Kirby Smart Takes a Stand for SEC Schools in the College Football Playoff Rankings
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ATHENS - Changes have been made for the seeding format of the College Football Playoff (CFP). What is difficult to predict will change is the way that the teams are ranked for it.
Last season, more than any during the CFP era, there was pushback on how the teams were being ranked. The schools that were at the forefront of this debate were Indiana, SMU, Boise State- teams that made the CFP. Those schools were being compared to Southeastern Conference (SEC) teams that were near the cutoff line to make it: Alabama, South Carolina and Ole Miss.
The non-SEC schools won more games. They went 11-1 in the regular season. Those SEC schools were 9-3. The argument was about the value of strength of schedule. Were the SEC schools being punished for losing more games during an objectively more difficult schedule?
Kirby Smart, who has certainly shown bias when discussing the power of the SEC, recently spoke about how he thinks the ranking system is flawed and compared it to the other major collegiate sports.
“When you look at what they’re (NCAA baseball and basketball) able to do, and there’s no outcry, and there’s nobody beating the drum saying that it’s completely unfair, they do a lot of things based on RPI, they do a lot of things based on strength of schedule, and they reward teams for that,” Smart said. “I have a hard time seeing Ole Miss, Alabama, and South Carolina not being in the best teams last year.”
Indiana and SMU in particular, who got into the playoff as large teams and not due to conference championships, did not have significant wins. They did not have terrible losses either, though. Indiana lost to only Ohio State, the eventual champion, and SMU lost by a field goal to BYU.
The SEC teams had much more significant wins. Ole Miss and Alabama each beat Georgia. South Carolina was ranked wins. On the other hand, Ole Miss had an ugly loss to a bad Kentucky, and Alabama suffered the same fate to Oklahoma. South Carolina lost to Ole Miss, but the other two games it lost were determined by a field goal or less.
Were the SEC teams better? The argument is there for many, and the power index rankings would have firmly placed Ole Miss and Alabama over those other schools due to their wins over Georgia.
That is where the nuance of having a committee of people compiling the rankings comes in. They are picking schools based on who they believe is better or more deserving and everyone has a different definition of that.
The SEC and B1G are pushing for a bigger playoff pool where there are more automatic qualifiers from that conference. They want to get rid of the nuance by the committee. Still, the SEC and B1G combined to represent seven of the 12 teams in the first year of the expanded playoff.