College football is popular, and maybe that’s what matters most to certain parties within the sport. Popularity equals … what? It adds up to the single sum that matters to networks and those who work for them, and to other powerful entities that certainly have … yeah, something to gain, the most important thing to gain.
What could that be? You know the answer.
M-m-m-m-m-m-o-n-e-y.
And who exactly wants so badly to control the college game, and by control we mean have the biggest say in where the revenue ends up?
You know that answer, too: The SEC and the Big Ten, the so-called Power-2 conferences, and their partners.
Those leagues want to prop themselves up by downgrading the Big 12 and the ACC, and anyone from any other league named, say, Boise State, by considering them inferior and inconsequential and unworthy. They already were successful at destroying the Pac-12, although other leagues also picked away bits and pieces, not to mention the contributions of less-than-enlightened school presidents themselves.
Where were we? Oh, yeah … that’s why you have folks connected to the SEC and the Big Ten ripping teams from other conferences who qualified for the College Football Playoff, and who subsequently lost in the first round of said playoff.
Remember back to that melancholy moment when people were hopeful that the playoff, expanded from four teams to 12 this season, would help alleviate so much belly-aching over who should have postseason opportunity and who shouldn’t? Ha. Those folks forgot who the colleges were dealing with up top, namely the two leagues who want to rule the game, who want to be the game.
What’s obvious — and part of it sweet, too — after the first-round games is that certain corners from the P2 were not only complaining that three-loss Alabama should have gotten in or maybe Ole Miss or somebody, anybody, else instead of SMU, who lost big to Penn State, and Clemson, who lost to Texas, they also were forced to turn on themselves, SEC sycophants going after Big Ten types for Indiana’s poor showing against Notre Dame and, then, Big Ten lovers criticizing Tennessee’s face-plant against Ohio State.
(Jay LaPrete | AP) Ohio State head coach Ryan Day reacts to a video replay against Tennessee during the first-round of the College Football Playoff Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024, in Columbus, Ohio.
Not only are teams from the “lesser” leagues somehow undeserving, an outfit like Indiana, which went into the playoff with an 11-1 record out of the Big Ten, is dog meat, as well. Or, from the other direction, Tennessee is an infidel. Nothing quite as satisfying as watching fans and media and officials of and from P2 conferences, and so many of those who speak for or about them, cannibalizing one another.
And remember this: The teams that lost in the first round were all playing on the road, on the other guys’ home fields, so determining who should or shouldn’t have been included based solely on those results is kind of dumb. Where those games were played made winning them a whole lot more difficult for the visitors.
What’s clear is that the SEC wants to stiff arm the lessers and also get a leg up on the Big Ten. Already, those two leagues receive more TV revenue than all the others. But do those extra dollars really mean, even with the propaganda that’s sent out via talking heads and coaches, etc., on ESPN that they are clearly superior?
Is that why Lane Kiffin says what he says in arguing that Ole Miss should have been included and Kirk Herbstreit tells viewers that wins shouldn’t matter when it comes to playoff consideration and qualification?
What should matter? Somebody’s bias, somebody’s opinion, despite certain preferred teams’ shortcomings that were made evident on the field during the regular season? There’s no way to completely level out that regular-season test for everyone. College football is either too regionalized or its expanded conferences are too big for everyone to play everyone. And if the playoff grows larger, then some critics will claim the importance of the games in the regular season will be diminished, made meaningless, even. I’d have no problem with a 16-team field. So let it be written, so let it be done. But even that won’t stop the whining, won’t stop the advantages the powerful seek for themselves.
At some point, the CFP has to be a national competition with opportunity spread around, not just opportunity spread around inside the SEC and the Big Ten. For the better part of a century now, too much opinion and too much bias have played too big a role in crowning kings in college football. And now, the SEC, in particular, needs to be reminded that it’s not the only realm where football is played all proper.
If you grow or have grown tired of hearing, again and again, that the SEC is all this and all that, and that the Big Ten is all this and all that, and that those leagues would just as soon have a postseason tournament among themselves — OK, they might let the Irish in, as well — to determine a national champion, then root for Arizona State to beat Texas and for Boise State to upset Penn State in the quarterfinals next week. Not sure how all that will go, but … we’re certain that the aforementioned conferences will do what they can to sing their own praises, and only their own praises.
Try not to listen, try not to believe, try not to buy in, even if one of their blue-bloods wins it all in the weeks ahead.
