Dumping 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 subject anybody to my minimally educated college football ramblings, then I should at least provide copious amounts of Boob GIF's 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 like it's an indictment on them as a human being. When someone says something bad about your team, it's a personal attack on your character. When the opposing team plants a piece of cloth attached to a long stick with their logo on it on your 50-yard line, you might as well just KYS. You'll never be able to show your face in public again after such a humiliation.
I'm sure that's largely due to the 12-team playoff. Instead of having maybe 6 fan bases personally attacking each other's families over 4 playoff spots, there's now… well… there were a whole lot more than that coming down the stretch. Way more fan bases who feel like their teams should matter in the big picture. Way more disrespect to go around. But now that we're heading into conference championship week, the playoff picture is finally shaping up. There's still plenty to be determined seeding-wise. But based on my "knowledge" of how the committee thinks, it looks as if there's only 1 at large bid up for grabs. I think pretty much everyone agrees on that. The official playoff rankings won't be out until Tuesday, but here's the AP poll that came out today.
The teams that are already in the playoff no matter what (not saying I necessarily agree with all of it) are as follows:
B1G: Oregon, Penn State, Ohio State, Indiana
SEC: Texas, Tennessee, Georgia
BIG12 Winner: Arizona State or Iowa State
ACC Winner: SMU or Clemson
Group of 5: Mountain West Championship Winner (Boise State vs UNLV)
Notre Dame: Notre Dame
At Large: _
That's 11 spots spoken for. 1 spot up for grabs.
Between the BIG12, ACC, and Mountain West championships, the only team that stands a chance to lose still make the playoff is SMU. Hopefully SMU takes care of business and beats Clemson. That would make things a lot easier. Then the committee will simply put Alabama in that final spot and call it a day. I don't think you can argue South Carolina deserves it over them. Alabama beat South Carolina head-to-head. Personally, I'd like to see Miami make it over Alabama. I don't think there's NEARLY as big of a gap between the SEC and ACC as people think there is. In my humble opinion, SEC teams all have wildly inflated strength of schedules. All based on the assumption we make at the beginning of every season that the level of football played in the SEC so far outweighs that of any other conference. Then during the season, SEC teams are given credit for all these quality wins they have over themselves. Their losses are all quality losses. It's like a fucking Ponzi scheme or something.
But when you look SEC teams vs non-conference opponents, it's not especially lopsided in the SEC's favor. Just this weekend we saw Georgia barely survive Georgia Tech in 8 OT's (some would say thanks to questionable officiating). Kentucky had their doors blown off by Louisville (something Georgia wasn't able to do). South Carolina did beat Clemson, but that game came down to the wire. I'm not saying the SEC isn't the better conference. They absolutely are top to bottom. But the gap isn't as wide as they are given credit for. So in this case, especially when you consider who Alabama has lost to (Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Oklahoma), I don't think their strength of schedule is so much better that they automatically deserve to be in over a Miami team with 1 less loss.
But that's just me. And I could even be swayed on that. Alabama has objectively better wins than Miami. Miami's defense would be middle of the road in the MAC. Nobody should be that upset when Alabama inevitably gets the nod over Miami in that scenario.
When it comes to SMU though… I'm playing the tape in my head right now. If SMU trips up and loses to Clemson in the ACC Championship, and Clemson snatches the automatic bid. It's going to come down to 2-loss SMU (who's 2nd loss came in a conference championship game), and 3-loss Alabama (who didn't have to play a conference championship game).
You know what's going to happen. You know what social media will be like. I expect the SEC propaganda machine that is ESPN to be in full force this week. It'll be exactly like what they did to Indiana the week leading up to IU vs Ohio State. It would have worked too if the rest of college football didn't immediately nose-dive along with them. But tomorrow Greg Sankey will call up his close personal friends Ryan Russillo & Josh Pate. This whole week will be one long Alabama suck-fest to set the stage for when the playoff committee puts 3-loss Alabama in over 2-loss SMU.
If Alabama gets in over SMU in that situation… that would just be disgusting. This whole time we've been told that the playoff committee won't hold conference championship losses against teams. And I'm sure that will apply to Georgia if they lose to Texas next weekend. But are they really going to give SMU that same treatment? Are they really going to "not punish" SMU for going undefeated in their conference and having to play an additional game? I'll believe it when I see it.
Sure, Alabama would most likely have a better chance of making a deep run the playoff than SMU. But that can't be everything. To put in a 3-loss Alabama team (2 losses vs non-ranked teams), over a 2-loss SMU (both losses to ranked teams in BYU & Iowa State in an extra game)… that's just too much. Results on the field have to matter. ThE gAmEs hAvE tO mEaN sOmEtHinG. All those cliches. That would be too much spit in the face of the rest of college football. We can accept some spit in the face from the SEC. We're all used to that. But leaving out SMU in that scenario is simply too much spit.
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If that happens, then you have to get rid of conference championship games altogether. If SMU was on the verge of being in the playoff as the rankings stand pre-conference championship week, then I'd get it. If there was a debate right now about who should be the ranked higher between SMU & Bama, then SMU went out there and lost by a few TD's to Clemson. I'd understand going with Alabama there (kinda). But SMU is very solidly ranked higher than Alabama at the end of the regular season. They have two fewer losses. If losing a conference championship game can take you from being solidly in the playoff, to dropping all the way out, then we shouldn't have the game. I don't care if SMU loses by 50. There's no world where Alabama should jump SMU after this weekend. Plain and simple.
