The College Football Playoff's Decisions and Videogames
In which I complain about the CFP Committee's decision and then segue into a story about an old NCAA Football dynasty
This was going to be the second Videogame Football Journal, but number one is going to get pushed. A few years ago, during my internship with Paste, I wanted to write about the NCAA ’14 modding community. I ended up more focused on the ’06 modding community, who I hoped to discuss more in the future. But the online community around NCAA ’14, even before the save file editing and the total conversion mod, were experimenting with custom conferences because the game allowed for that. After reading an article on EDSBS in 2016, I became sort of obsessed with the most tightly geographically accurate conferences, and then applying it to NCAA ’14. Once save file editing made a playoff possible, there were informal advisory committees in the dynasty discussion thread on Operation Sports – people asking advice on who their fourth or eighth team should be, usually hiding the brand and just showing off the résumé. I’ll talk about my own experience with this later. But I was thinking about this yesterday (December 4th) because, as usual, the college football playoff committee has created, allowed, or endorsed a controversy that has called their legitimacy into question.
Unlike in most American spectator sports, the playoff for the top level of college football is not decided merely by who has the most record and some tie-breakers. Like the sixty-four team NCAA Division 1 basketball tournament, a committee decides it. But because there are just four spots for the best of 120 teams that all play 12-game regular seasons, plus a conference championship in most (but not all) playoff discussion cases, there’s ample room for discussion, lobbying, and stupidity.
Now, college football already divides the NCAA’s top division int two subdivisions – the Football Bowl Subdivision is the big public schools you know like Alabama and Michigan, and the big private schools you know like Southern California and Notre Dame; the Football Championship Subdivision includes big public schools like North Dakota State and Sam Houston State, the Ivy League, Villanova, and a lot of the more prominent historically Black Colleges and Universities, among others. Beyond that, the top division has a formerly informal but now basically codified hierarchy – the first class of school teams (more monied and mostly more historically successful) is called the “Power 5.” The mostly lesser-monied schools are called the “Group of 5.” Ten conferences, four playoff spots, which have forty percent of the time gone to three instead of four conferences. I was lamenting the imminent death of USC’s conference earlier this year (due in no small part to USC deciding to leave for the greener pastures of the midwestern conference with UCLA; followed by Washington and Oregon; leading to an exodus by the southwestern/mountain schools to the southwestern conference; and now Washington State and Oregon State get to make all the financial decisions and, honestly, good for them; we shouldn’t have left).
Before 2021, no one-loss or 0-loss team from that second set have been granted entry. That year, Cincinnati lost to Alabama 27-6. Georgia, who lost the SEC championship, got in any way, and ended up winning the title. Notre Dame (11-1) was not considered a serious contender for the spot, neither was Baylor (11-2, Big XII champions).
The UCF Golden Knights, for example, went 13-0 in 2017 after beating Auburn – Auburn had regular season wins over both eventual national championship game participants (SEC Championship Georgia and SEC third-place team and eventual national champion Alabama, who are Auburn’s archrivals) but UCF’s claims to a national championship are mostly disregarded despite the fact that the NCAA does not technically crown a champion at this level and a committee decided UCF wasn’t allowed to play for the title. 12-0 Wisconsin got their first blemish in the Big Ten championship; winner Ohio state had two losses.
Following the 2016 season, 11-1 Ohio State was invited to the playoff despite not playing for the Big Ten title – eventual Big Ten champions beat them but lost to Pittsburgh and Michigan, so were relegated to the Rose Bowl, where they lost to USC. Ohio State would go on to lose in the first round of the playoff. 13-0 Western Michigan lost by 8 to Wisconsin the Cotton Bowl Classic.
Following the 2020 season, Notre Dame was invited to the playoff after a sound defeat at the hands of Clemson in Notre Dame’s lone appearance in the ACC title game (they usually call themselves independent and are not eligible for the game, but contractually have an open marriage with the ACC). Last year, both Ohio State and Michigan made the playoff despite Michigan beating Ohio State by 22 points to end the regular season. USC might have made it if they didn’t blow the Pac-12 championship, getting dominated by Utah. TCU made it despite blowing the Big-12 conference championship because they were 12-0 and lost a close game. Behind USC in the rankings were 2-loss Alabama, Tennessee, and Washington teams, so Ohio State was in.
This reflects the most easy to summarize of many issues with the selection process – the committee’s spokesman says that their job is to pick the “best” teams rather than the “most deserving.” This has the effect of rendering some results more important than others, which invites the question of “Why do we play the games?” after many years of debate over whether a playoff would diminish the importance of the regular season. The committee which picks the playoff teams does not include journalists or statisticians; it’s all eyeball test for a group of power brokers primarily representing Power 5 schools – they do have to recuse themselves if schools with which they’re closely related are discussed.
The teams chosen for the playoff this year are undefeated Michigan, who beat fellow top 5 team archrival Ohio State on Thanksgiving weekend and shut out ranked Iowa in the Big Ten title game, Washington, who finished 13-0 and beat conference rival Oregon twice, Texas, whose sole loss was to 10-win conference rival, and Alabama, who beat reigning national champion Georgia but lost to Texas by ten earlier this season. Florida State, who also finished undefeated and is even part of the “haves” rather than “have-nots”, was left out likely in part because the ACC is not considered one of the stronger power conferences, but the most cited-aloud reason is that they’re on their third-string quarterback and the committee presumes they won’t be competitive among this filed despite the fact their defense just held 10-win Louisville to six points. And, for whatever it’s worth, no one wants to feel bad for Florida State. They’re a historically successful program, their mascot is a Native American tribe and they do that same tomahawk chop racist Hollywood war chant during games that the Kansas City Chiefs and, I believe, Atlanta Braves, do. But they got screwed, no less.
I can’t find the quote, but someone I follow on Twitter said the CFP committee is a sports entertainment promotion (you know, like the WWE or AEW). They wanted good TV at the expense of having competitive fairness. In the first year of the College Football Playoff, Ohio State’s starter got hurt in the first game of the season. The second-stringer led them to eleven wins. He got hurt and the third-stringer led them to a national title.
Alabama lost to Texas by 10 points. They didn’t look much better in their win over 6-6 USF the following week. They beat 6-6 Auburn by 3 points in the last game of the regular season. The playoff committee inadvertently fuels conspiracy theories that the Disney’ corporations ESPN has bias in favor of the SEC (the presumed best conference) because Alabama’s past success is being honored as much as or more than what they did over the course of *this* season.
It's all about brands. This has long been the case, as more and more money has poured into the sport, and poorly-run athletic departments have gotten to coast on either making the right friends (having a politically-successful alumni base) 100 years ago or being in the right media market to invite a conference upgrade in the last decade-plus. Boise State, who fired their coach mid season because he was on his way to their first sub-9 win season since I was a toddler, never got a shot at a big conference, and therefore a national title. Unlike in soccer in the rest of the world, being the best at your level doesn’t get you promoted and being the worst at your level doesn’t get you relegated. UCF, Houston, BYU, and Cincinnati had to wait for the biggest brands in the Big-XII (Texas and Oklahoma) to abandon them for the SEC to get a call-up.
Brand is the word because marketing is the verb (er, gerund). Recruiting players, TV contracts, it all rotates around profit motive and therefore the on-field opportunities of allegedly amateur athletes are determined by people they don’t know in rooms they’re not invited into.
As Bomani Jones has said for at least the decade I’ve been reading and listening to him and restated on his podcast today (December 4th), there’s no good way to do this, so we ought to do it in the way that’s most fun. As he put it, adding games to the schedule of college student-athletes who are not paid for their participation so that we can all stop having arguments (which we will never do, by the way) isn’t the answer.
It is unlikely that equity will ever figure into the equation; fairness is beneath notice. And so, the spirit of competition is compromised for commerce. There’s no college football commissioner managing the whole sport (though Bill Connelly’s pods instead of divisions idea did end up getting adopted by the SEC and ACC, while everyone else is dropping divisions anyway), conferences are not beholden to being structured by the NCAA or held within reasonable geographic constraints, and a four-team playoff is a mockery of itself.
There was a time when the national title was decided by a variety of voting media bodies based on a regular season performance, then regular seasons plus a bowl win, then a few of the more popular bowls to decided to rotate the national championship, then they made it a stand-alone vent and the other big bowls were consolation prizes, now they’re stepping stones.
The question remains as to what the point is – dispute over this is at the heart of all debate. To celebrate hard work and athletic performance, the playoff is an inefficient tool. To pick the best teams, it will always be constrained by the limitations of opportunity. The other argument for why a playoff isn’t necessary besides that it’s a cumbersome solution to an unfixable problem, a contention that overlaps with traditionalist arguments, is an argument I don’t like as much but still have to respect as not completely meritless (and in fact overlaps with the other two): there usually aren’t *that* many *really* good teams. Funnily enough, this is close cousins to an argument for expansion: it’s better to be arguing about whether the fourth-best team got left out than the second-best, or the twelfth-best, or whatever. I really think 8 is a perfect number and don’t understand why that was so hard to get to that we skipped to 12, and frankly, I can’t wait to see how they mess up selecting 12 teams next year. You may think it can’t be done, but they’ll find a way.
And, now, a peak into solving these problems in the virtual world, where you can rectify injustice with less words and more action:
My most recent geographical set up was created in October 2022; an updated version in 2023 had less balanced conferences; also there’s nothing to be done about how in the game you only have so many major bowls to give automatic bids to (though one could track other championships and assign teams to bowls as one likes using the same tool that allows setting up a playoff). The following was made in December 2020 or January 2021 and is followed by a summary of a playoff controversy I had to work through. The whole point was to get rid of “haves” and “have nots” by grouping schools and their teams entirely by geography. As the roster of teams will no doubt denote, this is a modified save file that replaced teams that are no longer at the FBS level with some that have since been promoted. (I spelled out some names I usually wouldn’t in case someone that doesn’t know or care about college football has been brought here by morbid curiosity or what have you)
Atlantic Coastal Conference (South Carolina-Georgia-Florida 14)
North: Clemson, Coastal Carolina, Georgia, Georgia State, GT, South Carolina, Georgia Southern
South: Florida, Florida State, Florida Atlantic, Florida International, Miami, UCF, South Florida
American Athletic Conference (New Big East/North Midwest-Upper Appalachia 12)
East: Boston College, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple
West: Illinois, Northern Illinois, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Purdue, Penn State
Big XII (Texas 12)
N: Baylor, North Texas, Southern Methodist, Texas Christian, Texas Tech, UTSA (San Antonio)
S: Houston, Rice, Texas, A&M, Texas State, UTEP (El Paso)
Big Ten (Michigan-Ohio 14)
N: Bowling Green, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Michigan, Michigan State, Toledo, Western Michigan
S: Akron, Ball State, Cincinnati, Miami Ohio, Kent State, Ohio, Ohio State
CUSA (Central-USA; Midwest 12)
N: Iowa, Iowa State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Indiana
S: Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Tulsa, Missouri
Independents: Army (West Point), Brigham Young University
MAC (Mid-Atlantic; Maryland-Virginia-North Carolina 12)
East: Maryland, Navy (Annapolis), Eastern Carolina, Old Dominion, Virginia, Virginia Tech
West: North Carolina, Appalachian State, Duke, Charlotte, North Carolina State, Wake Forest
Mountain West (set 12)
N: Boise State, Utah, Utah State, Wyoming, Colorado, Colorado State
S: Air Force Academy, Arizona, Arizona State, New Mexico, Nevada (Reno), UNLV
Pacific-12 (set)
N: California, Oregon, Oregon St, Stanford, Washington, Washington State
S: Fresno State, Hawaii, San Diego State, San José State, UCLA, USC
SouthEastern Conference
E: Bama, Auburn, Miss St, USA, Troy, Alabama-Birmingham (UAB)
W: LSU, UL, Ole Miss, USM, Tulane, ULM
Sun Belt Conference (set; Appalachia)
E: Tenn, UK, Louisville, MTSU, Marshall, WVU
W: Arkansas, Ark State, LaTech, Memphis, WKU, Vandy
A playoff controversy I had in NCAA, from 31 January 2021:
#1 Virginia Tech (13-0), #2 USC (13-0), #3 Clemson (12-1), #4 Oklahoma (12-1), #5 A&M (12-1). All these teams won their conferences. Clemson’s only loss was by 7 in week 1. They beat 5 winning teams same as USC, but better teams. OU lost by 13 to Minnesota week 1 but they beat 6 winning teams. A&M lost to SMU by 7 but beat 2 ranked teams. Clemson went 3-1 against ranked teams, so did Oklahoma.
#7 Ohio State (12-1), #8 Bama (11-2), #6 Michigan (11-2), #9 Florida (11-2) are the next set. OSU seems obvious, but they lost to Michigan for the conference. Bama didn’t beat any ranked teams but beat Mississippi 42-7 in the conference championship to make up for losing 17-24 and Mississippi is 10-3 (59-31 on aggregate by UEFA Champions League rules lol).
Bama is in. They won their conference. UF is out. Granted Bama lost by 24 to A&M in the first week, and Floridas only two losses are by 5. But you win or you lose and Bama won their conference. So… #1 VT vs #8. #2 USC vs #7 Ohio State. #3 Clemson vs #6 Michigan. #4 OU vs # A&M.
But then I had a revelation a couple weeks later. Bama and Louisville won their conferences, OSU and Florida are out. That’s why we play the games! If Ohio State wanted to be in the title game, they should have beat Michigan to win their conference. That they split the difference in a series doesn’t matter when other conference winners with comparable schedules would be suffering to promote brands. Ohio State shouldn’t get a mulligan in my game, and Alabama shouldn’t get one in real life.
Playoff ended up as:
Sugar Bowl: #1 VT vs #8 Louisville: Louisville 35-28
Rose Bowl: #2 USC vs #7 Bama: USC 42-31
Peach Bowl: #3 Clemson vs #6 Michigan: Michigan 24-10
Cotton Bowl: #4 Oklahoma vs #5 A&M: Oklahoma 34-27
(as an aside #10 Florida played #9 Ohio State in the Citrus Bowl and Florida won 38-28)
Oklahoma beat Louisville 21-3 in the Orange Bowl as the semifinal. USC beat Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl semifinal. I think I won the national title with USC, or that’s just a dormant save file I’ve been ignoring for almost three years because I’ve been playing the PS2 game which, yes, there is another post about coming soon.