SmashMouth

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images If Mississippi State loses one game do you want to tell head coach Dan Mullen's daughter they can't be in the playoff? In just its first season, the College Football Playoff is heading for a debate bigger than anything we ever saw with the BCS and it is all because of the biggest flaw with the 4-team system.
The flaw is just basic math: 5 is more than 4.

In college football, there are five so-called "power conferences" and just four spots in the College Football Playoff. That means no matter how it shakes out, at least one champion from the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12 is going to miss out on the playoff.

That number is probably going to be even bigger this year which will just make the debate over the importance of winning conference championships even louder.

Enter the 2014 season and the unprecedented dominance of the SEC.

After nine weeks, four of the top five teams in the AP poll are from the SEC. That is the first time ever that one conference has four of the top five. And those four (Mississippi State, Mississippi, Alabama, Auburn) do not include Georgia, a team many consider the best 1-loss team in the country.



All of a sudden we are facing a situation where maybe three of the top four teams at the end of the regular season are all from one conference and the committee has to decide how many will be included in the playoff.

That conundrum is accentuated by the fact that the selection committee has not been given guidelines on how to deal with conference champions. While one committee member may feel winning one of the top four power conferences should mean automatic inclusion in the playoff, another may feel like conference championships mean nothing.

Would the selection committee being willing to pick three teams from one conference and just one other conference champion, say Florida State in the ACC? That scenario means the Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12 champions all miss out and that doesn't even consider Notre Dame who came within a pass interference call of beating Florida State on the road.

We don't know yet and that is where the debate will rage. It is going to get loud and it is going to get ugly.

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Danno

All 5 of those SEC schools play each other.

Its a shame that we're gonna knock each other off and we may end up with zero schools in the playoffs.

Barry from MS

The other conferences with get a rep...promise you that.

Ole Piss still has to play Auburn & Mississippi State.
Auburn still has to play Ole Piss & Bama.
Bama still has to play Mississippi State & Auburn.

That gauntlet of the SEC is way tougher than any of conference by far, which is one huge reason why Florida State will continue to run and hide from ever joining the SEC. Pansy criminals with their crab-stealing idiot savant QB.

One of these 4 teams will have to play Georgia (more than likely) in the SEC Championship game...in...Atlanta, Georgia.

I would bet the moon 3 SEC teams will not be in the playoffs, and it is very, very unlikely 2 SEC teams will be in the playoffs. You know how much whining and complaining there would be nationwide if 2 SEC teams went? Florida State Criminals will be one team, so only 1 out of the PAC-12, Big 12, and Big 10 (which has 14 teams?) will get picked so 2 SEC teams make it? Doubt it.

The whiny, sissy NCAA-basketball-scoring-no-defense-having conferences of the PAC-12 and Big 12 will get their rep, don't anyone worry about that.

"I'd far rather be happy than right any day" ~ Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
"Honor: if you need it defined, you don't have it" ~ Ron Swanson

Halo

It's hard to take it seriously until they go to a full slate tournament for top 20 schools (or something), and somehow integrate those games as "Bowls".

Every other division in the NCAA has football playoffs.
What I have seen in the past 10 to 15 years are MORE regular season games. In the 80's and most of the 90's it was an 11 game season, end of story. You got 11 games. Then SEC Championship came along creating a +1. All other conferences have copied that.

Now I'm seeing 14 game seasons.

More than willing to see the SEC conference Championship spared for a full blown playoff system.

Until Major College Football gets real, there will ALWAYS be disputed championships, always be "what if" teams... the #5, 6 and 7 ranked teams will be livid and have legitimate complaints as to why they're excluded.

(Trust me, I'm an SEC fan and know it's very possible SEC teams will dominate through semi-finals and championships in a full playoff system.)

Barry from MS

D2 & D3 football has it right.

D1? Who the crap knows...BCS, then this mess with 4 teams. The 4 team playoff is better than the BCS, that is true, but it's too small a sample size.

And having a freakin' committee to pick which 4 teams go in? Freakin' joke, and the biases will kill its legitimacy.

D1 has it wrong. Reason? SEC teams would more times than not knock out the other conferences early and you'd have the scenario like the LSU vs Bama for a national championship every year. And all you'd hear every stinking year would be the whining of those pansy, soft and tissue-paper conferences that are simply factors of Zero in the national championship equation.

"I'd far rather be happy than right any day" ~ Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
"Honor: if you need it defined, you don't have it" ~ Ron Swanson