An Evaluation of National Championships 1936-2013

[selmaborntidefan]

I may as well update this and tick off everyone.

2021 FOUR-TEAM PLAYOFF
Selections: Alabama, Michigan, Georgia, Cincinnati
Rejections: Notre Dame, Ohio State, Baylor, Oklahoma St

1) Did the committee get it right?

The CFP didn't have much choice in 2021.

Wanna know how many ranked (end of year) teams Ohio State played?
Three, two of them at home.

Know what their record was? 1-2.

Here's a hint, establishment of a "precedent" if you will: if you're going to argue your 2-loss team belongs in the playoff, it's a good idea to not lose to the two best teams you play. Sure, they absolutely blasted Michigan State into orbit, 56-7. They also lost to the only good OOC team on their schedule as well as the biggest game they had scheduled all year.

But there was another problem.....two of them, in fact.....

2) Oklahoma State's loss to Baylor in the Big 12 Title Game forced the CFP's hand

Had the Pokes just managed to make another yard or two and beaten Baylor, there is pretty much zero doubt that Oklahoma State would have made the playoff. They had a close loss to Iowa State on the road, but a win over Baylor would have given them THREE wins over teams "currently ranked" AND been their second straight win over a Top Ten team. That win in all honesty would likely have propelled OSU the one spot ahead of Cincinnati to provide the matchup of 2011 tragedies, Tornado vs Dead B-Ball Coaches. The committee would have had the out of OSU beating two top ten foes in back-to-back weeks that would have justified a higher ranking than unbeaten Cincinnati based on SoS and tougher conference title.

3) Cincinnati beat Notre Dame H2H.
In the end, the cold logic of a head-to-head win propelled Cincinnati into the playoff over Notre Dame. And let's just say it: who the hell did Notre Dame play or beat? By the end of the season, they had played exactly one ranked team - Cincinnati - and lost to them at home by 11 points. In October, once teams should have worked out the early problems. The Irish had played only one other team that was ranked on game day, Wisconsin, who ended the year at 9-4 and were unimpressive from start to finish. Notre Dame literally beat nobody in 2021, but had they won the Cincinnati game, they'd have made the playoff yet again as an overrated 4th seed and been clobbered by Alabama in Dallas - just like happened the year previous.

Cincinnati played two ranked teams, the Irish and the Houston Cougars, whom they beat pretty handily in the AAC title game. And Houston had been blown out by the 9th place team in a 10-team conference (Texas Tech), so how good were the Cougars? This data point actually supports the inclusion of Oklahoma State...had they just beaten Baylor.

4) In the end....

Was Cincinnati one of the so-called "four best teams"?
No.

Would you have picked them to win against:
- Ohio State
- Oklahoma State
- Baylor
- Ole Miss

The only teams in the Top Ten you MIGHT pick them to beat are Notre Dame (because they had although a rematch would make this far from certain) and Michigan State. Cincinnati was probably not better than the 8th or 9th best team in the country.

But for better or worse they filled in the blanks and had the "0" in the loss column while everyone else except the Irish had at least two losses. And the sole Irish loss was to Cincinnati, leaving the Bearcats in the playoff.

 

[Bama Czar]

I'm always careful to not use the word CLAIMED when referring to recognized national championships. I typically use the word(s) ACCEPTED instead. CLAIMED seems to imply that Alabama has simply & arbitrarily chosen the title and year of winning. As an example, "Alabama has accepted 18 awarded national championships throughout it's football history."....or "Alabama ACCPETED the AWARDED national championship in 1978 (or whatever year) ..... After all, somebody gave them the trophy that is in the trophy case.... right?

 

[selmaborntidefan]

2022 FOUR-TEAM PLAYOFF
Selections: Georgia, Michigan, TCU, Ohio State
Rejections: Alabama, Tennessee, Clemson, USC, Penn State, Washington

Once again, the CFP got left with very little choice. The top two were easy, the last two were going to be controversial no matter whom got selected. The choices of Michigan and Georgia were undisputed, the controversy (which didn't really even exist) settling on who gets the last two spots. In the end, the committee opted for path of least resistance and settled like a 55-year old Old Maid.

1) It could have been clean but.....

In all honesty, if TCU beats Kansas State and USC beats Utah in the rematch, you've got your four teams and Ohio State - despite being better than either one of those teams - is watching at home, accepting its fate. But USC didn't just lose, they got massacred, turning the selection process into the committee hoping TCU did the same thing Utah did. They didn't, and it ensured there would be a controversy no matter what the decision. In the end, they made the right call on whom to reward for the accomplishment of the season, and the wrong call on damned near everything else.

2) The Cases For..and Against...the 2-loss teams

a) Alabama
The case "for" Alabama was simple and unambiguous - Alabama was two plays from being undefeated, and they had lost to teams ranked #7 and #14 on the road in the SEC on the final play of the game both times. To their fans, there was also a curious logic that assumes something it's trying to deny: the infallibility of the CFP rankings. After all, the other unambiguous case in point was "we're the highest ranked team that didn't lose on championship weekend." Of course, part of the reason is because they didn't qualify to play on that weekend, which is one of the biggest points against Alabama in this argument. Furthermore, say what you will, but Tennessee did have a head-to-head win over Alabama - and no amount of losing to S Carolina by 25 points changes that fact. "But their star QB was hurt" isn't a very good argument in favor of Alabama, either, unless "the Texas QB was hurt or you have another loss" is allowed in this imaginary case.

The biggest mark against Alabama is the exact same one that held Ohio State back just one year earlier: you cannot lose to the two best teams on your schedule and try to make a believable or coherent case that you're one of the best teams in the country. At the time the committee was considering their case, Alabama had not beaten a single team they'd played who had more than 8 wins (MSU, grief-stricken by the death of Mike Leach, would survive Illinois in the bowl game to reach 9). They'd played one 10-win team and one 9-win team - and lost to both of them. No division title, no SEC title game, and unmentioned in the advocacy - Alabama had won two games by one play as well, meaning they were as close to 4 losses as they were to being undefeated.

b) Tennessee
One fair question to wonder is why Tennessee would be ranked lower than Alabama in the next-to-penultimate poll. They had a head-to-head win over Alabama, had beaten the other team that had beaten Alabama (and handily), and also had a narrow road win over 9-win Pitt. The Vols had as many wins over 9-win teams on polling day (2) as Alabama did 8-win teams. It seems the case to rank Alabama ahead of the Vols comes down to two things, the season-ending injury to Hendon Hooker and the absolute shellacking Tennessee took at the hands of South Carolina. Indeed, it is fair to surmise that had the Vols simply won that game, they likely would have been chosen over TCU for the last playoff spot (more on this momentarily).

c) Clemson
The case for Clemson begins and ends with "they are the only two-loss team to win a conference championship." Their narrow loss to South Carolina commends them more than Tennessee, and they got smoked by Notre Dame. They beat one semi-decent ranked team (Florida St), played two other teams that were ranked at season's end (and lost to both of them)

d) USC
The Trojans would have had a better case had their schedule not been so obviously fraught with avoiding the other best teams in the Pac-12. It's not as though they planned it, but they didn't face the highest-ranked Pac-12 team otherwise (Washington) or perceived powerhouse Oregon. They faced four ranked teams at season's end, losing 2 and winning the other 2 by three points each time. That body of work SUGGESTED (but didn't prove) that had they faced Washington or Oregon, they'd have more losses. And it would have been very difficult to lift 3-loss Utah into the playoff as well as a team they beat twice, so neither was in serious contention after the Pac-12 title game.

e) Penn State
A substantially overrated team who never deserved serious consideration. Had a two-game season against only two ranked teams - and got smashed by both. If Penn State had lost both games on the final play, particularly with both of those teams in the running for the CFP, their performance against the rest of their soft touch schedule might have allowed the B1G to become the first three-team representatives in the CFP. But they weren't even competitive, and they should have been ranked low in the two-loss pecking order, as they were.

f) Washington
The Huskies' big mistake was somehow losing to eventual 3-9 Arizona State, ending all hopes of serious consideration. A win in just that game would have made the USC-Washington game, in effect, a play-in game for the winner. Washington DID beat two ranked foes (the Oregon schools), and their loss to eventual #15 UCLA wasn't particularly egregious. But they had already eliminated themselves when they began winning and deserved no consideration without a conference title, either.

Thus, when considering the 2-loss teams, Tennessee has the most impressive wins but the most egregious loss, Clemson has a conference title without having beaten anyone really good, and Alabama is, well, Alabama but has more talent at most positions - oh and their QB isn't hurt, either.
The other three? Start playing for 2023.

3) TCU - by default
The biggest failure of the CFP era has been the brutal reality that they have yet to give us a year with THREE good post-season games. Most years, the semi-finals provide one good game at most and a blowout. 2022 made up for this with two of the most competitive semi-finals ever followed by the worst wipeout in NCAA FBS championship game history.

The only real mark against TCU is they lost their rematch with Kansas State, but it isn't as though they got drilled like 2003 Oklahoma did. TCU played 3 opponents (2 teams) ranked in the CFP final top 25, and they went 2-1. They played in their conference title game, and they were one of only two teams with one loss. In the end, the committee opted to view it as "team who has one loss and it was in the conference title game will not be punished at the expense of two-loss team that didn't even make it that far." Between the 2-1 (vs 1-2 Alabama) record against CFP ranked teams, the comparison of the common opponent (Texas), the final record, and making the CC game, the committee opted for the path of least resistance. Whether TCU "would have 4 losses in the SEC" is irrelevant to the ranking.
Would Alabama have beaten TCU last year on a neutral field? Maybe. After all, Bill O'Brien would still be calling plays and Pete Golding getting a check for, well, something.

4) However....

The most egregious faux pas wasn't the selection of TCU, it was the utter refusal of the CFP to drop them even one spot in the rankings. How is this even possible? All the committee had to do was move Michigan up to #1, drop TCU to #4, and they could have had the exact same teams and matchups, all designed to avoid an immediate Ohio State-Michigan rematch.

The more the committee tries to say that wasn't their intent, the easier it is to believe they're lying about other things.