Kicking Them Out: SMU vs. Alabama

Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out. I felt like writing a college football blog today. But I figured if I’m going to confide my less-than-educated college football ramblings to anyone, I should at least provide plenty of boob GIFs between paragraphs.

Everything about college football feels so much more personal this year than ever before. When your team loses a game, people take the loss as an indictment of them as a human being. If someone says something bad about your team, it’s a personal attack on your character. If the opposing team places a piece of cloth attached to a long stick with their logo on it on your 50 yard line, you might as well just do KYS. After such humiliation, you will never be able to show your face in public again.

I’m sure that’s largely due to the 12-team playoffs. Instead of maybe having six fan bases personally attacking each other’s families for four playoff spots, now there are… well… a lot more than that coming and the whole should play a role. Much more disrespect to go around. But now that conference championship week begins, a playoff picture is finally beginning to emerge. When it comes to sowing, there is still a lot to be decided. But based on my “knowledge” of how the committee thinks, it looks like there is only one bid up for grabs. I think pretty much everyone agrees on that. The official playoff rankings won’t be released until Tuesday, but here is the AP poll that was released today.

The teams that are definitely already in the playoffs (which doesn’t mean I necessarily agree with everything) are as follows:

B1G: Oregon, Penn State, Ohio State, Indiana
SEC: Texas, Tennessee, Georgia
BIG12 winners: Arizona State or Iowa State
ACC winners: SMU or Clemson
Group of 5: Mountain West Championship Winners (Boise State vs UNLV)
Notre Dame: Notre Dame

On the whole: _

This means that 11 places have been allocated. 1 place is available.

Between the BIG12, ACC and Mountain West championships, SMU is the only team that has a chance of losing and still making the playoffs. Hopefully SMU takes care of business and beats Clemson. That would make things a lot easier. Then the committee will simply put Alabama in last place and call it a day. I don’t think you can argue that South Carolina deserves better than them. Alabama defeated South Carolina in a head-to-head contest. Personally, I would like to see Miami overtake Alabama. I don’t think the gap between the SEC and ACC is nearly as big as people think. In my humble opinion, all SEC teams have grossly inflated schedules. Everything is based on the assumption that, at the start of each season, we assume that the level of football played in the SEC to date exceeds that of any other conference. Then the SEC teams get credit for all those quality wins they achieved over themselves throughout the season. Your losses are all losses of quality. It’s like a fucking pyramid scheme or something.

But when you look at SEC teams against non-conference opponents, the situation isn’t particularly lopsided in the SEC’s favor. Just this weekend we saw Georgia barely outlast Georgia Tech in 8 OTs (some would say thanks to questionable officiating). Louisville blew the doors off Kentucky (which Georgia couldn’t). South Carolina defeated Clemson, but the game ended in a wash. I’m not saying the SEC isn’t the better conference. They are absolute from top to bottom. But the gap is not as big as they are given credit for. In this case, especially considering who Alabama lost to (Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Oklahoma), I don’t think the strength of their schedule is so much better that they automatically deserve to win against a one-loss Miami team less to attend.

But that’s just me. And I might even let it influence me. Alabama objectively has better wins than Miami. Miami’s defense would be middle of the pack in the MAC. No one should be this upset if Alabama inevitably gets the nod over Miami in this scenario.

However, when it comes to SMU, I’m currently playing the tape in my head. If SMU stumbles and loses to Clemson in the ACC Championship and Clemson gets the automatic bid. What will come down to this is that SMU has suffered two losses (their second loss came in a conference championship game) and Alabama has suffered three losses (which did not have to play in a conference championship game).

You know what’s going to happen. You know what social media is going to look like. I expect the SEC propaganda machine, ESPN, to be in full swing this week. It will be just like they did with Indiana the week before the IU vs. Ohio State game. It would have worked even if the rest of college football hadn’t immediately collapsed along with it. But tomorrow Greg Sankey will be calling his close personal friends Ryan Russillo and Josh Pate. It’s going to be one long Alabama foolfest this entire week to set the stage for when the playoff committee takes three-loss Alabama into two-plus-loss SMU.

If Alabama gets past SMU in this situation, it would just be disgusting. We’ve been told all along that the playoff committee won’t allow conference championship losses to teams. And I’m sure that will be true for Georgia if they lose to Texas next weekend. But will they really treat SMU the same way? Are they really going to “not punish” SMU for going undefeated in their conference and having to play an extra game? I’ll believe it when I see it.

Certainly, Alabama would most likely have a better chance of making the playoffs than SMU. But that can’t be everything. Putting a 3-loss Alabama team (2 losses to unranked teams) over a 2-loss SMU (both losses to ranked teams in BYU and Iowa State in an extra game) is just too much. Results on the field must count. THE GAMES MUST MEAN SOMETHING. All these clichés. That would be too much spit in the face of the rest of college football. We can let the SEC spit something in our face. We’re all used to that. But ignoring SMU in this scenario is just too much spit.

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Giphy images.

If that happens, you’ll have to eliminate conference championship games altogether. If SMU was on the verge of making the playoffs based on the standings going into conference championship week, then I would understand it. If there was a debate right now about who should be ranked higher between SMU and Bama, then SMU went out there and lost to Clemson by a few touchdowns. I would (somehow) understand going there with Alabama. But SMU is ranked significantly higher than Alabama at the end of the regular season. They have two fewer losses. If losing a conference championship game can lead to a good playoff spot and eventual elimination altogether, then we shouldn’t have the game. I don’t care if SMU loses by 50 points. There is no world in which Alabama should overtake SMU after this weekend. Plain and simple.