Wednesday, November 2, 2016

College Football Playoff Committee your bias is showing

By: Raashaan Myers

     This not a scathing article about the injustice of the University of Louisville's standing in the initial College Football Rankings which the College Football Playoff Committee dropped yesterday on my birthday. (Thanks for the gift! LOL) It is not an article about giving scenarios about the best path for the Cardinals to make the playoff. I completely submit that you can make a very strong case for Ohio State and Texas A&M being ranked ahead of UofL. What I am here to do is talk about the fact that for some reason the New Founding Fathers of College Football has on their own decided that the SEC and Big Ten conferences are God's gift to football regardless of what we have seen on the field of play.

     My bone to pick is the blatant and ridiculous amount of favoritism being given to the SEC and the Big Ten. The CFPC has placed 10 of the top 13 teams from those two conferences. By doing this you can pretty much excuse away any loss or close game that is played in either conference and use that to basically make sure that if there is a 2nd team from a conference it will come from those two leagues. I mean I am okay if you truly believe that Auburn, Penn State, or LSU are on the come up but ranking them #9, #12, and #13 in the rankings is asinine and really just makes the whole thing lose all credibility. It stinks of good ole boy network and pretty much makes college football look bad. They have to have more diversity in there.
     This ranking gives me serious pause in trusting the whole system because literally by the current rankings these guys and gals have just said we are pretty much going to do what they want to in these rankings. The SEC coming out of the non-conference portion of the schedule was deemed to be as down this year as it has been in 15 years with Bama picking up on the only resounding non-con win vs USC. Yet somehow on the strength of all the "other guys" in the SEC beating each other they have somehow gained perception power for this season. By doing this the committee can excuse away any loss or close win by citing conference strength that the committee themselves has installed.

     The Big Ten is bias is not as bad based on the nonconference victories of Ohio St over Oklahoma and Wisconsin's win vs LSU at Lambeau Field. But still the fact that you take and place a Penn State team that gets some luck and pulls out a win at home vs the Buckeyes is now #12 is a bit much as well. And now you have a situation and a narrative that basically says we think only 2 conferences are worth anything and everyone else can kick rocks. I don't think that is very balanced or fair.
     All in all this is just another example of the screwed up nature of the popularity based system of college football that has existed for a long long time. And while there is still a ton of football to play this first set of rankings does not give me much confidence in this committee moving forward. I also have heard some give the theory that maybe the CFPC just simply wanted to screw with the rankings to give some made for TV drama and talking points for the nation. If that is true then college football is in deeper trouble than I currently imagine.


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