Robbing Texas A&M of Playoff Berth Looks Worse and Worse the Closer It’s Examined — College Football Fans Lose Big Too

Texas A&M University’s football program is not the only entity robbed by the college football selection committee’s decision to exclude one of the three best teams in the country from the playoffs. College football fans — and the game itself — will also needlessly suffer.

For things have been set up for another beyond predictable four team playoff that will excite no one outside of Alabama and South Carolina. Notre Dame. . . who wants to see the power from another time blown out again in one of college football’s showcase games?

The Fighting Irish already played what should have been a defacto playoff game Saturday. And they were thoroughly dominated by Clemson, which should have cast plenty of doubt on Notre Dame’s signature win — an overtime escape against a Clemson team playing without its best player. Notre Dame already should have been eliminated.

Instead, sports fans are subjected to seeing Brian Kelly’s overmatched team try to prove it belongs against No. 1 Alabama.

How you’re playing down the stretch of the season should mean something if the resumes are as close as Texas A&M and Notre Dame’s. And there is no doubt that Jimbo Fisher’s Texas A&M squad is a much more fearsome opponent than Notre Dame at this point in the season.

The Aggies have won seven straight games since getting spanked by Alabama in their second game of this slow-starting COVID-19 season. In its last four games, Texas A&M has outscored its opponents (all SEC schools) by a combined 133-43 margin. Fisher’s team is giving up 10.7 points per game since November 1.

No team in the country has put together a better closing kick, including Alabama. In fact, the Crimson Tide were pushed Saturday by same Florida team that is not supposed to be a good enough win for A&M. With quarterback Kellen Mond, the running game and the A&M defense playing at a high level, the Aggies could have given Alabama a very different game in a playoff contest that would have intrigued.

Instead, the selection committee — which really did not select anything but the status quo — has everyone yawning towards yet another Clemson-Alabama national championship game.

It’s as if the NFL decided that the Baltimore Ravens should still advance in the playoffs despite losing to the Titans last January because their early season wins were more impressive.

“They’ve played similar schedules, coming into this weekend, Notre Dame was undefeated,” playoff committee chairman Gary Barta says in his ESPN rationalization. “(Notre Dame) had beaten the No. 2 team, now, in Clemson, and on the road against the No. 13 team in North Carolina, and Texas A&M’s top win was against a very good Florida team.

“So very similar resumes, but in the end the committee felt that Notre Dame had earned its way there based on the complete analysis of the resume, and it probably came down to have an additional win against a ranked team.”

If that sounds like an excuse to get the TV-beloved Irish into the playoffs, well it is.

Week One Dooms Texas A&M? Really?!!

How you’re playing as the playoffs approach should matter for something. Just like playing nine games, largely against the league with the best talent in the country (the SEC’s NFL Draft record is unassailable) instead of just six games against a sometimes suspect Power 5 league should matter.

But to the selection committee, they clearly did not. For Ohio State and Notre Dame seemingly sailed into the playoffs with little second doubt from the people entrusted with casting doubt. Texas A&M’s resume definitely should have given Barta and company more pause.

Instead, the last Saturday of college football’s beyond strange — and often unsettling — 2020 regular season — gets treated like college basketball’s Power 5 conference tournament championship games. As largely meaningless fluff that impact no one’s postseason seeding.

Texas A&M wisely might be asking why it even bothered to play — and throttle — Tennessee.

Fisher and the Aggie faithful — which may be even more devoted than the Notre Dame faithful, but less East Coast connected — lose out. But so do sports fans everywhere. This Texas A&M team is fun to watch. It’s earned the right to play for college football’s biggest prize.

Instead, it’s the same old staid power programs that always seem to play for the national championship. Picking Cincinnati over Texas A&M would have made more sense than Notre Dame. At least then, you’re rewarding excellence on the field. If it truly is about selecting the four best college football teams in America, Fisher’s squad is probably the third best team in the nation at this point.

Ohio State would rightly be very nervous about playing Kellen Mond and Co. at this point.

If there is any season in which early season games should be weighed against everything going on around college football at that moment, it’s this one. Instead, the Aggies are kept out of the playoffs because they beat hapless Vanderbilt by only five points in Week One and lost to Alabama in Week Two.

Penalizing Texas A&M for a week one struggle after the weirdest buildup to a season ever and not penalizing Notre Dame for getting blown out in a conference championship game makes no competitive sense.

Cincinnati Wronged

This selection committee did not get much of anything right. 9-0 Cincinnati not getting a New Year’s Six bowl is just as ridiculous as Notre Dame over Texas A&M. This is a dominant Cincinnati team. The Bearcats and the American Athletic Conference both deserve much better. Cincinnati being ranked behind a two loss Oklahoma team and a three loss Florida one is an absolute joke.

The much-maligned computers did a much better job than this.

Sub Texas A&M and Cincinnati in for 6-0 Ohio State and Notre Dame and you have a much fairer, much more compelling (and likely much more competitive) four team playoff. Ohio State gets the benefit of the doubt when it blows out an inferior opponent in the Big Ten title game (see 2019). And then, it gets the same benefit a year later when it struggles against an inferior opponent (Northwestern) in the conference championship game.

The committee always finds a reason to put Ohio State in. Oh… just six games… no problem, you’re Ohio State!

Enough. It’s time to reward other programs outside of this snobbish elite of the elite. The committee essentially has told the world (repeatedly) that if there is any possible way to justify getting Ohio State or Notre Dame into the playoffs, they will do it.

Anti-mask “protestors” storming a Target are more open minded than college football’s selection committee. Something is wrong with that.

Texas A&M got robbed. Cincinnati was mocked, discounted and discarded in the most senseless way possible. But college football fans are the real losers of the whole thing.