Alabama’s in, but the Crimson Tide deserve it?

I love SEC Football as much as the rest of ’em, but there’s no way I can look at myself straight in the face and say: ‘We had the best conference. We deserved two teams in the play-off. College Football is great.’

Why? As a conference (apart from Georgia, Auburn and Alabama), the rest of the conference weren’t particularly great…or stank out right. As a conference, big names like LSU and Florida were a side conversation, Mississippi State lurched from looking like world-beaters one week to ‘world’ the next, Texas A&M wasn’t in the discussion, Ole Miss and Missouri were mostly interesting because of their great offenses and terrible defenses….and we all know how bad Arkansas, Tennessee and Vanderbilt was.

When your three biggest teams are effectively crapping on the opposition, that doesn’t make you a great conference. It makes you one-sided. In terms of interest as a college football fan, it wasn’t as competitive as the Big XII, Pac-12, or arguably even the ACC.

The fact that the SEC was so lackluster ensured that Alabama couldn’t make the argument about strength of schedule, because it simply wasn’t there.

And now to Ohio State…

Ohio State may have looked like world-beaters against crappy B1G opposition, but when it came down to it, the Buckeyes struggled against the biggest game of the season, losing in a blow-out to Oklahoma. Later during the season after an emotional win over Penn State, they were hammered at Iowa. After beating Michigan and its joke of an offense, the Buckeyes then won the B1G Championship Game. Unfortunately for the Buckeyes, who controlled the game (if you don’t believe me look at the yardage stats), they only won by six points and not the 31 that probably would have swung a spot in their favor.

There was also the argument that Ohio State won its conference while beating two Top 5 teams in its own conference (No.2 Penn State (that went 10-2) and No.4 Wisconsin (that went 12-1), while Alabama’s only Top 5 win outside of its conference was a No.3 Florida State, who had to re-schedule Louisiana-Monroe (and pay it $1 million in the process) to ensure bowl eligibility. And the fact that Ohio State won its conference, and Alabama didn’t.

But still, it was all about the Iowa loss.

Nick Saban – as he’s so good at – lobbied the NCAA incessantly, to the point of appearing on College Gameday as a guest (and looking befuddled when some guys dumped food on the desk), and throwing shade at Ohio State for the loss in Kinnick.

However much you could argue about Kinnick being a tough place to play (just ask Michigan in 2016), the fact that the Hawkeyes had played Michigan State and Penn State tough (losing by 7 points or less both times) and was 5-3 at the time and hadn’t had a stupid loss yet (they sure made up for that with losing to Purdue!), getting spanked by 31 points was never going to be a good look for the Buckeyes – who still don’t understand what in the hell happened that afternoon.

And when that type of loss is given to someone as brilliant with the media as Nick Saban is (its helped by the fact that he’s won so many National Championships, he’s the best recruiter in the land, and Alabama is the biggest brand in the game), and you give him a head start of a week because you’re playing in a Championship Game, then the game for Ohio State almost looked over – even if they had shelled Wisconsin.

The College Football Play-Off Committee helped…

Also helping Alabama was the duality of the College Football Play-Off Committee, who was able to put forward one argument but then not back itself every week. They also seemed to look at team’s past reputations, not look at strength-of-schedule in the way that it should have done, and seem to have one rule for one team and one team for another. Alabama was also helped by the fact that while the Committe was happy to talk up losses when convenient (see the time they put Notre Dame in the Top 4 even with the UGA loss and UGA in the Top 4 win the ND rode win), but then ignore them when it didn’t seem necessary (see Syracuse loss for Clemson and Iowa State home loss from Oklahoma), yet when it came to talking up the Crimson Tide’s whooping of Florida State in Dallas on Opening Weekend, they did so with vigour, while forgetting that Alabama’s next best win was over Mississippi State and LSU. LSU lost to Troy.

But at the end of the day, Ohio State was frustrated. And sadly with this system, there will be others until something changes.