Should Alabama, Notre Dame, or BYU have made the Playoff?

Nate's take is that while the College Football Playoff Committee got it right on Miami, it got it wrong on Ohio State over Georgia and Alabama over Notre Dame. Nate also compares Notre Dame's decision to opt out of their bowl game to Florida State's mass opt outs in 2023. Will it hurt the Irish the same way?

Transcript

This is sports takes with Nate skates. No spin, just straight sports. So college Football Playoff rankings come down if you haven't seen it. Um it's created shall we say, a controversy as it always does. They had Indiana at one. No controversy there. Then Ohio State two. Georgia three. Texas Tech is four. You have Oregon at five. Ole Miss at six. Texas A&M at seven. Oklahoma at eight. Then we get a little. Then it gets wild. Then it gets wild at number nine not dropping a single spot. Is Alabama. At number ten. The committee puts Miami in over Notre Dame. And that's created a lot of consternation, really, because the committee did it to themselves. This should have been done before this week when both teams were idle. It made no sense to wait until now. Oh, well, BYU was in between them. You're trying to tell me that a team with at ranked number ten is demonstrably better than a team ranked 12th? Oh, but if that teams ranked 11th, they're comparable. So we can use head to head as ridiculous. So they should have. They should have fixed that earlier in the season. So they really cause a lot of their own problems and to cause a lot of headache with Notre Dame that we're going to talk about later. And then the way the rankings work, you have automatic qualifiers. So it's not the top 12 teams. It's really the top ten teams. In this circumstance. It's. And so you have the two automatic qualifiers of Tulane who wins their conference championship game, and James Madison, who wins their conference championship game. Now ask me if I thought five years ago I'd be saying that James Madison is in the College Football Playoff, I can guarantee you I would never have guessed that in a million years. So going forward, what do I think they got right in the rankings? Well, I think they they got it right by moving Miami in front of Notre Dame. You had to do that. Miami has to be in the playoff. I think putting Indiana at one is right. They're undefeated. They're the Big Ten champ. They should be number one. Here's some things I think they got wrong Ohio State in front of Georgia. And you could call that bias. But let's look at this. Ohio State has one loss Georgia has one loss Georgia is the SEC champion Ohio State loses the Big Ten championship game. What are Ohio State's best wins? A 14 to 7 win over Texas and the admittedly dominant win over a Michigan. Where is George's best wins? Okay, well, George's got two wins over teams ranked higher than Texas. George's got a win over Ole Miss. George's got a win over number nine Alabama. Uh, not just a win a beatdown. So then we have one common opponent between Georgia and Ohio State. That's Texas. What did Georgia do to Texas? It wasn't 14 to 7. It wasn't close. It was 35 to 10. And then Georgia additionally has the win over ranked Georgia Tech. So Georgia has an SEC championship, has four ranked wins. Has two wins better than any of Ohio State's wins and fared better against their only common opponent. So it makes sense that you would put Ohio State in front of Georgia, right? It's a it's silly. It's silly. It's I don't ever want to hear from Big Ten people again about S.E.C. bias. You've got Indiana at one, Ohio State at two, Oregon at five. And to me that's another debate. Oregon, Ole Miss and Texas A&M. Those are all comparable teams. I don't have a problem with Oregon being at number five at this point. Looking at their resumes. Maybe I would move them at five. But I'm just saying don't come at me with SEC bias. We didn't even put the SEC champion at number two, despite the fact that they have a better resume. Georgia's only loss is a three point loss to Alabama, the team that they just dismantled. Georgia should be ahead of Ohio State. Other than that, I don't really have a problem until we get to nine. You have Alabama at nine. Alabama gets pummeled and doesn't drop a single spot and you have an argument. You hear this from I heard it from Greg McElroy. I heard it from Kirk Herbstreit. Two guys I, I like, but they made the argument that, oh, well, if you you drop Alabama from the playoff, it sets a precedent that you get punished for playing in the College Football Playoff. What sport have you been watching for the last 11 years? Every single team. This is not an exaggeration. Every team that was in the college football rankings since the College Football Playoff started in 2014, that lost their conference championship game, dropped at least one spot. Alabama is the only team in the history of the College Football Playoff to lose its its conference championship game and not drop a spot. That's unacceptable. And and it's not just that you have instances where teams were dropped wholly from the, the the playoff. The first time this happened was the first year of the playoff. TCU TCU was ranked in the top four. They lose the big 12 championship game. They get dropped from the playoff. So the committee set the precedent from the very beginning that if you play in the conference championship game and you lose, it could hurt you. Now, that's not necessarily I'm not arguing that it's fair. I'm arguing that it's the way it works. It's happened to lots of teams that the closest analogy to Alabama is Auburn in 2017 okay. Auburn at that point had two losses just like Alabama. They had beat Georgia badly in the regular season. And they had also beat Alabama. Earned their trip to the SEC Championship game. Well, they meet Georgia there and just like Alabama. Georgia wins that game 28 to 7. Same score. Auburn gets dropped from the playoffs. Oh and by the way Auburn didn't have a loss like Alabama's to Florida State. So you have the the exact same situation. And Auburn gets dropped but Alabama doesn't. And then you have a similar situation happened to Georgia in 2018. Georgia loses a close game to Alabama in the SEC championship game. They're dropped from the playoff. 2023 Georgia was on a 29 game winning streak. Defending national champion plays in the SEC Championship game. Loses by three points to Alabama. They get dropped from 1 to 6 five spots out of the playoff. And you can say well Nate that was in the four team playoff. What about in the 12 team playoff okay. Well that precedent has already been set in the first year of the 12 team playoff. SMU was ranked number eight going into the conference championship weekend. They lost that game I mentioned earlier by three points on a last second 56 yard field goal by Clemson. They dropped SMU from 8 to 10 in the final rankings. Okay, well, what about this year? Uh, Ohio State loses a three point game to number two Indiana. They drop one spot. Okay what about BYU who also gets dominated in their conference championship game just like Alabama. They get dropped. Alabama doesn't move a single. It's not even that they didn't get dropped out of the playoff. They didn't even go to ten. They got left at nine. It's truly remarkable. And it's no surprise to me. As I said on the episode last week, there is an Alabama bias period. There is always going to be an Alabama bias. And it's not just the the conference championship. They're the first team in the history of the playoff to go to the playoff with three losses, first three losses, team in the playoff ever. And they don't just have three losses. They have a loss where they got shelled by a terrible record wise Florida State team. And then you get hammered by Georgia in the SEC championship game. It it's I understand that they have the wins. They have the win against Georgia. They have the win against Vanderbilt. They have pretty decent wins. Tennessee and Missouri. So what? I mean, I'm not saying you can't make an argument for Alabama to be in the playoff. You can. But to me, there is very little difference resume wise in Alabama, Notre Dame and BYU. I think you could easily make an argument for any of those three teams. What you can't make an argument for is that Alabama didn't drop at all, and that it somehow sets a precedent now that Alabama is involved. For them to be dropped. No, that is nothing but Alabama bias. So if you ask me how I would have done the rankings, and I've been thinking about this a lot since the rankings came down on Sunday and before that. I personally don't want to punish conference champions, but that's the way we've done things. I think that we've created a scenario where the conference championship games are punishments, but I didn't create that rule. The committee created that rule in 2014 with TCU. So if we're going to treat TCU that way and we're going to treat Auburn and Georgia that way, and we're going to treat SMU that way, if we're going to this committee this year is going to drop every other team that lost their conference championship game. We have to drop Alabama. I personally would rank the teams as Miami, then Notre Dame, and then you could do a coin flip. I'm going to give Alabama the edge over BYU. And I'm I'm sorry BYU fans. I'm going to give Alabama the edge over BYU because of the wins. But I would head Miami and Notre Dame in the playoffs. And I know that creates a scenario where the two teams who didn't go to conference championship games go to the playoff. But if we're going to use the conference championship games as an additional data point, like the committee has said, then that game has to matter there. And Alabama, you needed to win that game and you didn't show up. You got manhandled. So Alabama doesn't have any business in the playoff. Now knowing them, they could go on a run. Who knows, maybe they'll win the national championship. I don't think so. I don't think they're going to get out of the first round. They have a hard time with Oklahoma. I think Oklahoma's got a great defense. They're going to win that game. But as far as Notre Dame's concerned. Part of it for me is your two losses are Miami and Texas A&M. The loss to Texas A&M is a one point loss where you muffed a hold on an extra point. You've got you've got to win over Pitt. You've got to win over USC. The resume is not beautiful, but neither is Alabama and BYU. So I would put Notre Dame in. Now with that being said Notre Dame join a conference. And I said this last episode. It's not right for us to have one set of rules for every other team in college football and one set of rules for Notre Dame. And then Notre Dame has the audacity to run around and complain that there's some form of cabal against them, you know? Oh, the media. Well, you're you're the team that has a TV contract with NBC. I mean, no, nobody else has that. So it's really out of touch. I think you should have been in the playoffs, per the committee's rules. But come on now. I mean, really oh, poor Notre Dame. Since when is Notre Dame oppressed by the playoff or oppressed by the media? So that's how I would have done it. And I feel free. Please tell me how you would have ranked it. Tell me how I'm wrong. Tell me how my reasons are wrong. I want to hear from you now. Talking about Notre Dame. I want to talk about this. Opting out of the bowl game. So I have a good friend who is a Notre Dame fan. He calls himself a rational Notre Dame fan. We talked about this a little bit, um, and especially about the rankings this weekend. And he also felt like, yeah, Notre Dame should have been in. But he he understood the situation. He also felt like joining a conference was necessary where he and I disagreed was he thought that it was the right decision to opt out of the bowl game. And I understand that a lot of people from Notre Dame are going to think that they, um, they feel like they got cheated. Now I disagree. I think you got invited to a bowl game. You need to finish that season. And the closest analog we have to a situation like this. And by the way, Notre Dame is not the only one opting out of the bowl game. Several teams are opting out of a bowl game. And you got situations where, you know, teams that normally wouldn't have even been in a bowl are opting out of bowl games. So it's an epidemic. It's not just Notre Dame, but I think it's a major mistake. The closest analog to this is 2023. Florida State, they win the ACC championship. They go undefeated. But Jordan Travis quarterback is hurt. They don't look great since his injury. Uh they get left out of the playoffs. Florida State fans schools furious Florida State's filing lawsuits against the committee. And they quit when they played in that Orange Bowl against Georgia, who also got left out of the playoff when they shouldn't have. Which we had a problem that year. There were six good teams. There were six good teams that should have been in the playoffs. But Florida State had a bunch of opt outs. They had guys, NFL guys quitting, opting out of the bowl game because pouting because they didn't get it. Georgia didn't do that. The guys on Georgia didn't do that. That game in that game, Georgia broke its own record set against TCU the year before for the biggest margin of victory in the history of postseason college football. And you had guys like, uh, Florida State's great wide receiver who went to the NFL, Keon Coleman, running around saying, oh, well, if Georgia had just beat Alabama, we'd been in the playoffs. And then we, you know, if we had played Georgia, then we we would have beat them for sure. Okay, give me a break. You had your chance to beat Georgia. You got beat by 60 points. Georgia got their backups in their second and third stringers are laying it on Florida State. Georgia thoroughly dominated that game, and whether it was, I'm not going to say Georgia was, talent wise, 60 points better than Florida State. I don't think that was the issue. I think Florida State quit and Georgia Kirby Smart refused to do that because to them, this is another opportunity to play a game, and this is another opportunity to prove how good we are and to impose our will. Hey Committee, let's show you how badly you got it wrong. We're going to blow Florida State out of the stadium. And that's what they did. Now how have those two programs differed since that game? Florida State undefeated in 2023. Since that game last year Florida State wins two games. They go two and ten. This year. They win five games. What is Georgia done since that game? Well Georgia's won two SEC championships and been to two playoffs. Now you could say, well, that's not just because of the way they handled that game, and you'd be right. It's not just because of the way they handled that game, but it's about a mentality. It's about a standard. It's about a way that you approach things. Florida State pouted, took their ball and went home. That has consequences long term. That's the kind of message you send to your players that it's not that we're playing this game because we love this game and we're not playing this game because we love playing together and being the better team. We just wanted to go to the playoffs. The Orange Bowl is not good enough for us. So in this year it you know we're talking a totally different bowl situation. But for Notre Dame this was your opportunity to say we're going to show you committee that we should have been in the playoff. We are better than Alabama. Maybe it was your opportunity to say that lost week one to Miami. That was a fluke. We're a better team now than we were then. But you didn't take it. You ran. You hid from the bowl game. And I think that's going to have repercussions for the program going forward. I think Marcus Freeman's done a great job at Notre Dame. Hey, we felt that as Georgia fans last year. Now there were some extenuating circumstances. Our starting quarterback had also been injured in the SEC championship game. Notre Dame beat Georgia and they did it pretty convincingly. But I think this is going to be a moment you can look back on, and it's going to be a time where Notre Dame's progress was stopped. And I hope I'm wrong because as I told my friend, I, I admire Notre Dame in a way and their fans, when Georgia played that game in 2017 against Notre Dame, all you heard a lot about, you know, how kindly their fans had treated Georgia fans who completely took over that stadium. And I was at the game in Athens in 2019 when Notre Dame came to Georgia. Which was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was awesome. It was loud. I had great interactions with Notre Dame fans, the the few that were there, and Notre Dame played really hard and I walked away with a respect for Notre Dame's players, Notre Dame's fans, and I feel like that's that's a relationship that's kind of been built through those games. So I, I hope I'm wrong. I hope Notre Dame is gonna come out next season and use that as their opportunity to prove the playoff committee wrong, but I don't think they're going to I'm not saying they're going to win two games like Florida State the next season, but I think this is going to hurt them going forward. I think it sends a bad message to the the players on the roster. I think it sends a bad message to recruits. I think it sets a bad tone for the program. So that's all really the time we have on this show. Next episode, I'm going to switch it up a little bit. We're going to talk about Major League Baseball free agency. There's been some big happenings already. And we're also going to talk a little bit about college basketball. We talked about Georgia's hot star and talked about what's going on with the UK. I live around a lot of Kentucky fans and they are not happy. But before I go, I want this show to be a community. I want you guys to. Send me your comments. Send me your questions. You can email me at. Skate sports show at. We've got a page on X, formerly Twitter. We've got a Facebook. I have a YouTube channel for this podcast. You can reach out to me there. So at the end of each episode going forward, I want to ask you guys some questions just about you as fans. And you can debate them. We can talk about them. Um, so the first question I want to ask you is really simple. Who are your favorite teams? Who do you guys root for? Who do you like? Obviously I like the Bulldogs. I like the Braves. Those are my teams. Um, who do you like? And another question I want to ask you are is who are some of your favorite players that did not play for those teams? Like for me, I liked Peyton Manning a lot. Growing up, I liked Tiki Barber. Uh, I liked, um, a lot of guys in the NFL who weren't playing for the Falcons. You know, there were some really great players that you could appreciate in Major League Baseball. I thought Ken Griffey Jr was awesome. Torii Hunter, uh, Johan Santana, some really cool guys who. I had my team had to play against and I had to see that. And uh, NBA you know, I liked watching Rajon Rondo. It was annoying watching the Celtics beat the Hawks. But you know, I liked watching him play. So who are some guys that you liked that uh, weren't on your team. So thank you so much for listening to the show today. If you made it this far, uh, appreciate it and hope you'll hit like, subscribe, follow. You know, give me some comments. Feedback. Uh, we hope I hope to grow this show. And I hope you'll grow along with me. This is sports takes with Nate skates. No spin, just straight sports.