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Feldman: What the CFP committee got wrong about the final field of four teams

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Next year, all these arguments about the College Football Playoff will be gone as the CFP expands to 12 teams. Arguing about numbers 3, 4 and 5 is very different from arguing about 10, 11, 12 and 13. You lose the benefit of the doubt when you lose games. Even in the SEC.

But this year the field is still down to four teams, and with so many variables going into the decision, there’s a lot to parse. And to put it plainly, the College Football Playoff committee got it wrong. College football has that, or at least it has used have – to right now – the best regular season in sports, because the games mattered most. We have a smaller sample size in this sport than in any other sport.

Ignoring an undefeated 13-0 Florida State team in a Power 5 conference was the wrong decision.

Michigan and Washington, both undefeated with top-10 wins, were the easiest. The problem for the College Football Playoff committee was that there were three teams with legitimate arguments for the final two slots.

Sorry, Georgia. You didn’t win the conference title, and in this format that has to count for something.

Alabama and the SEC are the proverbial elephant in this room. Nick Saban is the best coach of all time, and to me this year was the best coaching job he ever did during the season. His team was defeated at home by Texas in Week 2 and didn’t look any better the following week while struggling against a mediocre USF team. But Jalen Milroe continued to make big strides and when it mattered most, he and the Tide made enough plays to shut down a Bulldogs team that wasn’t nearly as dominant as it had been in the previous two title seasons.

The problem for Alabama – and the SEC – is the partner they’re going to bring in: Texas did defeated Alabama convincingly in Tuscaloosa. That happened and there was nothing lame about it.

The Longhorns, 12-1, were the class of the Big 12. There was no second-best team in the Big 12 this year, but Oklahoma State beat Oklahoma, the team Texas faced and, as expected, hammered Texas the Cowboy Saturday. Remember, this was an Oklahoma State team that went 9-3 and had lost to South Alabama and UCF by a combined score of 78-10. That wouldn’t help Texas’ case, but are we just forgetting that Alabama narrowly escaped a week ago against an Auburn team that got blown out at home by New Mexico State, 31-10, the week before?

The bigger problem was Florida State, the 13-0 Seminoles of the ACC. As we all know, FSU lost star quarterback Jordan Travis two weeks ago. The Seminoles’ backup Tate Rodemaker, who had led them to a comeback win over Louisville a year ago when Travis was injured, didn’t look great in the regular-season finale at archrival Florida. He also suffered a concussion.

FSU’s third stringer, Brock Glenn, had a shaky outing in the ACC Championship Game, but the defense was dominant. Led by Braden Fiske and Jared Verse, the Seminoles had 14 TFLs and seven sacks and became the first team in five years to hold a Jeff Brohm offense under 200 yards. Not so coincidentally, that same FSU defense started the year by dominating LSU and the SEC’s biggest star, Jayden Daniels, 45-24, and held the SEC and the nation’s No. 1 offense to its worst performance of the season.

FSU was the only team to hold Daniels under 60 percent in a game. Daniels ran for almost 100 fewer yards (99) against the Noles than he did when he played against the Crimson Tide.

The CFP rankings often devolve into a debate about “best” versus “most deserving.” Best is usually the get-out-of-jail-free card when your team loses or suffers a bad loss that can’t be explained. Similar to the nonsense of, “Well, Vegas would make so-and-so more than a touchdown favorite against them.” Awesome. But tell that to Washington. The Huskies were nearly double-digit underdogs last week against Oregon, a team they had already beaten this year. … Well, the Huskies beat the Ducks again.

I understand. The SEC has been the most dominant conference in college football for the past two decades. But this year wasn’t like those other years, if you’ve been paying attention. It’s just been a bad year for the SEC. The ACC actually went 6-4 against the SEC this year. If this was a one loss FSU team, I would say the Seminoles didn’t deserve their spot, but they did. Texas also shouldn’t have been left out for a team that beat it on home turf.

As colleague David Ubben wrote on Saturday evening: the matches must matter. What’s the point of playing them if we try to rationalize them away?

(Florida State Top Photo: John Byrum/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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