When the Southeastern Conference, the Big 10, Big 12, ACC and Pac-12 along with Notre Dame formed their own cartel, the Power 5 conferences felt they could separate themselves from the rest of the FBS and control access to the lucrative four-team college football playoff.
Sunday, when the 12-person selection committee announced its matchups, we had our first reality check.
First-seeded Alabama will play fourth-seeded Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl and second-ranked Oregon will play third-ranked Florida State the Rose Bowl.
But both Big 12 two co-champions were left out in the cold, opening up a new debate over whether four is the optimum number for a playoff or whether the committee could consider opening it up to eight teams with five power conference champions and the highest ranked team from the lesser conferences receiving automatic bids and two teams being chosen for at-large bids. First round games would be played on the site of the four highest-seeded teams, assuring sellouts and increasing revenue.
It would be an easy solution and take a lot of subjectivity out of the process. But it seems unlikely to happen any time soon..
Baylor, which defeated TCU, 61-58 in the regular season, and TCU both finished 11-1. But Baylor, which defeated ninth-ranked Kansas State, 38-27, finished fifth and TCU, which had been ranked third only a week ago, slipped to sixth after a 55-3 victory over Iowa State. In a way, these programs have no one to blame but themselves because of their suspect non-conference schedule and the lack of a conference championship game to determine a league champion.
Baylor opened the season non-league games against SMU, then played Northwestern State and Buffalo. Not exactly murderer’s row.
TCU’s non-league schedule was just slightly better– Samford, SMU and Minnesota. The Horned Frogs had a 30-7 win over 8-4 Big Ten Gophers, who were ranked 25th in the final college football playoff rankings.
“The way I looked at it is, you want to get in the Final Four and win the Big 12 and go unscathed,” Baylor coach Art Briles said. “You do that, you go 9-0 in the Big 12, you’re going to be in the Final Four because you’re going to beat probably two top 10 teams, probably two others in the top 20 and maybe another Top 25, which is what we faced last year. That’s a resume that’s good enough to match any other conference.”
If Briles felt this was the best road to football’s Final Four, he made a bad miscalculation.
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby stated as much. “Everybody has heard me say that if you’re sitting on a No. 5 ranking and you had a weak non-conference schedule, you’ll be in real jeopardy of not making the playoffs,” he said.
In the end, Ohio State (12-1) won over the committee by winning 11 straight games, averaging 48.5 points and making a strong final statement when it defeated Wisconsin, 59-0, to win the Big Ten championship game. “It was decisive,” playoff committee chairman Jeff Long said. “We think they overcame that early season loss to Virginia Tech with nine wins against bowl-eligible teams.”
TCU coach Gary Patterson took the high road when the selections came out.
But there was bitterness flowing out of Waco all weekend.
Baylor may have leapfrogged TCU in the final standings by virtue of its head-to-head victory. But the Big 12 did not help the Bears’ chances by not designating a champion by a tie breaker. It created a nightmare for the committee, which was supposed to reward champions but had the Frogs ranked three spots ahead of the team that beat them.
Briles was quick to sound his displeasure toward the league office after Bowlsby presented him with the trophy in Waco after the win over K-State. “As the Big 12 states, there’s one true champion. It’s the Baylor Bears! It’s the Baylor Bears,” he told the crowd.
On Big 12 media day in July, Bowlsby said if there was a tie for conference champion, the conference would go to tiebreakers, meaning head to head. On Sunday, Bowlsby told ESPN: “I went back and looked … and just plain misspoke.”
Briles got into a heated exchange with Bowlsby on site Saturday night and later told the media: ”You’re going to slogan around and say One True Champion, and all of a sudden you’re going to go out the back door instead of the front? Don’t say one thing and do another. That’s my whole deal.”
Briles also criticized the makeup of the selection committee in a 10-minute post selection press conference, questioning whether the Big 12 was fairly represented on the committee. Two members of the committee — West Virginia AD Oliver Luck and former Nebraska coach/AD Tom Osborne — have Big 12 connections, but Briles said he didn’t believe their representation is sufficient. “You want to ask me about a team in this part of the United States? I can tell you about ’em,” he said. “I can tell you their weaknesses and their strengths, OK? They need to have somebody on there that knows the teams in this part of the nation. The only person born in the south on that committee is Condoleezza Rice. She was born in Alabama.”
During a Sunday morning appearance on “SportsCenter,” Briles suggested ex-coaches R.C. Slocum, Mack Brown or Spike Dykes would be more qualified to evaluate programs in the state and region. He argued that Archie Manning stepping down from the committee in October due to health reasons might have ultimately hurt Baylor’s chances. “When Archie Manning went off, I said we’re in trouble,” Briles said. “I know Archie. He’s a friend. He understands football down here. When he went off that committee, we were in trouble. We need a voice. We need a voice.”
The absence of Baylor in the playoff mix has spawned no lack of conspiracy theories, with some critics claiming Ohio State’s 50,000 undergraduate enrollment and brand name may have swayed the committee when it came to choosing between the Buckeyes and two schools in Texas that were not located in Austin.
Life will eventually return to normal in Waco, but the disappointment seems destined to continue every year if one, or possibly two power conference are left out of the mix.
