ESPN’s Rece Davis is a sharp guy and a very good announcer. He also said something very incorrect during the College Football Playoff selection show on Sunday.
As the first four seeds in the 12-team bracket were being announced, the automatic byes to the highest-ranked conference champions, Davis uttered the following:
“I think everybody hopes this is just a one-year thing. Just seed them by ranking, don’t give the automatic byes to the champions.”
Ah, we all think that, Rece? Let’s offer a counterpoint: The seeding is working just as intended, providing more entertainment value to the new postseason.
This format, which bestows automatic byes to Mountain West champ Boise State (No. 3 seed) and Big 12 champion Arizona State (No. 4), while forcing Notre Dame, Texas and other at-larges to play first-round games, may seem silly. It may seem unfair. But college football is not fair.
Here’s what the first-round games would look like if the field was seeded without regard to conference champions:
No. 12 Clemson at No. 5 Notre Dame
No. 11 Arizona State at No. 6 Ohio State
No. 10 SMU at No. 7 Tennessee
No. 9 Boise State at No. 8 Indiana
Those games are … eh? The three lowest-ranked conference champions would have been shunted to the final three seeds, all set up for road trips where they would be heavy underdogs. The chances are good you would have mostly uncompetitive games.
In the actual format, Boise State and Arizona State are taken off the table until the quarterfinals. Now we have the following four first-round games:
No. 12 Clemson at No. 5 Texas
No. 11 SMU at No. 6 Penn State
No. 10 Indiana at No. 7 Notre Dame
No. 9 Tennessee at No. 8 Ohio State
Those look like better games. The home teams may win all of them, but the chances they are competitive for longer are much better. All four games also feature at least one marquee programs, accomplishing another purpose of the new CFP.
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For years, one of college football’s failings was its ceding the month of December to the NFL and other sports. After an exciting regular season, college football would wait almost a month until its biggest games, stalling momentum.
Now the attention immediately turns to the first-round games. And placing more of the at-large teams in those games ratchets up the attention. College football will remain on the front burner for the next few weeks, a place it hasn’t been in … well, forever.
Ah, but does this set up less interesting quarterfinal games? Are Boise State and Arizona State being set up to get blown out by, respectively, the Penn State-SMU winner and the Clemson-Texas winner? Maybe, although star running backs Ashton Jeanty and Cam Skattebo should be enough to keep anticipation high for the matchups. More importantly, the other two games are guaranteed to have high interest.
The purpose of the expanded CFP was to generate more interest in college football. That’s why automatic bids go to the five best conference champions, to prevent this from becoming the SEC and Big Ten invitational. The interest in this weekend’s Mountain West, Big 12 and ACC title games shows that part of it worked.
Spreading out when those conference champions play will make the product better. At least ideally. In the event we get a bunch of duds in the first round, feel free to bring this back up. This is all new, and everyone is learning on the fly. But as it stands now, Davis and company have it wrong, and luckily so for his network. He’s about to get better games.
Is that the most fair process? Maybe not. Is it better for the sport, providing more compelling storylines? Absolutely.
(Photo: Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
