Random thoughts on CFP and the conference championships … It is conference championship weekend coming up in college football with some very intriguing games on the docket. Indeed, both the SEC and Big Ten title games would be pretty much national semi-finals in the old 4-team CFP format with #1 Oregon facing #3 Penn State in the B10 championship and #2 Texas meeting #5 Georgia in the SEC on Saturday. There are also several spots in this year’s 12-team playoff on the line this weekend, although the reality is that the upcoming playoff field is already pretty much baked in. Indeed, all four of the SEC and Big Ten championship game teams are already in win or lose on Saturday, while there are another 4 teams with either one or two losses ranked in the top 10 – Notre Dame, Ohio State, Tennessee and Indiana – that aren’t in a conference title game, ie they aren’t going to lose this weekend, and as such also are pretty much guaranteed a playoff berth. Three other spots will go to the winners of the ACC (Clemson versus SMU); Big XII (Arizona State versus Iowa State) and Mountain West (Boise State versus UNLV) championship games, leaving one final spot that at this point in time seems to be pretty much guaranteed to 3-loss Alabama which is currently 11th in the CFP ranking. And the fact that Alabama – or whomever – gets the final spot is going to leave a handful of other teams including Miami and at least two other 3-loss SEC teams, not to mention schools like SMU and Arizona State should they lose their respective conference finals this weekend, fuming that they didn’t get in. Clearly, the CFP folks need to expand the playoff field!! Meanwhile, the other conference title games this weekend have Army playing Tulane in the American Athletic title contest; Ohio versus Miami (Ohio) in the MAC; Western Kentucky against Jacksonville State in C-USA; and Marshall versus Louisiana in the Sun Belt game.
