Georgia’s controversial College Football Playoff ranking a reminder that this is supposed to be hard

This week, the College Football Playoff selection committee deigned to suggest that the Georgia Bulldogs — who have won two of the last three national championships and began this very season as the preseason No. 1 in the AP poll — might not make the final 12-team field.

If you plugged in the teams from this week’s CFP rankings into a bracket, you’d quickly discover that No. 12 Georgia would actually be the first team out, because No. 13 Boise State would slide into the field as the 12 seed, with the fifth highest-ranked conference champion assured to make the field. Now, this week’s rankings are not the real ones. They’re made for television, and there’s so many more data points still to be collected before Selection Sunday (Dec. 8). That’s when we’ll know who is truly in and out.

But the level of scrutiny that the committee has received to date shouldn’t be surprising. Deciding between teams in the 5-12 range is much harder than simply ranking 1-4 as it has for the past decade. There are always teams with obvious flaws when you get to the bubble. This particular chaos-filled regular season only underscores that.

Still, it was jarring to see the Bulldogs as the first team out of the bracket — even though they’re fresh off an 18-point loss to Ole Miss, their second loss of the season. Carson Beck hasn’t played well in more than a month, turning the ball over more than any other quarterback in the SEC. Even the defense, a calling card of Kirby Smart teams, has gotten gashed at times this season.

Logically, it makes sense that two-loss Georgia might miss the Playoff. Four SEC teams are in this week’s projected bracket! It’s not like the league itself is being slighted, even though fans in the southeast certainly feel a way about the Big Ten having four teams ranked in the committee’s top five. The ACC and Big 12 are both staring down the very real possibility of being one-bid leagues.

So, why the uproar about Georgia? Part of it has to do with the fact that it’s Georgia. With Nick Saban retired, Kirby Smart has assumed the mantle as the flag-bearer of the sport, his level of success and recent titles setting the new gold standard. The other part is that the ‘Dawgs have played the nation’s toughest schedule, per ESPN’s strength of schedule metrics. They have lost two games (and nearly lost to Kentucky) because they have played opponents that are harder to beat — and fans want that to offset or discount the losses.

“Their offense hasn’t been consistent — the committee discussed that,” selection committee chair Warde Manuel said. “They’ve struggled with some turnovers. The defense has been solid, although in the loss to Ole Miss, we felt that that plays a factor into with the offense struggling; their defense was on the field quite a bit.”

Manuel also pointed out that because the committee adhered to its principle of head-to-head results mattering, Georgia had to be slotted behind the two teams it had lost to (Alabama and Ole Miss). Again, this is all pretty logical.

Still, it prompted something of an existential crisis among those who root for the Bulldogs and among those who believe the SEC is the nation’s premier conference. They want to believe that a two-loss Georgia team is a lock for the CFP. They want to believe that a three-loss Georgia team can make the field, too.
We still don’t know how conference championship games are going to affect the final bracket. CFP executive director Rich Clark and his staff have suggested that they don’t expect the selection committee to penalize the teams that lose in their conference championship games, because those teams would be playing an additional game compared to the other teams in the at-large pool that they’ll be compared to.

So, in theory, if Georgia beats Tennessee this weekend and eventually somehow ends up in Atlanta for the SEC championship game, it could suffer a third loss. But would that be viewed as a third loss? Or could the committee truly set that aside? It’s something that sounds great in theory, but I have a hard time believing the committee won’t make note of the “3” it sees in the loss column every time it looks at the Georgia team page.

And if the loser of the SEC title game isn’t penalized, then shouldn’t that mean the same for the loser of the Big 12 and ACC championship games? If Miami is comfortably in the bracket heading into the ACC title game and BYU the same heading into the Big 12 title game, why do we think losses could knock both teams out of the bracket as at-large candidates?

So much of the conversation around the CFP right now boils down to the value of brands. We’re talking about Georgia this way because it’s Georgia. We’re talking about two-loss SEC teams this way because they’re in the SEC.
If any other team had Georgia’s resume, a turnover-prone quarterback and a general downward trajectory, we would have no problem with them being on the wrong side of the bubble. If SMU’s helmets looked like Michigan’s but had the same resume — a top-20 win and a three-point loss to the nation’s No. 6 team — it seems quite that the Mustangs would be in the bracket, as we see teams like Texas, Penn State and Indiana all ranked inside the top six despite a lack of signature wins to anchor their resumes. And we still aren’t actually sure if any of those teams can weather a loss and still make the final bracket.

Ultimately, this season is about testing our patience. There’s a lot we don’t know about a new format and a process that is not at all transparent. But that’s what everyone signed up for with a 12-team bracket in the era of megaconferences. Georgia being the team that’s not in the field isn’t something any of us would have predicted back on Labor Day. But in a season filled with surprises, this is perhaps a shocker we should have seen coming.