Central Michigan Has CFB Playoff Representation, How Should We View That Game?

We might be tired of talking about it. You might be tired of talking about it. But Mike Gundy is certainly not tired of talking about it. Gundy has (rightfully) brought up the Oklahoma State-Central Michigan game after nearly every game Oklahoma State has played this year until Monday.

“I will address my opinion on the playoff system next week because, in a sense, it doesn’t matter until we play this game,” Mike Gundy said on Monday. What he might not have known at the time is that Central Michigan, of all teams (!), has representation on the College Football Playoff committee. How crazy is that?

Can't make this up: Central Michigan’s former coach/AD is on the @CFBPlayoff committee. Think he’ll argue that's an #okstate win? No chance. pic.twitter.com/tMuS6godkO

— Carson Cunningham (@KOCOCarson) November 29, 2016

Anyway, friend of the blog Robert Whetsell has offered up some of his thoughts on the CMU-OSU game, and we thought they were good so let’s look at them.

Since we’re into “final takes” on OSU’s “loss” to Central Michigan, here’s mine…

We all know championship teams rarely go undefeated, and it is even rarer for a championship team to go through a season without having one or two games where they underperform against lesser opponents.

Most championship programs find a way to win those games (see Ohio State vs Michigan State). Some don’t (see Michigan vs Iowa). Oklahoma State turned Central Michigan over twice in the final minutes of the game, first to post the go-ahead score, then to seal the win and run out the clock, which they did correctly according to the rules. Then the officials screwed up, which they admitted to immediately following the game. Like, within a few minutes.

That being said, it only matters to OSU folks. In my opinion, even a one-loss Cowboys squad was never getting into the playoff. Oklahoma State will never be a favorite for the college football playoff because of brand bias, which is blatantly obvious.

I mean, look at Penn State and Ohio State. The Nittany Lions beat the Buckeyes, and if they win the Big 10 title could be easily left out of the playoff. Ridiculous. If the Cowboys were undefeated, all we would be hearing about would be playing in the Big 12, close wins over CMU, Pitt, Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas State, and Texas Tech. They would still need debate to get in.

Why are we even still talking about this? Because the way the playoff selection currently works is actually worse than the BCS. At least then we had the thin veil of “computers” to allow us to think we were separating ourselves from our subjective stupidity. Now all we have is a room full of humans with clear and open favoritism, and winning a Power 5 conference title guarantees nothing.

The big fallacy here is “we must pick the best teams so we make sure the champion is actually one of the best teams.” For some reason there are folks that have a phobia against titles being won by teams who aren’t considered the “best.”

My goodness, how boring would that be? That mentality would negate the following championship teams:

• Milan High School (1954)
• Texas Western (1966)
• New York Jets (1969)
• NC State (1983)
• Villanova (1985)
• New York Giants (2007)

I could run down a list of more examples, but I think this is plenty to make the point. If you made list of the top twenty Cinderella stories in sports, college football would be noticeably absent.

The goal of any sports season should be to keep winning. Keep winning, and you have a shot at being the champ of something. That philosophy works well except for Division I college football, where it’s more about being “chosen.” Do you still need to win…yes. But it depends largely on who’s doing the winning and who’s doing the choosing.

CBS Sports did a great series revisiting past NCAA basketball champions, and in their recap of 1985 Villanova, and captured the exact reason why the current formula for the college football playoff is bad:

It was the first year of the 64-team bracket, which has proven to be a wildly successful formula but at the time was an experiment. Would adding more teams to the field water down the product? Did it hurt the top seeds who would’ve had first-round byes under the previous format? The NCAA was taking a risk here, and it paid off huge with the type of “Cinderella” run that has come to define the romance of the tournament.

If you look back over time, the better teams usually prevail, but it is Cinderella that defines most memories. I would argue that without upsets and Cinderella, this whole thing would be boring as hell. I postulated, way before the college football playoff came to life, that going to an eight-team playoff, if handled properly, could become as big, if not bigger, than March Madness.

We want our underdogs to have a shot. We love rooting for the little guy, the outsider. That’s decidedly not what Division I college football has ever been about, and it’s only gotten worse since the invention of the BCS.

The NFL has it down, where there is no choice at all, with everything determined by records and tiebreakers. No arguments about strength of schedule, and seeding is based on records and tiebreakers. Win and you’re in, no humans. Single elimination. Division I college football would need massive reorganization before they could approach this model, but it could also work.

The NCAA basketball tournament is the best example, with conference champs guaranteed a spot, and the issue around a committee handing out at-large bids is put largely to bed by volume. Fun to imagine, but for now we’re stuck with bias on steroids. It can’t change soon enough.