In the first year of the system, conference championship games have delivered in a big way.
Friday’s Mountain West Championship Game will kick off the best weekend of conference championship games in history.
For the first time since 2006, there are no conference championship games with a betting spread of a touchdown or more.
Palm: How might the CFP Selection Committee judge conference title game losers?
In almost every case, though, a conference title game loser was replaced by a conference champion.
There were two main objectives when the 12-team College Football Playoff was revealed. One of them was to shift the emphasis back to conference titles and give teams that make it to the top real rewards. After all, five conference winners will automatically qualify for the field.
Conference championship games have performed admirably in the system’s first year. The greatest conference championship game weekend in history will begin with Friday’s Mountain West Championship Game. There are win-and-in games between the Big 12 and the Mountain West. To qualify for the ACC, Clemson (Clemson!) needs to defeat SMU. While the loser will need to play 17 games to win a national championship, the winner will receive a crucial bye, even for the SEC and Big Ten.
No conference title game has a betting spread of a touchdown or more for the first time since 2006. There were five title games that year. Nine are present this year. Tulane and Louisiana, who are 5 point and 5 point favorites against Army and Marshall, respectively, have the widest lines in the AAC and Sun Belt. The average score for each Power Conference title game is 3 points to 5 points per closer.
It should be a celebration of the new system, but the weekend could end up being a mockery because of some ill-timed remarks made by CFP chair Warde Manuel.
When the final CFP Rankings are released on Sunday, no. 8. SMU is comfortably positioned in the field, predicted to win the ACC, and appears secure even in the event of a defeat. However, there is no denying the historical significance of this situation: the Mustangs are hoping to win their first major conference championship since the Death Penalty of the 1980s, and in their first year as ACC members, at that.
During a press conference on Tuesday, however, Manuel was questioned about whether the Mustangs could lose ground to No. 11 If Alabama loses to No. That ACC championship game featured 17 Clemson. Would SMU, for example, go from a first-round bye to being excluded entirely from the 12-team field?
“Potentially yes,” Manuel replied. Furthermore, they are able to transcend teams. It just depends on how the game turns out, once more. “,”.
Don’t wait. And what?
The 11-1 Mustangs are vying for a conference title in a league where they had an undefeated conference record. No. 9 Indiana, which is also 11-1, isn’t. Also, no. 11 After losing a full quarter of its games and only finishing 5-3 in conference play, Alabama isn’t even close. Is being honored to compete for a title suddenly a disadvantage in the marketplace?
Palm: What criteria might the CFP Selection Committee use to evaluate losers in conference championship games?
Granted, teams that lost their conference title game were occasionally penalized under the previous system. Since 2014, the four-team field has seen seven title game losers drop out. However, a conference champion would almost always take the place of a conference title game loser. Five times, the real head-to-head winner of that match took their place.
This isn’t the case. If SMU loses to Clemson, the Mustangs will be compared to teams that just played 12 games and those that weren’t champions.
Encouraging teams to skip conference finals is detrimental to the sport as a whole. The thirteenth data point is a conference title game; data points can also be negative. The CFP committee should, however, carefully consider how detrimental a data point should be in order to counterbalance a team that didn’t even receive the thirteenth data point.
Playing for a championship ought to be an honor and the only way to end an outstanding season, by all standards. In the BCS/CFP era, the Mustangs, for instance, would be the first team to win the league after moving up to a power conference.
“We’re in if our team didn’t play and everyone had COVID today,” SMU coach Rhett Lashlee told Andy Staples of On3. We don’t have any more data points that would place us below anyone who is behind us, so we’re in, right? There will probably be a lot of crazy things that people will do if you open that door, in my opinion. “..”.
This is the worst thing possible to hear from the coach of a team that is capable of winning a championship, but Lashlee is only attempting to advocate for playoff seeding. It would be catastrophic for the sport if SMU could not even relish the chance to win the ACC without feeling like there was a weight on its shoulders.
The committee must, of course, continue to be adaptable. It matters when a conference finalist loses 59-0 and loses a key player. Nevertheless, there’s no reason to set the stage for failing a team before it occurs. A far less worthy team would be severely harmed if a good team lost a close game to another good team while the rest of the sport was idle.
More meaningful games and an electrifying atmosphere have been produced by the 12-team College Football Playoff than almost any other year in history. The committee must consider the standards it wishes to establish when the final CFP Rankings are published. They must demonstrate their worth on Sunday if they hope to continue encouraging conference titles to promote the sport.
