Ohio State Fan Writes Open Letter To The Playoff Committee Saying The Buckeyes Should Be In Over Alabama
A Letter To: The College Football Committee
RE: Ohio State
Dearest Jeff Long and others at the CFP-
You created a system in which you are supposed to put the BEST 4 TEAMS in the playoff, regardless of anything else. I get that championships carry more weight, but you can’t watch Ohio State crush Michigan on the road and then see Alabama struggle against the worst SEC “championship” team I’ve ever seen and logically leave Ohio State out, let alone Oklahoma’s abysmal loss to Texas.
Oklahoma lost to a 5-7 team by 7. Alabama lost to a 9-3 team by 6 (at home). Ohio State lost to the #5 team in the country by 3 points. While it was at home you could see the impact that weather conditions had on the game, and you could also see how Ohio State rebounded in a big way on the road against the #10 team in the country with a 30 point victory.
I know about your “SEC bias.” I mean, what would ESPN think if you left an SEC team out of the playoff? Finebaum might have a heart attack! Logically though, Alabama is in no way better than Ohio State. They struggled with a Florida team who just lost 27-2 to FSU and almost lost to Florida Atlantic at home. Alabama’s non-conference schedule is worse than Ohio State’s according to the SOS metrics.
Yes, Ohio State’s schedule is not great, but that shouldn’t really matter if you are truly trying to include the “Four Best Teams.” Hell, I created a 56-team link that has 2-10 SMU beating Alabama. Yes, it’s legit. Why don’t you just use that and put SMU in the CFP? Anyway, I encourage you to look a little deeper. Alabama’s best win is against a three-loss LSU team that almost fired their head coach. The B1G has five teams in the top 15 YOU CREATED; the SEC has two.
Alabama has beat ZERO teams that have less than 3 losses. Zero. Zilch. None. Some of it’s “tough competition,” like Arkansas, lost to a MAC team. Hell, if it wasn’t for a farce by Ole Miss on a 4th and 25 against that very same Arkansas team, Ole Miss, with 2 losses, would’ve been mathematically in the SEC championship over Alabama. Big bad SEC contender South Carolina lost to an FCS team. FCS! The SEC played more FCS teams out of conference than they did Power-5 opponents. Alabama’s best win out of conference is over a 3 loss BIG TEN team, Wisconsin on a “neutral” site. They also played 1-11 Louisiana Monroe, Charleston Southern, and Middle Tennessee.
The “Big Bad SEC” is nothing anymore. Houston has the same amount of wins over ranked teams (3) as the ENTIRE SEC East division. So does Michigan State. So does Oklahoma. They all have the same amount of losses. So why is Alabama ahead of them? I’m not quite sure.
Oklahoma had the benefit of playing a ton of backup QB’s. TCU was without Trevone Boykin when they played Oklahoma. Baylor did not have Seth Russell. In addition, while they did play a solid non-conference schedule, they lost to Texas (a team that finished 5-7) in week five. That is two weeks later than Alabama’s loss. Texas was 1-4 at that point and coming off a 50-7 whooping at the hands of TCU. Oklahoma should not have lost that game and still have been considered over more worthy teams for the playoff.
Either way, the four best teams deserve to be in the playoff. Not the SEC champion and the 3 other best teams. Sorry guys, I know ESPN is on the phone talking about how to justify Alabama being #1 even if Clemson wins, so I’ll end this letter.
Pretty compelling argument. Sucks because I already posted about the College Football Playoff standings and made some predictions – now I have to go delete all of it and start over again once the committee reads this and changes everything around. I think open letters from blogs are a major part of their criteria for final rankings? Overall record, conference championships, strength of schedule, blog rants. The order of importance varies, nobody is really sure. But if you read that letter and still think that 1 loss, Conference Champion Alabama should be in over 1 loss, not champion of anything Ohio State I don’t know what to tell you, you clearly just don’t read good enough.