The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Final College Football Playoff Rankings are here: did the Committee get it right?

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

FOX Sports’ lead College Football analyst Joel Klatt reacts to the final College Football Playoff Rankings. He discusses why the Committee chose SMU over Alabama for the final at-large spot and whether it was the right decision. He breaks down why the Committee placed so much value on the Conference Championship Games and discusses whether that makes sense in this era of super conferences with imbalanced scheduling. He also explains why teams like Ohio State and Tennessee have legitimate complaints about their seeding and why the team that did everything right to receive the #1 seed, Oregon, was “rewarded” with a very difficult path thanks to some unintended consequences. Klatt also lays out how the CFP format could look different very soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And I do believe that they manipulated what their process actually is to get SMU in this playoff. College football has never been better. Interest has never been higher. I believe that we are at the dawn of the golden age of college football. It was an epic day of college football. It was one of those days where you fall in love with the sport all over again. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome into the Joel Clatt show.

I am Joel Clatt. This show is always brought to you by Hampton, by Hilton, and we thank them for their support. Hey, wherever you're listening, wherever you get your podcast, please go rate and review us. That would be great. Invite a friend in. That would also be great. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to subscribe to the show. That's how you know exactly when all of our content drops. You can also hit that notifications button. That helps you out with that as well. And leave a comment below. The comment section is always really good. And I'm always impressed with a lot of the thoughtful discussion. Now, there's always some of the internet stuff.

But there's a lot of good thoughtful discussion down there in the comment. So please get down there, leave a comment below. and then wherever you like to social media, we are obviously there at Joel Clat Show, wherever you are at. So lots to get into. We have got a new playoff. Not only were there great games that we could obviously talk about last Saturday, but now we've got the playoff. And we know what it looks like and we know what the seating is. So before we start in on this, before we literally just dive in, I just want to make sure that this point is crystal clear, which is this is awesome. I love this. I think that the college football playoff expanding to 12 has been great for the sport. I genuinely believe that we have expanded what it means to have a meaningful season, you know, past what it was in previous years with the four-team college football playoff. So in that regard, like, this has been terrific.

And we were always going to have arguments over who was in and where teams were seated. And so that's all we're going to have today is like a discussion about like, a discussion about, like, Like, okay, well, here's what the committee gave us. Was it right? What do we think about it? That is a far cry from saying, this is broken. And I want to make that distinction right off the top of the show because I am fired up about this playoff. What it meant for the regular season, what it means now moving forward and some of the games that we're going to get a chance to see as college football fans,

like this is going to be awesome. Now, are there a couple of issues with all of this, whether it's format or what we got from the committee? yes, of course. And so why don't we dive into those? And so this is what they gave us. And listen, we kind of expected some of this. Now, there was questions about exactly what the seating was going to be, but this is what they gave us. So number one was Oregon. We knew that was going to be the case. Two was Georgia. And then we have these automatic buys for the conference champions. So Boise was ranked the head of Arizona State. Boise's three, Arizona State is four. and the remaining conference champ, which was left way deep in the rankings after winning the ACC, which was kind of wild, is Clemson at 12. Then you just get the seeds as they were after all the championship games.

Texas at 5, Penn State at 6, Notre Dame at 7. Then you've got that great 8, 9 game, Ohio State in Tennessee. And Indiana is 10, SMU is 11. And there we go. We have a 12 team playoff. And it's like, hey, it's fixed, everybody. We did it. all this time, all of this energy for this. So it begs the question like, well, was that right?

Is this right? Is it right? Is the format correct? Do we like what we got from this committee? And I think that even I was probably too quick to immediately criticize the committee. Now, I do think that there are some issues in both format and what the committee gave us. And so that's what I wanted to work through here tonight on the show. And again, like I said, I wanted to make this abundantly clear from the very outset that, like, I'm super excited about this. This is awesome. I can't wait to watch Tennessee at Ohio State. I can't wait to watch Clemson and Texas, SMU and Penn State, the Indiana Bowl with Indiana and Notre Dame. Like, this is going to be fantastic. I cannot wait for the playoff. And I think it's going to be good for college football. And I think it has been good for college football. Are there some issues? Yes,

there's going to be issues. Why are there issues? Well, in order to understand why there are issues, you kind of have to understand how this thing was made in the first place. And the way that this thing was made in the first place was by the same people that gave us the Bull Alliance and then the BCS and then the four-team college football playoff and then this 12-team college playoff format. So there's a couple of truths that you have to understand, which is they didn't give us a new system. And we kind of understood this because the current contracts were still there and the bowl games were going to be involved. And yes, that's all the case. But this was hard work just to get everybody on board and to agree that they wanted to do away with the old format and bring in and usher in the new era to the 12-team era.

So when you start to have to build things in order to placate certain people and conferences and bowl games, here's what I'm. happens is that there are a lot of parties involved and there are a lot of people that are protecting their own self-interest. Now, I'm not going to blame them for that because I think that that's human instinct and in a lot of cases, that's their job. Namely, like conference commissioners, their job is to protect their conference. And so if they're doing the things that protects their member institutions, then they're doing their job. So this is not anybody's fault. This is a product of trying to build a system while hanging on to the old. This was a renovation at best, not a whole new house, right? This was not a scrape. It was a renovation. So you have to understand

that like self-interest will be protected. We see that in the bowl games. They're still a part of this. We see that with conferences because every conference and their champion was going to get a buy, at least the top four, because the format was 12 teams and there was going to be four buys. then they kind of anchored in this self-protectionism for all of these conferences about like, are we going to definitely be in? We need an automatic spot for our champion. And we want our champion to be rewarded too. And we want, and this is the main point, we want to retain the value of our conference championship game.

And so when that fact was landed on, and then you start to build the format for this, system, this playoff, you immediately, immediately enter into a really flawed territory. So the idea that we have to retain the value of these conference championship games is the reason why we have the four buys going to conference champions. That's because the ACC championship game is highly valuable to them. The Big Ten championship game is highly valuable to the Big Ten. the ACC, ACC, SEC is the same and the Big 12 is the same. These games are premium games because they are premium matchups.

And just so you know, like when it comes to the value of games that are bought in these television contracts, the premium games hold a giant, giant percentage of the influence of the entire value of that contract. And so when the television partner enters into an agreement, with that conference, the championship game is a huge part of that. Because there are like five to eight really valuable games that you're really paying for, that you think you can get upwards of the six to seven, eight, nine, ten million, 11, 12, 13 million viewers. That's where the real value is at.

Okay, so the conferences say, well, we're only going to do this if we can protect our conference championship game. Because remember, if you don't get a buy, then the ACC championship game on Saturday night is not very valuable. Maybe for a play-in into the playoff, but for Clemson only, but then it's not valuable at all for an SMU because, you know, what does it pay for you to actually win it? You're going to be in the same spot that you would be if you lost it. And maybe you're going to get knocked out because who knows what the committee is going to do. So again, you would lose that value entirely. And it just kind of, I just want to echo this point. And old things in

college football, do not mix with new things in college football, generally speaking. And this playoff is certainly one of those. And the format of this playoff is certainly one of those. I'll just give you a couple of examples before we got to move on. The bowl system and the playoff system are incompatible. They just, they don't work. They're like oil and water. And so trying to mix one with the other does not work. You get way too many neutral site games. And now fans of teams that qualify for conference championship games are going to be. be asked to possibly go to four neutral site games for postseason? Well, that's crazy. Clearly, that's crazy. So again, oil and water. Old college football and new college football don't really

coexist. Even though it's a sport that we love the tradition, it just doesn't work. Mega conferences and the eight game conference schedule don't really work more on that in a little bit. A balance of power five conferences in the old days where everyone kind of got the same revenue to now very different revenue distribution for the Big Ten and the SEC means that the power conferences are not really on even footing. Old college football, a new college football, don't really work. They are not consistent with one another. So here we are and we're landed on this point that we only get the 12-team playoff, and we're only going to get signed off on the 12-team playoff if we retain the value of conference championship games. And so those champions are going

to get these buys, at least the top four. And that's how we get Boise State and Arizona estate with buys. Now, what happens when that takes place? Well, there are ripple effects and there are costs to that decision. So while you're trying to retain value, you are actually giving something up. So there's an opportunity cost on the other side. More on that in a little bit. So that's the flawed format. And the format is something that the committee had nothing to do with. So the committee was placing teams into this format. And a lot of us, myself included, hated what was going on from a format perspective, namely because like the one and two seed, I felt like got much more difficult second round games, even though they got a buy in the

first round, they got much more difficult second round games than the potential five seed or six seed, which by the way, they just beat in conference championship games. More on that in a little bit. So that was my main rub with the format. And we knew that before and we've been talking about that for some time. I've been talking about on this program for now a couple of weeks, hey, what's better the one seat or the five seat? So we've seen this coming. And now we've got it right in front of us and we can see exactly what that means. So that's the format. Committee had nothing to do with that. So with that format, how did this committee do? How did this committee do? And let's talk about how this committee actually did in their performance, not only in this last ranking, but

in previous weeks as well. I would just say right off the bat, there was an inconsistency with this committee when you look at the way that they acted up until the last rankings. And I know why they did that. And that was to protect conference championship games, which is exactly how we got here in the first place. And you're going to see this tie kind of throughout the entirety of the show. they wanted to retain the value of conference championship games, and then now they wanted to this committee reward conference championship games and the participation in conference championship games.

And the data bears that out. Here's the data, actually. Since the committee started ranking teams, I believe we got the first rankings on the 5th. I wanted to say that, like the first weekend or week of November. And since then, there have been 11 teams that have been in the top 10 in the college football playoff rankings that have, lost football games.

Eight of those happened before the conference championship games, and then three happened this last weekend in conference championship games. Okay. In the eight losses that top 10 teams suffered, pre-conference championship game, let's call it regular season, regular season top 10 losses, the committee hammered those teams. In the subsequent rankings, on average, those eight teams dropped 5.8. spots. So let's just call it six spots. We round up to six spots. Hammered them. And maybe rightly so. Hey, games in the regular season have to matter. College football has a unique and valuable regular

season. The committee was trying to uphold that. Now, did these rankings matter in the regular season? No, it's a made-for-TV show on Tuesday. And even Reese touched on like, hey, maybe the problem was the six iterations before this final one. And you know what? He's right. But guess why we're there? Television. Television. Why are we in this four? format, television, you know, and listen, it's the nature of the beast. We feed the beast as a television partner. And we need eyeballs, and ESPN wants eyeballs through the month of November on Tuesday night for the rankings release. So we get all of these releases. And then there's a vast inconsistency with where they ranked in the regular season to how they ranked

after this one. How about those three teams that lost as top 10 teams in conference championship games? They dropped an average of 1.3 spots. So there's your inconsistency right there. In the eight times that in the regular season, the top 10 team lost, they dropped an average of six spots. And then on Saturday, after we had three teams drop conference championship games, they got dropped 1.3 spots, one spot, one spot, 11 losses. And listen, the format was incorrect because of the conference championship games. We can kind of see that. and we saw it coming.

The problem with the committee is that they doubled down on that in this last ranking by overvaluing the conference championship games. It's like they were carrying this flag out there. It's like conference championship games are bust. We have to protect them. And you can see that in the rankings. The data bears that out. They were clearly valuing those champ games over everything, over everything.

Now, in my estimation, I think they went overboard. I think they overvalued those games. Way overvalued those games. And the reason is, well, there's a couple of reasons, but the main reason is the imbalance in the mega conference schedule. And we've known this all year. We talked about it in the preseason. In all of these preseason episodes, one of the main drivers in the way that we talked

about teams and forecasted their season, was their conference schedule? And was it favorable or was it difficult? We talked about this constantly all year long. right on this program. And we knew, we knew that there were much different paths to success and the conference championship game, a birth in that game, for some teams over others. And in fact, it had no basis on where you finished in prior years. It was a lottery. It was literally a lottery. You just got lucky. Bam. Did we get a favorable schedule or not given to us by the conference office? and in some cases, it was way more favorable than in others.

So the path to the conference championship game wasn't even remotely similar for teams in the same conferences. This is why in the modern college football, I'll go back to this, mega conferences and eight game conference schedules do not mix. Even nine conference game schedules, you can make an argument, don't really mix. And this is where I will agree with all the guys talking on that program and Kirk Herbstreet mentioned this and Nick Saban. mentioned this as well, I think that we need to play more conference games. We need to have a centralized

scheduling department in college football. I've actually talked about that for years. And then we can start to iron out the path to these games. Because remember now, in a lot of these cases, we've done away with divisions. And so we're putting teams in these championship games based on tiebreakers. And there's an uneven path to get to those tiebreaker spots. So this is clearly a spot in which, as a committee, you need to stop and pause and take a look at this and be like, okay, hold on. Do we really want to just value this game and the participation in this game over everything? And I would argue you can't. You can't because of the imbalance in schedules. It's vast. It's vast. Let me just give you some of the data behind that. SMU.

SMU played only two of the six ACC teams with a winning record in conference play. That's wild. So only eight conference games to begin with, which I think there should be nine, maybe even ten, but they play only eight. Six of their eight are against teams that are at or below 500 in ACC play. So they didn't play any of the top opponents. None of the top opponents. They didn't play Clemson.

They didn't play Miami. And quite honestly, neither of those teams played the others. either. So it was an incredibly flawed ACC schedule from the get-go. Texas wasn't all that much different. They got a, I mean, for SEC standards, a cupcake SEC schedule. They only played two of the other eight SEC teams with a winning record in conference play, Georgia and A&M. They lost to Georgia. They did it twice, and they beat A&M on the road. They didn't play Tennessee. They didn't play Ole Miss. They didn't play Alabama. They didn't play South Carolina. They didn't play play LSU and they didn't play Missouri. So Texas was a huge beneficiary of an incredibly favorable

schedule on the SEC. They still don't have a win over a ranked opponent. So that's Texas. Alabama, on the other hand, they had to play five of the other eight SEC teams with winning records in conference play, Georgia at Tennessee, at LSU, South Carolina, and Missouri. You know, they beat Georgia, they lose to Tennessee. And then the Oklahoma. game is just like wild and the Vanderbilt game. And I'm not arguing for Alabama because you can't lose to six and six twice. So I understand that. But this idea that the committee is going to just value getting to these championship games above all else.

When clearly the paths are so different, it's like, listen, you should take a nuanced approach to this. You've had six weeks of sitting in this room, analyzing these schedules, and really understanding what these teams are dealing with on a weekend and week out basis. and yet you didn't apply it. And you certainly didn't apply it consistently to the way you were ranking teams in the regular season, in particular after losses. You look up Penn State. They only played Ohio State out of the four playoff teams in the Big Ten. Meanwhile, Ohio State had to play all the other playoff teams, Oregon, Penn State and Indiana. The path to the championship game was vastly different.

For Ohio State and Penn State, the path to Indianapolis was wildly different. listen, Penn State earned their spot in that game. And I'm not suggesting that they didn't. They did so in a tie break over Indiana. So basically, the committee is telling me with the way that they valued conference championship games in these rankings, that the tie break over Indiana just meant everything. And if Indiana would have meant that tie break, then they get thrown way up there.

When both of those tie breaks are totally out of their control, comes down to like conference opponent winning record. Again, like we need a better. effort from the committee when you get into these things that need nuance. All these paths are different. The imbalance schedules were different. And it was very clear that they were going to value these championship games over everything else. And I knew it right away. When Texas came up at number five, the five seed, I thought to myself, okay, that means Penn State's ahead of Ohio State. That means SMU is in over Alabama. I knew those things right away. Texas pops up at five and boom,

it's over. Penn State's going to be in there. Notre Dame is going to be in there. They're going to be above Ohio State and SMU is getting in over Alabama. Because the only determining factor is conference championship games at that point and valuing the participation in that game. So it didn't matter if you lost. It didn't matter how you look. And everyone's pointing to this idea of like these games were great. No one should be penalized for playing in these games. I understand that. And in previous years, I've been in that camp. I really have. But this year, the paths to those games are just vastly different.

It's not like it used to be where you had to play everybody in your division and win your division in order to get to the game. There was a level, I think, above this year. Because this year, the path was created for you by the conference office. And in some cases, and in many cases in these champ games, it was so favorable. It was so favorable. So why does this matter? Well, because they were putting an artificial floor under Texas and Penn State and SMU. And it was artificial.

And the reason that it was artificial is because they were ranked ahead of teams that they would absolutely lose resume debates with if this was a regular resume conversation. If this committee really was just looking at resumes and trying to create and make arguments about who is better or best, then these numbers look vastly different. That's not like, that's just the data, folks. You look up at the resume. The fifth seed Texas only played in two top 25 games. They lost to Georgia and both by 15 at home and on overtime. Schedule looked harder before the year. Certainly they were at Michigan.

They were at A&M and OU, and those teams kind of fell off, but that's an issue. The 6th seed Penn State, they only have one top 25 win. They beat Illinois. They lost to Ohio State by 7 at home. They lost to Oregon by 8. The 7 seed Notre Dame has one top 25 win. They beat Army, and they lost to Northern Illinois at home who finished 6th in the Mac. Meanwhile, the 8th seed behind all of them is Ohio State, which beat Penn State on

the road, beat 10 seed Indiana by 23, lost to Oregon, the number one team of the country in Otson by one, and then lost that inexplicable game to Michigan at home when Michigan was having a down year. Strength of schedule is 29. By resume, of those four teams, Ohio State is the best team, and it's the best resume. Then it goes from there. Texas getting the benefit of the doubt with no top 25 wins immediately told me the only. The only barometer that puts them at five is the fact that they were playing Georgia and the SEC championship game. And you might be fine with that. And that's okay. That's okay. But I am telling you there are consequences to that. There are unintended consequences to that. And I'll get to them in just a moment. Because by resume, the seating is wrong. And if you are going by best, best teams, the seating is wrong. Now, you could be in a different camp. And that's fine by saying, no, Joel, you are not supposed to penalize

teams for being in those championship games. But that means that you are artificially putting a floor under those teams. So you're pulling these levers at this point in order to keep teams in spots that they maybe don't deserve based on a true metric of resume and a true metric of, hey, who's actually better here? Okay. Now, everybody telling me and you might be one of them, and I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, and I'm not going to say that the committee did the absolute wrong thing. But what I am going to tell you is that there are unintended consequences here. And I think that they're fairly obvious, but I just want to roll through them briefly here. I believe that what the committee gave us sounds really good in theory,

and you can defend it in theory, and it sounds good on social media. And in a lot of ways, they kind of played to the masses. Let them eat cake. Because the sentiment was on SMU's side. really was. And again, I don't disagree with that other than the factor that you have to manipulate it to make it happen. So once they wanted to keep SMU in, I think they wanted to give value conference championship games. And one of the reasons that they wanted to value conference championship games is to keep SMU in the college football playoff. I believe that they were swayed by sentiment. I believe that they were swayed by the fact that the ACC got absolutely jobbed last year with Florida State being undefeated and left out. And they thought to themselves like,

we can't do that again for the same team that we did it last year in Alabama. And I do believe that they manipulated what their process actually is to get SMU in this playoff. They put them in at 11, which is one spot higher than the team that actually beat them, which also doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but that's what they gave us. It's an artificial floor. They're pulling the levers here of power in order to create something that probably wasn't going to be created if they did it right. That's their prerogative, totally their prerogative. And it sounds good in theory, but it hurts the playoff overall. And it hurts the integrity of the playoff. And I think, again, it's obvious, but let's move through it. When you artificially

wait those games, those conference championship games, even though now more than ever, it really matters more about what your schedule is, rather than if you're actually the better team or not, you're going down a precarious road. You really are. And when you pull those levers and you get into this language of deserving rather than best, there is a cost and there is a deep cost. And it might be unintended, but it is an unintended cost. And the cost of that is put onto the shoulders of the teams that actually earned their way to the top. This is how it happens. The better resume teams are artificially shoved down in the seating. The teams at the top earn their spot. Oregon earns their spot. They had the best regular season of anybody in college football.

They're number one in the country and should be. They're 13 and 0. They beat Ohio State at home. They did it. They did it all. They're the number one team of the country. And yet, you're trying to manipulate the seating and pull the levers of power here in order to try to put an artificial floor under the conference championship game participants.

In order to do that and get SMU in, you have to value Texas and Penn State. Well, once you do that, you've got to somehow keep them above Ohio State and maybe even Notre Dame and maybe even Tennessee. And so at that point, what do you have to do? Valuate over everything. Nope, they played in that game. They're not moving down. That's artificial. Once that happens, the better resumes and teams get shoved down in the bracket. when they get shoved down, who bears the brunt of that? Oregon, who earned their spot at the top. So now it's not a true meritocracy.

Now it's not a true playoff. It's not a true bracket. You set out to do something like value the conference championship game and in doing so, you devalued the conference championship game. That's the unintended consequence. the cost of the artificial manipulation of seeds will be bore by Oregon, the exact team that should have earned every right to have the easiest path to a national championship. That's what we do in every other sport, because it's a true meritocracy in those sports.

And we don't artificially pull the levers of power to bump teams up based on sentiment. We let it be. We let it be. Oregon is the number one team in the country. But because they artificially shoved the better resumes down, the 8-9 game is going to be Ohio State and Tennessee, which means that the one-seed Oregon has to play the winner of Ohio State and Tennessee. Ohio State has as good a resume as anybody in the country outside of Oregon.

In a true resume determination, they're probably, the third ranked team in the country? I would say they're certainly better than Texas, unless you artificially value the SEC championship game over everything, and then Texas is ahead of Ohio State. So now it's not even that Ohio State has a tough path. No, no, no. They lost to Michigan. They kind of made their bed, and this is where they have to be. So now they're going to have to host Tennessee. Okay, good for them. That's their first round game. The cost of all of this manipulation gets put on the shoulders of all. Oregon. Because now Oregon, in order to go win the national championship, is going to have to

play the winner of Ohio State Tennessee. Let's just say it's the favorite, the home team, Ohio State Buckeyes. They would have to play Ohio State, and let's just say the favorite wins in the other matchups, and Texas gets through there, and they play them in the semis, and let's just say the favorite win on the other side of the bracket, that means Oregon's path to the national championship. The reward for going 13 to know and having the best regular season in all of college football, which is supposed to be the most valuable regular season in all of sports, the reward for that is having to play the three highest odds team to win the national championship. They're going to have to go through possibly Ohio State, Texas, and Georgia to win the national

championship. Congratulations, Dan Laning and the Oregon Ducks. You got absolutely screwed by the playoff committee because their sentiment of trying to create artificial floors rose some of these teams to the levels where they shouldn't be. That's the problem. So you can tell me that the logic of rewarding conference championship games is right. And the theory is correct. And you know what?

I think that you believe that. But in actuality, what happens is that in the dead set objective, in the valuing of conference championship games above everything, which has happened, both in the creation of this playoff and now in the rankings of these seeds, in the effort to value the conference championship game over everything, you devalued it because Oregon's path is actually harder than Penn State. And Penn State is sitting there, and it's not their fault. This is not me ragging on Penn State.

Penn State made their bed, and they're going to have to be in it. But playing SMU and then potentially what is it, Boise State, their path to the college football semifinal is far easier than Oregon's. and Oregon just beat them. But you were supposed to value conference championship games. And in the effort to value them, you devalued them. That's the problem. Oregon's got the toughest route of anybody that got buys.

It's tougher than Georgia's. It's tougher than Arizona states. It's tougher than Boise states. And to me, like this, that idea just, escaped everybody. The team with the biggest gripe, which they won't gripe, because this is not what Dan Lannning does. He just says, like, fine, send me wherever and we'll play whomever. And that's why I love Dan Lanning. I really do, because he doesn't sit there and whine about

things like seeds, and he doesn't get on Twitter and whine and cry about what this committee is doing and what the commissioner did to me. And he certainly doesn't do that on the podium. But I will just tell you, Oregon got hosed. in this. And they got hosed by the committee, and the committee was doing this artificially. I mean, it's pretty clear. It's pretty clear. The seeding was wrong. So flawed format, born out of this idea that you have to retain value of the conference championship game. The committee then clearly overvalues conference championship games when they shouldn't. And in the objective of protecting that game above everything, they devalued it by creating the hardest possible path for Oregon.

Well done, everybody. Slow clap for college football. You never get this right. You never get this right because you let the same people do this over and over and over and over again. And then you try to placate all the self-interest and all the bowl people have got to have a seat at the table and all the conferences have a seat at the table. And guess what? That doesn't work. And so guess what's about to happen?

This is what it means, and this is what it means for the future, is that the two people that I think are going to be most upset with the way that this playoff format and seeding played out are going to be the two most powerful people in college football period. And the only people that drug everybody else along to do this. And that's the commissioner of the SEC, Greg Sanky, and the commissioner of the Big Ten, Tony Petiti. They're the teams that are bearing the cost of the artificial manipulation.

Bama is better than SMU. I don't know. Fine. Like, hate me if you want. Bama is better than SMU. The SEC this year was the best team in college football. They have been for a long time. Maybe not last year with Michigan winning the national championship. But listen, they're right there.

They're deep. They're great. They're talented. So many draft picks in that league. It's a great league. They got three participants. Greg Stenke, he's got to be pulling his hair out. He's like, what do you mean?

Three. Three. Like, our conference should get five. That's what Greg Sankey is thinking. He's unapologetic about the success of the SEC. And now he's sitting there and he's thinking to himself like, you've got to be kidding me. We only got three teams.

They left out Alabama when their resumes clearly trumps SMU's resume. SMU lost the two toughest games they played, BYU and now Clemson. They don't have anything close to a top 25 win. It's a great story. It's a great story and it's a great sentiment, but it's artificial. It's more about more deserving than it is about best.

because Alabama is the better team. They beat Georgia. They beat South Carolina. They're three and one against the top 25. There's strength of schedules in the top 20. Meanwhile, we got teams littering this playoff, whether it's Indiana or SMU or Texas, strength of schedules are way off.

Way off. Look at Clemson's strength of schedule. Look at SMU's strength of schedule. Look at Indiana's strength of schedule. It's just, it's not very good. It's not very good. Again, because of all the different paths that we have in these megacomferences, is with a limited number of conference games.

So Greg Sanky is going to be upset that they've only got three teams. Meanwhile, his third team got the toughest draw of anybody. So Tennessee is sitting there. And in a resume battle is certainly a better resume than I think Notre Dame or Penn State or maybe even Texas. But again, we've got to honor the conference championship game. So their third best team in Tennessee has to go to Columbus, then face the number one seed in Oregon, then face possibly Texas. and possibly face Georgia.

So not only did the SEC only get three teams, but their third team got the most devastating path in the entire playoff. Tennessee, hardest path of anybody. You've got to potentially go through Ohio State, Oregon, maybe Texas, and maybe Georgia. That's an absolute gutlet. So now Greg Sankey has got to be sitting there to himself,

and he's like, well, this doesn't work. This doesn't work. Meanwhile, in the Big Ten, I think Tony Petiti is going to be upset. Why? Tony Petiti is going to be sitting there and he's going to be thinking to himself, you mean to tell me that you're going to put my conference champion, which had clearly the best regular season in all of college football, and your reward for them is going to give them the tougher second round game of any of the buy teams.

So Tony Petitia's got to be thinking to himself like, well, this is crazy. That doesn't work. We can't artificially manipulate these seeds just to give these conferences, buys, just to allow them to retain value for their conference championship game. Why? Because everybody in college football is inherently selfish. So these guys will start looking out for themselves, in particular when they're pushed to the limit. So this format's going to change. They're the two most powerful people in college football, and this will absolutely change. There's no doubt. By 2026, this is not going to be 12. It's likely going to be. be 14. There's likely going to be four autos for the SEC and the Big Ten. There's likely only going to be two buys for the SEC champion and the Big Ten champion. And there's likely going to be a reseeding in the second round so that we can make sure, make sure that we're rewarding

the team that had the best regular season. You see, in this playoff, you can even say like, well, they should reseed in the second round, which I have on Twitter. And people agree, and I still think that way. But when you artificially seed teams and you push better teams down, in the seating, let's say all the favorites win in the first round. Well, that would still be Ohio State at Oregon. That's still artificial. Ohio State beat Penn State. They should be a higher seed than them.

This is not anybody's fault from a team perspective. I'm not arguing against Texas or Penn State or any of those teams. And this is not for any other team. The only team I'm arguing for is Oregon. Oregon got a ridiculously tough path. And the reason is because this committee, I don't think did their proper job. That's my thought.

And listen, you see what Greg Burns said, the Alabama Athletic Director, and everyone's going to look at this. Because listen, the way that these playoffs happen, there are consequences to the future of the sport. And Greg Byrne, he sent out a lengthy tweet. I'm not going to read it all. Basically, the gist of it being they were very disappointed that they didn't get included in the playoff,

and they're going to think about the way that they schedule in the future, in particular in the non-league. it's a little bit ripe with like, well, you didn't lose in the non-league, bro. You lost in league, so don't lose to six and six vandy in Oklahoma. And I totally am with that. And Greg would even probably tell you that as well. But the underlying issue is true because what he's basically saying is like, listen, if you're just going to like throw teams out because they lose a game or reward teams,

more correctly put, reward teams for playing easier schedules than just getting through that easy schedule, then we're all going to try to play easy schedules. And when you have the strength of schedule of some of these teams that got included into the playoffs with favorable conference schedules and not much in the non-conference, that's the path of the future. And there are consequences to everything that goes on. And the unintended consequences is a devaluing of the conference championship game like Oregon having a worse path than Penn State. And that athletic directors are going to sit here and say, listen, we want the path of least resistance, not most resistance. And as college football fans, we don't want. that because we want more quality games, not less quality games.

So while Greg Byrne wasn't entirely accurate because of the place where those three losses happened for Alabama, and I get that, in a sense, it is a technicality because what he's arguing for from a broader standpoint is that we need to reward tougher schedules, which is accurate, which is accurate for the future of the sport. Man, there is so much going on. I wish we could have just sat here and talked about those games. And I will say this. The fact that there isn't divisions made every one of those games incredible.

We didn't have the lopsided conference championship game with some team that won the division that had four losses, playing against an undefeated team that's in the top five in the country. Those games were fantastic. I loved them. We'll be back next year with the Big Ten game. It was very hard to sit at home and not call the Big Ten championship game. That game feels like home. everybody over there at CBS did a fantastic job, and I enjoyed watching it, but it was tough not being there.

There's no doubt, and we'll be back in that booth next year in Indianapolis. Listen, I want to end the way I started. I can't wait for this playoff. I know I talked a lot about the flaws and the way everything kind of panned out, and there was some things that I had issue with. What I don't have issue with is that this playoff has made our sport better. It made the regular season better, and I am fired up to watch these games. I cannot wait, and I know you can't either. We'll be back in the middle of the week.

We'll talk about the Heisman finalists and everything going on here as we plunge towards these playoffs, Army Navy on Saturday. What a time here in college football. Follow the show on social media at Joel Clatt Show. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, hit that notifications button, and folks, have a great week.