The CFP is having plenty of off the field combat.
The 12-team College Football Playoff has to absorb some bad feelings before the tournament kicks off Friday night with eighth-seeded Oklahoma playing No. 9 Alabama in Norman.
That first-round match-up is curious in itself because those teams met during the regular season on November 15 in Tuscaloosa where the Sooners edged the fourth-ranked Crimson Tide. Seriously, is the seeding so complicated that it could not avoid an SEC rematch and the third time in the last 13 months they have played, both games won by Oklahoma?
Should the Tide lose again Friday night at 8 p.m., there will be yet another controversy over whether Alabama belonged in the field anyway with three losses going in. That speaks more to the political power of the SEC.
Another oddity is the Rose Bowl game will still be in Pasadena on Jan. 1 when there is no longer the Big Ten champion versus the old Pac-10/12 champ. In joining the CFP, the Rose Bowl was guaranteed the half-century tradition to be played on New Year’s Day. This season it is a quarterfinal site and gets the Alabama-Oklahoma winner against the Big Ten champion and top-seed Indiana, which has a first-round bye.
Confusing, for sure.
Right now, the biggest controversy still simmers over the second first-round game on Saturday at noon, when tenth-seed Miami of the ACC plays at No. 7 seed Texas A&M, which was undefeated until losing its regular season finale at Texas, which did not make the CFP.
Ever since the field was announced, a not-so-friendly fire broke out between snubbed Notre Dame and the ACC, where the Irish is a member in all sports except football. South Bend athletic director Pete Bevacqua took issue with not being equally promoted for a CFP berth as the Hurricanes, who were left out last season.
Notre Dame does not compete for the ACC football championship (although it did in 2020 during COVID when all the schedules were reworked and the Irish played their entire regular season against ACC teams and lost the championship game to Clemson).
Notre Dame thinks the ACC should have given them promotional equality because one of the concessions in the 2014 semi-merger was that the Irish would play at least five ACC football teams every season, home or away, which enhances TV ratings and ticket sales for the hosting ACC schools. Bevacqua made that point to ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, who was AD at Northwestern back then and went all in to “promote our 17 football schools” in light of what happened to Miami a year ago.
If favored A&M, which was ranked third going into its game at Texas, beats the Canes Phillips and his league will have a lot of egg on its collective face to eat.
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Featured image via Associated Press/Joe Maiorana
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
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