College Football: Nine Angry Old Men.

Nine Men.

That's all it takes to undo years of competitive messaging, send a firm message to teams that scheduling soft will be rewarded and make totally irrelevant the regular season.

Nine. Men.

And it's not just that Alabama beat out Ohio State for the fourth spot, and inclusion, in the College Football Playoff although that's what people will point to the most.  But the fact is that the decision between the two was a false choice between two horribly flawed teams, neither of whom probably deserved inclusion in the party.

But, by dropping Auburn below Washington, AND elevating Alabama AND dropping Miami behind Penn State the CFP committee has given the signal to teams that you are far better off scheduling soft (Alabama's strength of schedule was 57th) than you are scheduling tough (Imagine if Ohio State had played say...Mercer, instead of OU) or sitting home instead of playing in a championship game. (Penn State benefited from not playing, as did Alabama for that matter).

We've also been sent the message that rivalry weekend didn't matter at all.  The Crimson Tide looked outmatched, and were overran by Auburn, who ranked 7th in the final poll, they had no wins over a team in the final top ten and their best win was over No. 17 LSU, yet they got in.

The fact is that the best argument for Alabama was nothing that they themselves did, it was OSU's loss column.  The best argument against Alabama was their win column, and that one ugly loss to Auburn.

What we are, sort of, forgetting is that, in order to get Alabama in (the only team to be in all four years) the committee had to ignore all of their talking points from prior years.  Suddenly not playing in the championship game doesn't matter (to be fair, they did the same thing with Ohio State a few years back) nor does the now-mythical "body of work" argument that they used against Wisconsin and, to a greater extent, UCF all year.  Depends on whose body of work is being analyzed one guesses?

In fact, the biggest problem with the CFP is that it's showing itself to be nothing more than the B(C)S minus the lie of computer rankings and plus two teams. In short, it's a farce. A farce to ensure that the blue bloods of the world (Sorry Baylor and Oklahoma State) keep a stranglehold on the sport.

What the CFP IS NOT is a way to determine who the top four teams in the country in order to determine a National Champion.  The CFP IS an organ grinder, whose job is to focus your attention on the dancing monkey. Their job is to try and get the four biggest revenue generating teams possible into the dance, to ensure the blue-bloods have a hammer lock on the seats at the table. Their job is to be fluid in their requirements and rules so that no one can seriously question who the number 4 team in the country is in any given year.

In a way, it works, because I'm writing, and people are talking, about them despite the fact that, outside of the B1G and American, "Championship week" turned out to be a string of duds. Oklahoma destroyed an over-matched TCU team, Georgia thumped Auburn and Clemson utterly dominated a Miami team that had to kick a sad-field-goal just to not get blanked. Thank goodness that Ohio State and Wisconsin remembered to both play, and for the American which gave us the game of the year for the second week in a row.

Which brings us to UCF and the so-called "Group of 5".

Is UCF one of the "top 4" teams in the country?  No, I don't think so.

Does UCF deserve a shot at the crown?  Yes, I think they do.

But, they finished ranked number 10, which is just another data point in the argument that no matter what the best group of 5 team in the country does they are NEVER going to get to play in the CFP. While they have to schedule hard, the CFP has just told the Power 5 teams to schedule pillow soft.

They might want to sit out their conference championship games as well.

Finally: It is ironic that, during one of their worst seasons on record the CFP decided that the SEC was so dominant in the college football landscape that they were able to secure two slots.

That logic alone is enough for people to call for the entire committee to be relived of their duties.

College football is the best sport in the world and it is also one of the most poorly ran. (This excludes soccer, which is at a dysfunction level all it's own)