Someone recently mentioned to me that their father had played football at Georgia Tech, and after a few jokes about how bad Tech is these days, I pointed out that Tech used to be pretty good, even tying for a National Championship in 1990.
“Wait,” they asked, “they tied for a championship? How did that happen?”
It turns out that even as inscrutable as modern day college football can be, things used to be even more confusing. There were polls and voters and all kinds of controversy, year after year. Sometimes, multiple teams shared the trophy. The good news, though, is that now we finally have a playoff. Sure, only four teams make it, but surely that’s enough to solve any issues, right?
Well, think again, because like we always do at this time, we’re left sifting through crumbs to figure out which teams belong in the College Football Playoff this season.
This is almost an unanswerable question, in part because the season is not over, so we can expect more chaos as things inch along these last few weeks. But for now, all we can do is base things on the ways things have played out this season. Which is to say, yeah, it’s confusing.
This week, the CFP committee released their latest rankings, which has Georgia first, Ohio State second, Michigan third, and TCU fourth. Tennessee is ranked fifth, and Oregon is sixth, both within mustard-throwing distance of the top four.
Let’s start with what we know. Georgia is pretty much a consensus number one pick, except for some haters out there. UGA stamped their top spot with a dominant 27-13 win over Tennessee last weekend. As an admitted UGA fan, my main worry heading into the game was that UGA’s defense would get twisted into blown coverages the same way Tennessee has scrambled everyone else’s defenses all season long. If anything, watching Tennessee this season has reminded me of Steve Spurrier’s Fun and Gun Florida teams, where wide receivers used to somehow consistently appear wide open 20 yards down the field.
But that didn’t happen. UGA manhandled Tennessee all over the field, and dominated the Vols. TCU is undefeated, but they play against Texas this weekend, a game in which they’re currently seven point dogs. Michigan and Ohio State are both undefeated and have played mostly the same competition, but they’ll play each other in a few weeks, which will certainly drop one of them a few spots. All the way out of the top four? Well, maybe.
Would a one-loss Big Ten team have a claim to a top four spot? Other than the Big Ten duo, currently the two best one-loss teams are Tennessee and Oregon. Despite being across the country from each other, Tennessee and Oregon coincidentally have a common opponent this season: UGA. The Dawgs beat Oregon, 49-3, and the Dawgs beat Tennessee, 27-13. Certainly someone will look at those two scores and say, well, Tennessee lost to Georgia by less, so they must be the more deserving team.
To which I’d say, in my best Lee Corso voice, not so fast, my friend. UGA destroyed Oregon in their first game of the season, and the Ducks seem to have improved week by week ever since, winning eight in a row. Tennessee may have only lost by two TDs, but they were down 18 at the half against UGA when a rainstorm hit Athens, and the Dawgs essentially just ran the clock out the rest of the way, content with protecting the ball and getting the win. If that game had been played in a domed stadium, maybe we’re talking about a 48-12 finish, or something along those lines.
But that’s the problem, right?
The one knock against UGA before the Tennessee game was that they hadn’t beaten an elite team. (Although in retrospect, was Oregon elite?) At the same time, what elite team has Tennessee beaten? Maybe LSU, although they weren’t very good at the start of the season. Kentucky? Alabama? Neither of them turned out to be the powers we thought they were going to be. And Tennessee now ends against the terrible trio of Missouri, South Carolina and Vanderbilt. Although those teams now have a gameplan that Kirby Smart laid out, which they can use to try and slow down Tennessee a bit.
Meanwhile, Oregon gets a ranked Washington and a pretty good Utah to prove themselves against, as well as a presumably tough game (against USC or UCLA?) in the Pac 12 championship.
There’s much Tennessee can do except win out and then sit back and watch and hope.