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If you gaze far enough into the fall horizon, you’ll spot a chaotic College Football Playoff selection scenario taking shape. Anyone who’s worked up a playoff projection sees it coming.
Every coach or fan of a Power Four team wants to believe finishing with at least 10 wins will be enough to earn one of the seven at-large bids to the 12-team playoff.
“Two (losses), you’ve got a fighting chance,” LSU’s Brian Kelly told me before the season.
A chance, yes.
A guarantee? No.
Twenty Power Four teams remain undefeated, and, come December, we’ll likely have an overcrowded field of one- and two-loss teams extending their hand and expecting an at-large bid.
How committee members will make these hair-splitting decisions remains remarkably unclear. In the four-team playoff era, most playoff decisions were pretty cut and dry with few difficult decisions. Last year’s great debate between Alabama and Florida State was more the exception than the rule.
LSU coach Brian Kelly looks on during the second quarter against South Carolina at Williams-Brice Stadium.
In the 12-team format, the bubble will become much more crowded, while the playoff selection guidance remains as murky.
Sure, a few guidelines exist. The committee is supposed to consider schedule strength, head-to-head competition and outcomes against common opponents, without stressing over margin of victory.
But, as we saw last year, rules get squishy when Alabama’s playoff fate hangs in the balance.
One committee member told ESPN last December that the committee attempted to forecast whether Florida State was good enough to win the national championship without injured quarterback Jordan Travis. The committee peeked into a crystal ball and decided the Seminoles couldn’t win it all, and it chose Alabama. Never mind that nowhere in the College Football Playoff’s…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/brian-kelly-offers-idea-clearing-100504782.html
Author : USA TODAY Sports
Publish date : 2024-09-26 10:05:04
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