The college football regular season came to a merciful end Saturday night, and we all get a well-deserved break until bowl season begins in [checks notes] A FEW HOURS??? OK, well, damn. We'd better go ahead and talk about the College Football Playoff, the weekend that was and what to look forward to in bowl season.
The CFP committee got it right...ish
It's almost a reflex that I have. Before I can fully unleash criticism about the College Football Playoff committee ...
... that its proud, defiant refusal to at least open one eye toward advanced stats holds it back (why on earth would you not want more information for making such an important decision?) ...
... that it has constantly failed and undersold the Group of 5's capabilities (and doesn't exactly go out of its way to seek G5 backgrounds for committee membership), rendering college football's Football Bowl Subdivision virtually the only sport/association/subdivision that gives half of its members no path to a championship ...
... that its insistence on meeting in person to create rankings in the middle of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic was both (a) an unnecessary health risk and (b) pretty pointless, considering how frustrating and inconsistent the rankings actually were at times ...
I have to provide a definitive disclaimer: The committee hasn't screwed up a top four yet. They have all been, at worst, acceptable. Maybe I would have placed teams in a different order, but all 24 teams selected for playoff inclusion from 2014 to '19 were deserving of a spot. That relegates the legion of complaints I and others have had through the years to secondary status. The committee gets the big thing mostly right.
I'll be nice and say it's now 28-for-28. I guess. The playoff once again cleared the acceptability bar.
Mind you, the committee completely screwed over Cincinnati. If we actually regarded G5 teams as the capable members of FBS that they've proved to be, there would be no way to justify the Bearcats ranking worse than sixth. But they finished eighth all the same, behind a two-loss Oklahoma team that lost to a Kansas State team that is barely top 80 in SP+. There's no excusing that, no matter how hot the Sooners were at the end of the season. The committee fell in love with the Big 12 despite the conference's brief, abysmal nonconference showing and also treated the SEC like it was the normal SEC and not a conference with far more disappointments than pleasant surprises this year.
In the end, though, all four teams selected for the CFP were among the teams with justifiable cases. You could certainly make cases for Cincinnati, Texas A&M (unbeaten against teams not ranked No. 1 in the country) and even Oklahoma (unbeaten with its full-strength lineup) if you wanted, but all four of the actual top-four selections were deserving of inclusion. That's not much, and it does little to assuage those frustrated not only by Cincinnati's fate but also that of teams such as Coastal Carolina and Indiana, which rolled through dream seasons but weren't rewarded with high-level bowls, but it's something. I'm trying to be nice here.
My five favorite non-playoff bowls
Dec. 22: UCF vs. BYU (RoofClaim.com Boca Raton Bowl, 7 p.m. ET on ESPN and the ESPN App)
If you've read anything I've written in the past 10 years or so, you probably knew this would be on the list. UCF is nearly as good as it has been for most of the past four years but has lost seven of its past eight one-score finishes, and this is the best BYU team since at least 1996, maybe 1985. This one's going to have some plot twists. It will also quite possibly be our last chance to watch quarterback Zach Wilson in a BYU uniform.
Dec. 26: Coastal Carolina vs. Liberty (Cure Bowl, noon ET on ESPN and the ESPN App)
Putting the disappointment of Coastal getting passed over for a major bowl bid aside, this is a pretty good consolation. Liberty's only loss was by one point to 8-3 NC State, and both the Flames and Chanticleers combine attractive, unique offenses with aggressive-as-heck defensive fronts. (Their color schemes are also both great.) If you're simply looking for 3.5 pleasant hours of football, this might be the safest bet on the bowl schedule.
Dec. 29: Miami vs. Oklahoma State (Cheez-It Bowl, 5:30 p.m. ET on ESPN and the ESPN App)
First, this bowl gives me a reason to think and talk about one of the most momentous coaching changes in college football history -- when Howard Schnellenberger left his budding Miami dynasty for a shot in the soon-to-be-doomed USFL, and Oklahoma State's Jimmy Johnson replaced him and added to The U's dominance. But it's also a game between two programs that finished their respective seasons in disappointing fashion (Miami getting its doors blown off by UNC, OSU stumbling after a 4-0 start) and have plenty to play for.
Dec. 30: Oklahoma vs. Florida (Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic, 8 p.m. ET on ESPN and the ESPN App)
Granted, the Gators' Kyle Pitts has opted out -- his brilliant SEC championship game performance against Alabama (seven catches, 129 yards, one touchdown) was officially the last game for one of the best college tight ends we've ever seen. But this game is a fun rematch of 2008's BCS Championship and is still loaded with offensive firepower. It will give OU a chance to fully prove just how far its defense has come in 2020, and it will give us a chance to properly evaluate the Sooners' capabilities heading into 2021.
Jan. 2: Texas A&M vs. North Carolina (Capital One Orange Bowl, 8 p.m. ET on ESPN and the ESPN App)
Former Texas head coach Mack Brown versus the Aggies? This counts as a rivalry game, right? Regardless, this is a lovely styles-make-fights contest. A&M's defense made excellent strides over the course of the season, and playing against Sam Howell and the UNC attack is the ultimate "are you elite?" test. Elite defenses can snuff out the Tar Heels attack; anything less and you'll give up 40-plus points.
Four more random thoughts
1. Steve Sarkisian, master playcalling troll
One of my favorite activities of this cursed 2020 season has been watching all the different ways Alabama offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian finds to mess with defenders', and probably defensive coordinators', heads.
He notes every defensive assumption about the RPO game and builds fakes off them (and a spectacular offensive line gives those fakes time to work). And in Saturday's SEC championship, he and the Tide stole points while damn near trolling the Florida defense. They randomly went into hurry-up mode to catch Florida with 12 players on the field. They ran a tight-end sneak in a short-yardage situation. They had a different tight end running a jet sweep (albeit unsuccessfully). They not only lined up star running back Najee Harris wide and threw him the ball but also had him running double moves into wide-open spaces.
Each year moves us closer to a positionless future, where skill corps guys are used in every possible way. Yes, it helps to have a spectacular offensive line and what might be three of the top five finishers in the Heisman voting (quarterback Mac Jones, Harris and receiver DeVonta Smith), but Sark is speeding our ascent toward that future. And with Alabama's defense struggling for the first time in more than two months, his nearly perfect offense saved Bama's perfect season.
2. Tulsa is just a nasty, nasty football team
Tulsa played eight games this season. Six were decided by single digits, four of its last five by six or fewer points. The Golden Hurricane offense could have stood to show up more consistently, but the defense was one of the most exciting in college football.
Despite games against Cincinnati, UCF, SMU and Oklahoma State, among others, Tulsa finished 11th in success rate allowed and ninth in marginal explosiveness allowed (my measure of the magnitude of an offense's successful plays, adjusted for field position). Here are the teams that finished in the top 15 in both measures: Cincinnati, Tulsa, West Virginia. That's it.
Even if you beat Tulsa this year -- and only two teams got the pleasure -- this was maybe one of the least enjoyable teams in the country to play. The Golden Hurricane hit hard; they swallow up whatever you try to do; and players such as linebacker Zaven Collins and end Jaxon Player would have had a spot in the rotation of any defense in the country. Head coach Philip Montgomery was hired at TU because of his offensive prowess, but as opponents have adapted to his and others' versions of the spread, his own defense, led by future power conference defensive coordinator Joseph Gillespie for the past two years, has adapted even more. His 3-3-5 is unique and frustrating, and watching Cincinnati try to move the ball against Tulsa in cold and soggy weather was miserable ... in all the right, football-related ways.
3. So many partial impressions
We spent quite a bit of time in recent weeks arguing about how many games different teams played and how much of a difference that should make in playoff consideration. I never really enjoyed that argument much -- punishing teams because of decisions their presidents made while flying blind (and refusing to work together) in a pandemic seems unfair for any number of reasons -- but quantity mattered in another way: We just didn't get much of an impression of certain teams.
That's particularly true of teams in the MAC, MWC and Pac-12. Ohio was interesting and fun ... and played three games. Colorado State's first defense under Chuck Heater was aggressive and efficient and done after four games. Arizona State's run game was fantastic and explosive (Rachaad White and DeaMonte Trayanum combined for 7.8 yards per carry), quarterback Jayden Daniels continued to show promise, and the Sun Devils finished at 2-2. Colorado played inspired ball and nearly finished unbeaten ... and the Alamo Bowl will be the Buffaloes' sixth and final game of the year.
UCLA and USC ... Washington and Wazzu ... Kent State and Miami (Ohio) ... hell, SJSU and Boise State ... we got only partial impressions of so many potentially interesting teams, and that's just a shame. It goes without saying that this is about the 31,148th most important repercussion of this pandemic, but it's on the list, at least. And speaking of ...
4. Every "[Team] opts out of bowl" announcement made me sad
Holding a bowl in a pandemic, with all the added risks and logistical nightmares involved, sounds extremely difficult. That a lot of them were canceled made perfect sense.
Playing in a bowl in a pandemic, with all the aforementioned risks and logistics, and holding off on seeing your family or letting this season mercifully end for a couple of more weeks, sounds even more difficult. That a lot of teams and players voted to end their seasons bowl-free also made perfect sense.
Every time a cancellation or opt-out came across the Twitter timeline, however, it made me sad. A bowl is supposed to be a celebration of a good -- or at least decent -- season, a reward for all the work and time and effort that goes into even finishing .500. That far fewer teams than normal will be playing in bowls this year, and that we had to basically open bowls up to all comers to even get the bowls we got, is a reminder of just how impossibly hard this season was for everyone involved, players and coaches and operations staffs most of all. I commend them for getting through it. They've earned some rest and family time. Hopefully we all come back recharged for a fun, full and fans-in-the-stands campaign in 2021.
We deserve better
"There is a place in college football for this kind of champion to have more to play for in our sport's future." -- Fox Sports' Tim Brando, after San Jose State's MWC championship win over Boise State, quite possibly the biggest win in school history.
Coastal Carolina will play Liberty in the Cure Bowl. San Jose State will play MAC champion Ball State in the Arizona Bowl. These are reasonably exciting matchups and will give both schools chances at unbeaten finishes and the highest final rankings in their respective histories. In this season of frustration and fatigue, both the Chanticleers and Spartans provided college football with some desperately needed positivity and excitement. And like Cincinnati, they both deserved better from college football than the bowls they got.
This season isn't completely over yet, but it's hard not to look to the horizon.
A pair of U.S. senators introduced a College Athlete Bill of Rights last week, which proposes athlete-friendly measures including a liberal NIL (name, image and likeness) policy, group licensing capabilities, a medical trust fund that should have been in place since the start of college athletics, removal of transfer penalties and even a revenue-sharing policy that would severely change how athletic departments operate.
We don't know whether it will pass, or what an altered version that will pass looks like, but we know that, one way or another, NIL and transfer policy changes are coming down the pike.
That's not the only change people are talking about these days.
After the sport's disastrous display of disunity in the scheduling and decision-making processes leading to the 2020 season, many of the sport's higher-ups, including Alabama's Nick Saban, have once again called for the creation of a college football commissioner's office. (I have a candidate to humbly nominate, ahem.) The Knight Commission, meanwhile, recommended that the FBS level of college football split entirely from the NCAA.
College football could be operating from a different leadership structure at some point, but whether any big changes come to pass, I hope that increasing dissatisfaction leads to changes to the actual process of playing a season. And I hope that, for once, they are changes that don't just reinforce the current balance of power. Odds are very good fans will return to the stands next year, that we'll get our full schedules and full slates of rivalry games, and these slivers of normalcy will all feel absolutely amazing. But we should still hope for change.
Even for those of us who didn't see or care to acknowledge them before now, 2020 both shined a light on all of the cracks in this sport's infrastructure and highlighted all the ways this sport could be even better. We know we can be much more flexible and creative with our scheduling (and, as BYU-Coastal taught us, we know viewers will jump aboard a good bandwagon story). We know we can play on-campus home games in mid-December (as would likely be required of an expanded playoff).
Basically: We know we can make this sport both more inclusive and more fun. College football prints cash even when we know that half of FBS has no chance and that our journey is going to end with Alabama-Clemson more often than not. Now imagine how much healthier this sport could become.
Imagine a world in which student-athletes can make money off their name, image and likeness and play knowing their long-term health is valued and compensated. Imagine getting our EA Sports video game back.
Imagine an eight-team playoff that had us preparing for Oregon at Alabama, Texas A&M at Notre Dame, Oklahoma at Ohio State and Cincinnati at Clemson this coming week?
Hell, imagine a 16-team playoff that welcomes any conference champions in the CFP top 25? Celebrating San Jose State for a week as it prepares for a matchup against No. 2 Clemson? Digging our teeth into No. 10 Iowa State at No. 7 Florida and No. 11 Indiana at No. 6 Oklahoma? Think about the number of fan bases that would be thrilled and fully engaged right now. Think of the journey such a playoff would entail, even if the destination were still Bama-Clemson.
No matter what change comes, the best part of college football will remain the football itself. It has succeeded despite, not because of, all the other stuff. The best part of college football is Ole Miss and LSU fighting their guts out, as they did on Saturday evening, in a driving rainstorm with nothing to play for and a lot of their best players having opted out. The best part is Stanford and UCLA doing the same thing 1,800 miles away (albeit in better weather).
We'll always get those moments and those games, whether we deserve them or not. More engagement, more honor and more fun would only add to the enjoyment.
This sport has seduced us all. And it could be so, so much better. It appears change of some sort is coming one way or another. Err on the side of care, inclusiveness and fun, and watch what happens.