As Michigan, WMU go big bowling, CFP anoints Alabama and 3 playoff victims

By  David Mayo for Michigan Live.

This is an opinion piece by MLive.com columnist David Mayo.

Central casting should have been consulted before some of the developments regarding the College Football Playoff and major bowl bids.

Let’s go straight to the local angle first, shall we?

Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh not participating with Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher on the Orange Bowl teleconference was like getting Abbott without Costello. The Dec. 30 game is an attractive appetizer for the national semifinals the next day and Harbaugh’s absence from the kickoff teleconference was bitterly disappointing, one might say.

Harbaugh did a different teleconference later Sunday, so there’s that. Regardless, he probably had a pretty good idea that certain media commitments go along with the major bowls and not doing the teleconference was a glaring snub, intentional or not.

Alabama and The Pips played out just as expected, too. The four-game playoff bracket was rubber-stamped by a largely drama-free conference championship weekend. The College Football Playoff committee had to justify the champion of the best conference not qualifying while another Big Ten team did, with Penn State out and Ohio State in, but in the end, the break was clean between the playoff quartet and multi-loss teams.

That equation excludes Western Michigan, which is 13-0 and led by the most interesting young coach in America, P.J. Fleck, whose personality would have played well on an even bigger stage. The Broncos are headed to the Cotton Bowl, which is their best possible outcome under college football’s caste system. The WMU vs. Wisconsin playbill thrill brokers in the secondary market so much that Cotton Bowl tickets on StubHub were listed for as little as $13 Sunday.

The announcements also gave us a bit deeper look into what the 12-person CFP panel values, even if the only top-four change it made was a meaningless flip-flop of now-No. 2 Clemson and now-No. 3 Ohio State in one semifinal. Alabama faces No. 4 Washington, which plays the role filled last year by Michigan State and hopes that comparison doesn’t spill into next year.

These were the takeaways:

Avoid live opposition whenever possible

This really hasn’t changed much whether talking about the 1960s or the 2010s; or with titles decided by polls, Bowl Coalition, Bowl Alliance, Bowl Championship Series, or CFP. The debate has existed all along. Is a team better off playing a strong non-conference schedule, with all the respect and ratings boosts that can bring, or a weak schedule it knows it can run?

Washington played Rutgers, Idaho and Portland State in the non-conference season, swept those games by at least five touchdowns each, lost one Pacific-10 game, and is in the playoff.

Oklahoma didn’t get in the playoff because it took the risk of scheduling Ohio State and Houston in the non-conference season and lost both, then went undefeated in the Big 12. Penn State is out despite winning the best conference in the nation because it lost to Pittsburgh in the non-conference season. If either one scheduled like Washington, it would be in the playoff field as a stronger once-beaten conference champion.

Losing once against lesser opposition was valued more than losing twice against better opposition. If playing a less-competitive non-conference schedule commonly gets rewarded, athletic directors will respond accordingly.

Conference championships matter unless they don’t

The whole concept of preferential treatment for conference champions is flawed by having more power conferences than playoff spots. Imbalanced conference schedules and division play also can render even identical records within the same conference inequitable.

Other factors also must be considered, including head-to-head results. As to how they are applied, the answer is strictly on a case-by-case basis.

Penn State moved up to No. 5 in the final CFP rankings, one spot ahead of Michigan. Penn State lost 49-10 to Michigan, and both finished with two losses, so it’s fair to say the committee gave the Big Ten title added weight in debating two teams that were separated by 39 points in a live game played by college human football athletes.

But Penn State had both the conference championship and head-to-head advantage over Ohio State and couldn’t dislodge the Buckeyes from the playoffs. Hocutt made it clear that the debate over the last playoff spot involved Washington and Penn State, not Ohio State. So what do conference championships and head-to-head results mean if raw win-loss record is what’s rewarded?

Again, Oklahoma and Penn State did one thing wrong above all. They scheduled too tough in September.

Don’t lose twice

There never has been a two-loss team in the playoff field. If soft scheduling continues to be rewarded, there won’t be one any time soon.

Point differential still matters

It isn’t officially part of the CFP equation, and they can paint it as some unquantifiable nuance if they want, but when Hocutt said Big 12 champion Oklahoma was ranked behind the other two-loss teams because it is an incomplete team with defensive deficiencies, that means the Sooners didn’t win by enough. It means 52-46 over TCU, and 45-40 over Texas, and 66-59 over Texas Tech didn’t satisfy the committee, even though 30-point blowouts aren’t mandates under the selection criteria.

Barry Switzer used to set “half-a-hundred” as the goal for the Sooners’ offense each week. It worked with pollsters who rewarded humiliating opponents. And people hated Switzer and Oklahoma for it.

Today, Oklahoma isn’t out of the playoffs for lack of offense, but because it didn’t trash teams by enough and lost two tough non-conference games.

The only teams that outscored Oklahoma were Louisiana Tech, Louisville, Washington, Western Kentucky and Western Michigan. There are some good teams in that group, including one in the playoffs and one unbeaten team. Scoring half-a-hundred just doesn’t get Oklahoma enough bonus points anymore. Winning by half-a-hundred would, though.

So yes, when you get a chance to deny an opponent a touchdown late in a blowout, or tack on one yourself when it doesn’t matter, it’s just as good an idea now as it was in the days when the AP and UPI determined champions.

Given that the old-style polls came up with the same top four teams in their final regular-season rankings, and any non-partisan panel of educated fans would have done the same, it kind of leaves you wondering what the CFP puts on its expense reports.