I am as guilty as anyone about disregarding the relevance of the PAC-12 in college football these days. Apart from Oregon in 2014, they haven’t had a real contender for a national championship since the USC days (though Oregon did make one BCS championship game). However, given that the B10 has now been left out of the playoff for two years in a row despite having a strong argument for inclusion, you have to wonder if the conference is going the way of the PAC-12. The Washington State AD is none too happy with his team’s latest ranking. He had this to say:
“We're very disappointed with where we ended up being ranked," Chun said. "We believe, as a 10-win team in Power 5 league, the manner in which our two losses came, statistically how we match up with the other teams in the same cluster as us, we believed our résumé ranked perhaps higher than where the committee thought it was, but they are empowered to make those decisions. We'll respect those decisions.
"We are not happy with where we're ranked, but we're ecstatic to be in the Alamo Bowl."
He’s being diplomatic, but it’s refreshing to hear someone call out the committee. And I like that he’s saying something about bowl placement in general, not just about the playoffs. The committee wields a great amount of power which affects hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. I’m not suggesting that they don’t take that responsibility seriously, but there have been a lot of head scratchers over the years. That power should not go unchecked and I think that’s what the WSU AD is doing here. Makes me wonder how Gene Smith has been fighting for the Buckeye’s cause. I get that he’s on the committee and there are probably all sorts of things he cannot say, but I really question whether there has been anyone going to bat for Ohio State.
Here’s the link (warning: this is an ESPN article in case this is going to trigger you somehow):
As an aside, after OU won yesterday, I was rooting hard for Georgia to win and force the committee to make a tough decision. Based on the rankings today, it’s obvious that they would have indeed taken both Bama and Georgia and left out the B12 as well. That would have pissed another conference off and forced some sort of change with the committee. Not an expansion of the playoff, but perhaps some sort of metric for how they make their decisions so there can at least be some transparency. Alas, that didn’t happen so we will be stuck with more of the same.
