College Football Playoff: Parity is about to bring chaos … especially in the SEC

The job of the College Football Playoff committee has rarely been simple, but it certainly has never been this complicated

In the old days of the four-team playoff, the selections were often obvious. Now there aren’t just 12 teams to pick and seed, there is something else adding a degree of difficulty.

Parity.

The transfer portal and Name, Image and Likeness payments have quickly dispersed top talent to more schools — at the same strengthening contenders and weakening favorites. The gap between great and good has closed. It isn’t quite Any Given Saturday, but it is a far cry from even five years ago, when only two or three legitimate national title contenders existed.

That means not just more teams that can now rightfully make a claim for the playoff, but more regular season losses that make differentiating between teams more difficult.

Consider trying to sort through the Southeastern Conference — which the committee tried to do on Tuesday Night in its second playoff rankings (Oregon No. 1, by the way).

(Jeremy Klump/Yahoo Sports illustration)

The SEC has always been the biggest player in the playoff, winning six of the 10 four-team tournaments from 2014-2023. Yet the league was mostly top-heavy during that period, with select programs able to stockpile top five recruiting classes and roll season after season.

Across the previous decade, just three SEC programs reached the four-team playoff — Alabama (8 times), Georgia (3) and LSU (1). Everyone else was a pretender.

And now — especially after the SEC added Texas and Oklahoma to expand to 16 teams?

Nine SEC teams are ranked in the committee’s top 25, including four that would be in the playoff field — Texas (projected No. 2 seed as league champs), Tennessee (No. 8 seed), Alabama (No. 10 seed) and Ole Miss (No. 11 seed).

Georgia (12th ranked but out of the…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/college-football-playoff-parity-is-about-to-bring-chaos–especially-in-the-sec-023117646.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-11-13 02:31:17

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.