We have seen this four-team playoff in action for six years now, and it has never been more predictable. Here’s why that’s such a shame.
Welcome once again to the Alabama-Clemson College Football Playoff invitational, where it hardly seems to matter who earned the “right” to take on the two clear favorites to make the national championship game. This year, it happens to be No.3 Ohio State and No.4 Notre Dame. The Irish made it in over Texas A&M with what the committee called a better body of work. Ohio State only played six games, but the committee deemed that enough because it won its conference championship and had two ranked wins. We can quibble over résumés and who was most worthy of facing the No.1 Crimson Tide as a double-digit underdog, but there is no surprise in what the committee did. In fact, the decisions on the top four were so predictable, it made the entire process stale and boring and so filled with an utter lack of meaningful debate that there is no reason for outrage because we all saw the way this was going to unfold. This speaks to a system that was set up to favor teams in the Power 5 conferences (and Notre Dame, of course), to keep power and money for themselves. From the beginning, the same teams in Power 5 conferences have dominated the top four. That, in turn, has watered down who actually is capable of making a playoff run. Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State, Notre Dame and Oklahoma have combined to take 20 out of 28 possible spots since the playoff began in 2014. If Clemson and Alabama end up meeting in the national championship, it would be their fifth playoff meeting in the past six years. Talk about a lack of competitive balance across a sport with 130 FBS teams. And, although Oklahoma is not in the playoff this year, the two-loss Sooners still proved their Power 5 stature Sunday when the committee jumped them four spots all the way to No.6 in the final rankings because they just won their sixth straight Big 12 title. In the process, Oklahoma moved ahead of undefeated Cincinnati, a team that should have merited consideration but instead was deemed to have an insufficient résumé — like every other undefeated Group of 5 team in BCS/playoff history. College Football Playoff National Championship Presented by AT&T Hard Rock Stadium (Miami Gardens, Florida) Jan.
