The College Football Playoff Committee and a Stunning Lack of Logic
- Sheehan Planas-Arteaga
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
The College Football Playoff Committee took us on quite a ride picking the final 12 teams.
After much hullabaloo, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee decided on their final 12 last weekend, giving these schools a chance to play for the National Championship. The biggest controversy surrounding this process involved Notre Dame versus Miami, with the consensus being that only one of the two would sneak into one of the lower seeds.
Just a crash course if you’re unfamiliar with the debate over the two teams, Miami beat Notre Dame in Week 1, then Notre Dame again lost in Week 2, this time to Texas A+M. Since then, however, Notre Dame has won 10 straight, while Miami has dropped two games against inferior opponents, both of them as double-digit favorites. All in all, their résumés were nearly identical at the end of the regular season, but with Miami holding the edge via their head-to-head confrontation, people were losing their minds over the Irish consistently getting placed ahead of the Canes.
The more the Committee Chair, Hunter Yurachek, gave interviews explaining their thinking process, the worse it got. To me, his ESPN interview with Rece Davis after the dust had settled and the final 12 were chosen was the worst of them all.
Let’s break down just how dumb this logic is.
Side-by-Side Nonsense
As we learned more about the Committee’s process week after week, one topic that kept getting brought up was that head-to-head only factors into their ranking if the teams are side-by-side in order. So the 5th- and 6th-ranked teams, assuming they played each other, could be ranked based on their matchup, but not if they were, say, 4th and 7th.
What?
What does that even mean? Miami entered the week of conference championships sitting at 12, while Notre Dame was at 10. You’re telling me a team ranked two spots ahead of another is just so far removed that their head-to-head matchup is irrelevant? BYU, which was the middle man in this whole thing at 11, lost their conference championship in convincing fashion. As Yurachek described, them losing made Miami jump them, which then activated the trap card of head-to-head comparison with Notre Dame.
Just so we’re on the same page here, Notre Dame was always allowed to be two or more spots better than Miami, but not one. Perfectly logical.
Transitive Property Issues
The transitive property rarely works in sports, and Hunter Yurachek and Co. seem to have applied it pretty liberally during their selection process. The transitive property, if you’re unfamiliar, is a rule in math that says if A and B have a relationship, and B and C have a similar relationship, then A and C share the same relationship. If A is a larger number than B, and B is a larger number than C, then A must be a larger number than C. To give you a real-life example, if Colorado is a larger state than Ohio, and Ohio is a larger state than Massachusetts, then Colorado must be a larger state than Massachusetts. Makes sense, right?
It gets tricky in sports.
You hear people try to use the transitive property all the time when debating sports, and this whole Notre Dame-Miami thing was no different. “We beat X team and they beat Y team, so we’re better than Y team.” It rarely works. There are far too many variables, especially in college football, where teenagers play an immensely complicated game in front of 50-100,000 people who are either cheering for them or wishing death upon their families. In reality, each game is a vacuum. If you play the transitive game, Florida (4-8) beat Texas (9-3), who beat Oklahoma (10-2). Therefore, Florida is better than Oklahoma. Florida State (5-7) beat Alabama (9-3), who beat Georgia (12-1). Therefore, Florida State is better than Georgia. You can go on and on.
The Committee is right about putting head-to-head scenarios near the bottom of their decision-making factors. They avoided it most of the season because Notre Dame was simply playing better than Miami. But now, at the final hour, after week after week of incessant bitching from fans about how Notre Dame couldn't possibly be ranked ahead of Miami, they decided to go with the following logic: Miami is better than BYU, and Miami beat Notre Dame, who is also better than BYU. Therefore, Miami is better than Notre Dame. Neither team played, but Miami somehow became better. You can see how perplexed Rece Davis is throughout the interview.
Consistency? Shut Up, Nerd.
In reality, if the committee wanted to stay consistent, a loss by BYU should have moved Miami up one spot and only one spot. You clearly thought Notre Dame was slightly better than Miami before this final week. A loss by BYU should not have changed that, as the Cougars have nothing to do with either team, schedule-wise. But not so fast, my friend (Lee Corso voice), the auto-switcherooni was activated, so the Canes swapped with the Fighting Irish! If Miami would've also beaten the 9th-ranked team during the regular season, would they have jumped them too? Is it illegal to be ranked only one spot below a team you beat?
Where Yurachek made a mistake was mentioning that teams had to be in the same “bracket” in order for head-to-head to matter. Stop it. What are you saying, dude? It always matters, just nowhere near as much as other things. But he had to stick to his guns, lest he be called a hypocrite and damage the already fragile relationship the Committee has with fans. The fact that there is more of a human element to the CFP Committee, as opposed to the computer-driver BCS of yesteryear, helped UM, I think.
I don’t know what I would have done because I don’t know who is better between UM and Notre Dame. But I know damn sure that a BYU loss wasn’t launching the Canes up an extra spot via a head-to-head wormhole. It’s either they stay below Notre Dame, or they are ranked ahead of them before that, perhaps after demolishing 22nd-ranked Pitt on the road in their final regular season game.
I can almost guarantee these side-by-side switches stop after this season, as Yurachek and the committee will quietly acknowledge that they simply stuck their feet in their mouths and had to keep the charade up. Use the transitive property the right way (don’t) and just judge teams’ résumés as a whole. That will get you much closer to actually determining who’s better or worse.
Whiney Babies
Oh, and Notre Dame throwing a temper tantrum and not playing their bowl game makes them soft as puppy shit. Although I don’t agree with how they were dropped from the College Football Playoff, I’m now glad they were.
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