Hard to get a handle on selection committee’s critera

 

Dear Selection Committee:

What’s the deal? What are you looking for?

Quality wins?

Best loss?

Strength of schedule?

Head-to-head?

Eye test?

Please tell us. No, scratch that. Please SHOW us.

Is it too much to ask for a little consistency and logic? That seems like a reasonable request.

We know perception and facts change each week. Every meaningful game provides new information. Earlier in the season, Mississippi State looked like a nice little overachieving team. Then the Bulldogs won at LSU, then dominated Texas A&M and then handled Auburn without much trouble. So now we see them differently. Now we see them as the No. 1 team in the country.

No dispute there until new information comes in, which could come as early as this weekend when Hail State visits Alabama.

And, of course, the four teams ranked in the top 10 last week that lost — Auburn, Kansas State, Michigan State and Notre Dame — all had to drop. Makes complete sense.

But what happened between Mississippi State and Auburn at No. 9 frankly makes almost no sense.

Start with Florida State. The Seminoles started the season as the No. 1 team in the old fashioned polls. That was affirmed when they opened the season by winning at Oklahoma State. And all they have done is win every game.

Yet, with each win, the Seminoles seem to lose credibility. They beat Notre Dame 31-27, which, oddly, seemed to validate the Fighting Irish because they lacked a “quality win” but were No. 10 in the first College Football Playoff rankings two weeks ago. Meanwhile, the Seminoles kept winning, beating Louisville and Virginia.

So how do you reward the Seminoles? By dropping them to third in favor of Oregon, which needed a strong fourth quarter — not to mention a gift of a 14-point swing when Utah’s Kaelin Clay just dropped the football before crossing the goal-line. Sure, mathematically, that play didn’t mean anything in the end. Oregon would have won anyway. But 44-34 is much more respectable than 51-27. And there’s no telling how the game would have turned out if Utah had been leading 27-20 instead of trailing by that score in the fourth quarter.

This is not knocking Oregon so much as it trying take up for Florida State.

OK, so the Seminoles’ win over Virginia 34-20 wasn’t impressive. So then, how do you reconcile that with TCU needing a last-second field goal the week before to beat West Virginia?

Apparently one reason you have had TCU over Baylor — despite the fact that Baylor beat TCU 61-58 — is that Baylor lost to West Virginia.

So …

You jumped TCU over Alabama, which pretty much dominated West Virginia in the season opener. One reason the Crimson Tide debuted at No. 6 and not any higher was that they lacked a “quality win.” Beating Texas A&M 59-0 and beating Florida (which beat Georgia) by a 42-21 score and rolling up more than 600 yards of offense did not constitute a quality win.

So the Crimson Tide went down to Baton Rouge and beat a stubborn LSU team, having to force overtime with a clutch two-minute drive with their best running back, T.J. Yeldon, hurt. Then they scored in overtime and held LSU. You think highly enough of LSU that the Tigers, at No. 17, are your highest ranked three-loss team. They’re ahead of Notre Dame and Clemson.

That’s not a quality win? Apparently not, because your reward was to let them get jumped by TCU, whose most credible non-conference win was over Minnesota, which you ranked behind SEVEN teams from the SEC. Alabama’s best non-conference win was over — didn’t we mention this before? — West Virginia, which nearly beat TCU. Alabama’s only loss came on the road in the last minutes against Ole Miss, which you think highly enough of to have in your top 10 despite having two losses, one of which was to the aforementioned LSU.

You say strength of schedule matters, yet you have Baylor ahead of Auburn and Ole Miss. Baylor’s non-conference schedule consisted of SMU, Northwestern State and Buffalo. Yeah, the Bears trumped Oklahoma, but how impressive is that anymore?

I know, people say it doesn’t really matter now, that it will all sort itself out. All a team has to do is finish in the top four and it will have a chance to win the national championship.

If Bama wins out — which would mean beating Mississippi State, Auburn and the SEC East winner — the Tide will be in. Oregon and Arizona State are on a collision course for one to knock the other out.

Ah, but it does matter. It’s very possible Alabama could beat Mississippi State, which subsequently beats Ole Miss, and you have two teams from the best conference in college football with one loss each, and one of them almost certainly will be left out because TCU beat Samford, Minnesota and SMU.

This thing could be one big mess.