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CFP committee’s logic falls apart; even Yurachek can’t justify it

Baffling defense of committee’s argument leaves fans, analysts with more questions than answers
Taylor Hodges|
Arkansas Razorbacks athletic director Hunter Yurachek during the second half against the Samford Bulldogs at Bud Walton Arena.
Arkansas Razorbacks athletic director Hunter Yurachek during the second half against the Samford Bulldogs at Bud Walton Arena. | Nelson Chenault-Imagn Images

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Arkansas Razorbacks

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek may have just presided over two of the most head-scratching decisions by the College Football Committee.

And head-scratching is being nice because what transpired Sunday when the final CFP rankings were unveiled will likely to lead a massive change to the playoff (which maybe that was the goal?).

However, the bigger issue may not be the actual decisions. It's why college football let's money behind an ESPN reveal show each Tuesday muddy the waters on the value of the final playoff selections Yurachek was left to explain these past few weeks.

To start, let’s identify the two decisions this year’s committee made that are going to have a lot of consequences:

  1. Putting Miami ahead of Notre Dame
  2. Not dropping Alabama after losing SEC title game

Those two decisions are worthy of discussion, but first, perspective is important.

Committee’s history of controversy

The job of sitting on the selection committee is not an easy one. Tough choices have to be made, but nobody is forcing anyone to sit on the committee (see former Baylor AD Mark Rhoades’ resignation for proof).

The people on the committee, including Yurachek, willingly take on the responsibility for deciding who makes the CFP and who goes to a random bowl game. With that responsibility comes scrutiny, but that’s nothing new.

In 2014, TCU and Baylor were both 11-1, ranked in the Top 6 and the committee picked Florida State and Ohio State over both of them after the Big 12 refused to play a championship game. Meanwhile, the eventual national champion Buckeyes won the Big Ten championship, 59-0, to move to 12-1 and Florida State won the ACC to go to 13-0 as the two slid into the final two playoff spots.

Or what about in 2017 when Alabama (11-1), which didn’t even play in the SEC title game, got into the playoff instead of Auburn, which lost the SEC title game, 28-7, to Georgia to fall to 10-3?

Of course, no one can forget about the most controversial decision to leave undefeated ACC champion Florida State out of the 2023 playoff because the Semioles were down to their third-string quarterback at the time of the decision with no hope of elite starter Jordan Travis returning from a broken leg.

Just because Ohio State and Alabama won those national championships and Florida State has lost 18 games since getting snubbed doesn’t mean the committee was right.

That is, unless the CFP selection committee has secret philosophy of "the results justify the means."

This year’s “small” controversy

Let’s start with the second of the two previously mentioned controversies, Alabama not falling in the rankings.

Go back to that 2017 season. Auburn lost the SEC title game to Georgia and went from No. 2 to No. 5 in the playoff rankings.

Now, look at last season and what happened to SMU after losing to Clemson by three points in the ACC title game. The Mustangs didn’t get knocked out of the playoff, but they fell two spots and wound up on the road at Penn State instead of getting a first-round bye.

You can even look at this year’s final CFP rankings for an example. BYU lost its second game of the season in the Big 12 title game, 34-7, to No. 4 Texas Tech. The result? The Cougars fell from No. 11 to No. 12.

Would BYU have made the playoff without the drop? No, but the committee did see fit to drop BYU for losing an extra game others didn’t play.

So, does losing a conference title game only matter if it's not an SEC or Big Ten one?

The big controversy

Now let's tackle the biggest problem of this Yurachek-led committee: Miami over Notre Dame.

Everyone should agree that what Yurachek said to Reece Davis on ESPN is correct. Miami and Notre Dame are very similar in most metrics. The deciding factor is Miami’s head-to-head win against the Irish.

OK, that’s fine. It make sense, except the committee had Notre Dame ranked ahead of Miami (by as much as eight spots in the initial rankings) in every set of rankings?

Listening to Yurachek explain the committee’s decision makes it even more confusing.

“The first move was we felt the way BYU performed in their championship game, a second loss to Texas Tech in a similar fashion, was worthy of Miami moving ahead of (BYU) in the rankings,” Yurachek said during his appearance with Davis on ESPN. “And once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everybody had been hungering for with Notre Dame and Miami.

“You look at those two teams on paper and they are almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponents, the results against their common opponents. But the one metric we had to fall back on, again, was the head-to-head.

“I charged the committee members to go back and watch that game again, the Miami-Notre Dame game, because it was so far back. And we got some interesting debate from our coaches on what that game looked like as we watched it. And with that in mind, we gave Miami the nod over Notre Dame into that 10 spot.”

Basically, Yurachek said the head-to-head result didn’t matter until Notre Dame and Miami were going to be ranked beside one another.

It gets even more confusing when Davis tries to get a better explanation for why the head-to-head matter wasn’t a factor before Saturday night.

“As I mentioned last week in last week's rankings, we thought Notre Dame was better than BYU and deserved to be ranked higher than BYU,” Yurachek said. “After the championship game in the Big 12 and the way BYU performed again against Texas Tech, we felt like Miami deserved to be ranked ahead of BYU. And then you had the direct head-to-head comparison of those teams.”

So, if understood correctly, the committee thought Notre Dame was better than BYU and that BYU was better than Miami until the Big 12 title game.

Then the committee thought Miami is better than BYU. Also, because Miami beat Notre Dame in the first game of the season, the Hurricanes should move ahead in the rankings and get the final at-large bid.

The overall thought process just doesn’t make sense and Arkansas fans should hope Yurachek’s reasons for hiring Ryan Silverman to lead the football program are more sensical.

An unpopular solution

The committee’s decisions have presented a host of problems that conspiracy theorists will use to argue were manufactured to facilitate an expanded playoff field.

But an expanded playoff field won’t solve these problems. If the playoff field was 16 teams and the same format was applied, the debates would just shift to different teams.

In fact, here’s how the playoff would look with 16 teams using the current format (5 highest conference champions automatically get, the rest are at-large):

  1. Indiana
  2. Ohio State
  3. Georgia
  4. Texas Tech
  5. Oregon
  6. Ole Miss
  7. Texas A&M
  8. Oklahoma
  9. Alabama
  10. Miami
  11. Notre Dame
  12. BYU
  13. Texas
  14. Vanderbilt
  15. Tulane
  16. James Madison
  • First team out: Utah
  • Second team out: USC

There’d still be arguments and controversies. For example, Texas has three losses and Vanderbilt only has two, but the Longhorns are ranked ahead. Does a head-to-head win make up for a loss to Florida? (It shouldn’t.)

Utah would have the biggest gripe, but USC is a blue blood and would make more noise. The point is controversy is inevitable.

The only way to mitigate the controversy is to stop doing the weekly rankings and the accompanying reveal shows on ESPN.

If the football playoff was decided like the NCAA basketball tournaments, we wouldn’t know the committee had Notre Dame ranked ahead of Miami before the final bracket.

All we’d know is that Miami got into the playoff because of its head-to-head win against Notre Dame.

We also wouldn’t know Alabama didn’t suffer any punishment for losing an SEC title game like BYU did (or Auburn did in 2017).

We wouldn’t be looking at a committee that makes absolutely no sense in its decisions. Instead, we’d be looking at a committee that got it right.

So why not get rid of those Tuesday night playoff reveal shows?

Oh, yeah, they make money. And that’s all that matters, right?

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Taylor Hodges
TAYLOR HODGES

Award-winning sports editor, writer, columnist, and photographer with 15 years’ experience offering his opinion and insight about the sports world in Mississippi and Texas, but he was taken to Razorback pep rallies at Billy Bob's Texas in Fort Worth before he could walk. Taylor has covered all levels of sports, from small high schools in the Mississippi Delta to NFL games. Follow Taylor on Twitter and Facebook.

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