered only after SMU agreed to give up the annual share of the ACC’s broadcast revenue for NINE seasons. SMU’s big-money donors agreed to underwrite the lost TV money – at a purported cost of $200 million in donations.

(I laughed over the weekend when ACC commissioner Jim Phillips raged with grievance in interviews about how disrespectful it would be for SMU to get left out of the playoffs. Wait a minute, Jimbo. Are we talking about the SMU program that you all forced to beg and plead and crawl their way into the ACC after relinquishing nine years of revenue? Oh, so now all of a sudden SMU is the pride of the ACC, and you were all ready to fight to preserve their honor? The hypocrisy is spectacular. You made SMU grovel, commissioner.)

In the end, the committee didn’t succumb to pressure to accommodate Alabama despite the politicking from powerful SEC commissioner Greg Sankey.

At least for the first year of the new playoff setup, the committee members had a spine. Look, there is no perfect formula for putting a 12 playoff field together; there will always be inconsistencies and inequities and the constant shifting of the standards to justify whatever choices are made in the weekly rankings.

I’m an SEC honk, but it’s OK to say no to Alabama, even if the Crimson Tide had a better set of analytical numbers on the resume than SMU. In a Sunday-morning upset, the committee put merit over metrics.

Thanks for reading …

–Bernie