Grading the College Football Playoff Selection Committee’s first 12-team bracket: How did they do?

Move over, brand recognition. Welcome, most-deserving team. The selection committee’s decision to sidestep Alabama (9-3) in favor of SMU (11-2) in the final College Football Playoff Rankings was a brave call — and the right decision — on Selection Sunday. The report card’s final grade is satisfactory after the committee avoided a disruptive precedent that would’ve been set had the three-loss Crimson Tide, who failed to reach their conference championship game, been handed the “last team in” distinction.

The Mustangs, whose setbacks this season came against two opponents with double-digit wins and not Vanderbilt or Oklahoma, did what was necessary to maintain their stance inside the top 12 by erasing a 17-point deficit in the fourth quarter against Clemson (10-3) only to lose as time expired.

College Football Playoff chair Warde Manuel has a difficult job. He’s the weekly mouthpiece for a committee tasked with justifying every selection and movement within the rankings with no shot at appeasing the masses. But his group appears to have picked the right group of teams in the first season of playoff expansion. 

“It was quite a debate,” Manuel told ESPN. “We value strength of schedule, which is why Alabama — as a three-loss team — was ranked ahead of other teams that have two losses. … In the balance of it, in the way SMU played in that game, losing on a last-second field goal … we just felt that, in this particular case, SMU still had the nod at 10 above Alabama. But it’s no disrespect to Alabama’s strength of schedule. It’s merely looking at the entire body of work of both teams.”

Auto-bids given to five conference champions and seeding confusion must be revised moving forward, but as the dust settles in Grapevine, Texas,…

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/grading-the-college-football-playoff-selection-committees-first-12-team-bracket-how-did-they-do/

Author : Brad Crawford

Publish date : 2024-12-08 18:12:00

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