THE PLAYOFFS! CAN CHALAMET EXPLAIN WHAT’S WRONG WITH ALABAMA AND BOISE STATE?
The Crimson Tide are expunged — bad idea — and a 12-team postseason allows first-round byes for two unworthy programs, meaning powerhouses play while the potato farmers are off an extra 10-11 days
When he’s finished playing Bob Dylan, would Timothee Chalamet agree to become the commissioner of college football? The sport doesn’t have such a role, but it’s certainly … tangled up in blue. The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.
Can Chalamet explain the ills of Alabama after his stellar performance on College GameDay? The Crimson Tide are deleted from the 12-team postseason, though they beat SEC champion Georgia, No. 15 South Carolina and No. 19 Missouri — which should be enough despite losing to No. 7 Tennessee, 6-6 Oklahoma and 6-6 Vanderbilt. SMU made the playoffs while beating no one better than 9-3 Duke, following a last-second loss to Clemson. Alabama is worthier and somehow didn’t benefit from three usual advantages: SEC bias, ESPN’s slobber about a national profile and Nick Saban defending the athletic director for scheduling bigger opponents.
“It’d be criminal if we’re not in,” said SMU coach Rhett Lashlee, whose program once was imposed with the NCAA death penalty. “It'd be wrong to what college football stands for. It would set a really bad precedent.” Now? “When the announcement happened, I got emotional,” he said Sunday.
Said Saban from Tuscaloosa, where Kalen DeBoer was aghast in his first season as coach: “If we don’t take the strength of schedule, is there any benefit to scheduling good teams in the future? Those are great games for fans to see. But do you enhance people to be doing that? What’s the athletic director going to do, cancel those games?”
Saban is right, bucking College Football Playoff chair Warde Manuel, who said, “It was quite a debate. We value strength of schedule … the way SMU played in that game losing on a last-second field goal. We just felt SMU still had that nod over Alabama.” SMU losing to Clemson does not compare to, um, Alabama beating Georgia.
And can Chalamet please explain why Boise State — and Arizona State — received first-round byes when both should play games Dec. 20 and 21? Dressed in a fluorescent pink jacket, Timmy Trifecta commanded my attention when he picked my school in the Mid-American Conference title game. “I’m going with the underdog Bobcats here,” he said, referring to Ohio University, drawing a boisterous “Wow!” from Pat McAfee and a shoulder slap from Kirk Herbstreit.
He saw Georgia beat Texas when a backup quarterback, Gunner Stockton, lost his helmet while gunning for the winning touchdown in the SEC title game — in overtime, of course. He also picked Oregon to win the Big Ten championship. “Number one team in the country for a reason,” said Chalamet, who has no link to FanDuel or DraftKings. What he would seem to know, as a Saturday extremist, is that the national playoff has a major problem before we indulge in its inaugural thrills. Maybe he can fix it, like a rolling stone.
In the complexity of team sports, nothing is more integral than a bye week in the first round of a football postseason. Teams report to camp in August and suffer injuries of all sorts for months. Only the programs that compile the best records deserve a week off to rest, all while eight other teams play in the first round. Chalamet has no problem with 13-0 Oregon and 11-2 Georgia, ranked first and second in the committee polls, receiving two of the precious byes. But what about the rest of us?
Why are Boise State and Arizona State receiving the other two byes? Answer: They are part of a predisposed plan to give automatic bids to the top four conference titleists. The selection committee decided to expunge the ACC from the formula and side with the Group of Five and Big 12, which constitutes a dream on the Blue Field in Idaho and is worth another stadium bull rush from fans in Tempe. The issue: How many of the teams that must play immediately are better than those teams? Would you like Penn State, Texas, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Indiana and/or Tennessee to beat Boise State — which has played only one Power 4 foe, losing to Oregon in early September?
I would. Hopefully, the oddball seedings are a one-and-done.
“Think about the rest you can get with the bye,” Herbstreit offered Saturday.
It has been suggested the committee members, who buy pizza and beer and sit in boxer shorts in suburban Dallas, are “paying attention to logos verses resumes.” It’s their way of accommodating a smaller program burned often in the old days, when the final four was chosen from the typical behemoths. I do not think Boise should be sitting alone for a quarterfinal berth — 10 or 11 days later, on Dec. 31 in the Fiesta Bowl — with Oregon and Georgia. The Broncos are 12-1 and boast a Heisman Trophy runnerup in Ashton Jeanty, who ranks fourth all-time in single-season rushing. Already, the program has made $8 million for reaching the quarters.
“I think the same thing week after week. Not only is this one of the best teams in the nation, but they've got one of the best players in the nation,” Jeanty said.
Let’s see how their record would tumble in the Big Ten or SEC, where expansion and transfer portals left Alabama bruised and Georgia surviving without battered quarterback Carson Beck after two recent national titles. Potent power packages doesn’t exist in the Mountain West Conference. “You guys actually meet for days and come up with these rankings?” wrote Ole Miss coach Lane Kifffin, who flipped social media against the committee when his team fell out of the top 12.
Said South Carolina coach Shane Beamer, who also came up short and aimed at the committee chair: “Warde Manuel, if I hear the word ‘data point’ one more time in my life, I may throw up.”
Meanwhile, Arizona State was lobbying for a bye while coach Kenny Dillingham lobbied for running back Cam Skattebo to join Travis Hunter and Jeanty in New York for Heisman ceremonies. “I think you can achieve anything here,” Dillingham said after a 45-19 romp over Iowa State. “I’ve always thought that people have always said this place is a sleeping giant. Well, you're not a sleeping giant if you never wake up. You're a dead giant. And it just hasn't woken up for so long.”
And there was Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, who said, “In no way should a Group of 5 champion be ranked above our champion.” Turns out he won with No. 4 seed Arizona State, though Boise State was seeded No. 3. ACC commissioner Jim Phillips won with SMU and Clemson. The SEC lost, with only three teams in the postseason compared to four for the Big Ten. That prompted Georgia coach Kirby Smart to take a shot at the SEC commissioner: “It means rest for our team that Greg Sankey and his staff sent on the road all year long. We get to take a little bit of a break and get ready for the College Football Playoff. This team needs some rest mentally.”
Would someone clarify 10-3 Clemson? “We're at a point now where we don't win a championship and we've got to fire everybody, and it's just — same ol’ tired narratives that come up every single year when we lose a game,” coach Dabo Swinney said. “You can check our record versus the SEC. You can check it versus the Big Ten. You can check it versus Notre Dame because that's really who runs college football.”
Ouch. The Fighting Irish made the playoff, with a home game against Indiana, and still are doused after losing in September to Northern Illinois.
As we settle into a new system, no one wants to hear about more expansion. But even Chalamet knows a 14-team playoff would mirror the NFL. Fairly, only the 11-1 Kansas City Chiefs and 12-1 Detroit Lions are positioned for first-round byes while Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Minnesota have to play early. In college, only Oregon and Georgia should receive those breaks.
“I didn’t say one word to him. He believed it. The kid’s a winner,” Smart said of Stockton, who left for the last play as Beck — unable to move his right arm — handed the ball to Trevor Etienne for the winning score.
“This is why you come to Georgia,” Etienne said. “So resilient. No matter the ups and downs, nobody gave up and nobody gave in. Nobody showed signs of weakness.”
And Oregon, undefeated in its first Big Ten year? “It's just going in a new environment, just kind of messing up that environment, being the alpha in that environment,” tight end Terrance Ferguson said. “There's been some alphas in the Big Ten, and we just came in and put our hat on that. All year, that's been preached to us, and we just put in the work to make it happen.”
For those of us who’ve thirsted about campus sites, prepare eyeballs for special moments. Notre Dame hosts Indiana’s Curt Cignetti, who wants to pad his Google with a victory in South Bend on a Friday night. Ohio State, with fans perplexed about Ryan Day’s latest failure to Michigan, hosts Tennessee. Texas hosts Clemson. Penn State will hold a White Out show, with snow possibly on the ground, against SMU.
Boise State? We’ll have to wait a while. What?
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
For the times, they are a-changin’.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.