The wailing and moaning you heard late last night/early this morning were the cries of fans of schools not affiliated with the South East Conference. After Georgia beat Oklahoma in a 54-48 overtime thriller of a College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Rose Bowl Game Presented by Northwestern Mutual (Fellas, about that name) and Alabama trounced Clemson at the College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Allstate Sugar Bowl the rest of the country was forced to come to terms with yet another SEC Championship game doubling as a college football championship.
To add to the misery, fans of schools such at Texas aTm, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt will be running around chanting "S-E-C" to the rooftops as they desperately try and take credit for other school's wins.
Contrary to most people's beliefs, I am not an SEC "hater". For years I had them pegged as the top conference in college football, falling off the last couple of years, and I am the first person to say that their champion should always have a seat at the table in any college football playoff system.
But I do have a problem when they get two seats. And one of those seats is taken by a team that only had one win over a top 10 team prior to the semi-final game and didn't even participate in the conference championship.
Yes, Alabama dominated Clemson last night and there's no doubt they are among the best teams in football, but that's a separate question than "did they deserve to be there in the first place?"
"Of course they do" you might say, last night was clear evidence for that. But then there's contradicting evidence in the form of UCF, who went undefeated and beat an Auburn team that beat both Georgia and Alabama this year.
Four years ago we had this same problem with Ohio State. They failed to play in their conference championship and skated in, and eventually won, the inaugural CFP. Left out in that case was a Baylor team that arguably had a better resume, and a better case to get in.
In another year it was Oklahoma State that got shut-out.
This year it was UCF.
The common thread?
None of the schools listed above are 'name programs' in the college football hierarchy, and what the CFP has been designed to do is to protect the pecking order at all costs.
Ask yourself this: Are we really all that much better right now in terms of determining a "true" champion than we were five years ago? How about 20 years ago?
An honest evaluation of the facts will tell you that no, we are not. But it's the system that we're going to be stuck with through at least 2020 and as long as there are good ratings and money to be made (by the universities, not by the players mind you) then the current system is the system we are going to be stuck with, for better (last year) or for worse (this year). Not every year will we be stuck with a regional match-up which allows the worst fans in college sportsdom to chant like idiots, and not every year will the other "Power" conferences decide to cannibalize each other.
But there is always going to be a chance that the SEC gets two (or more, believe it or not) teams into the CFP because the system has been designed to allow the SEC to get away with too much light scheduling for too long. It places too much value over their wins over weak conference foes, and doesn't place enough weight on other team's wins against the same.
Also, one of the fears of college football analysts was that the regular season would no longer matter, under the CFP. Strangely, many of those voices are now quiet since the CFP pretty much invalidated regular season results.
This all ignores the fact that it's silly and insipid to determine a champion by playing a couple of games more than a full month after the regular season has come to an end. Only college football does that, and it's no mystery why the college football national championship is the most controversial of them all.
Like it or not you're going to be saddled with Alabama/Georgia on Monday evening and no amount of wailing or SEC hate is going to change that. They'll continue to operate this way because they can. Because no matter how many shenanigans they continue to pull to keep some teams out of the party and let some teams in you're still going to tune in and watch. They're the only game in town if you want entertaining football, even when Alabama is sucking the life force out of their opponents.
It sure would have been more fun to watch UCF face Clemson, and while that might have resulted in a Clemson/Georgia championship game we'll never know. It could have resulted in a UCF/Georgia championship game and that would have potentially been the money maker of the century.
And a helluva fun game to boot.
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