Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: WVUAFM Tuscaloosa.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Welcome into the low tide here on 90.7 the Capstone. We got a nice little emergency podcast going here. The latest college football playoff rankings are out, and as of right now, Alabama would be in the College Football playoff. They are ranked number 11. 11.
Twitter is exploding.
The haters are very furious.
Initial thoughts, initial reactions. Did you think this was actually going to happen? Elliot, we'll start with you.
[00:00:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to say that I'm shocked. I'm not surprised at all, especially with the way that the dominoes fell. I think we said it, or at least I said it on Sunday in our normal show. Like, I was expecting it to be down to Alabama and Miami kind of vying for that last spot there. And they did choose Alabama over Miami for probably the exact same reasons that I did. So not entirely shocked. Do I like where they currently are sitting? I like the first round match with Notre Dame, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't scared that they would have to go play smu. So.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Adam?
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, for this one, you know, I thought the only one that they could really, I mean, committee could have done anything they wanted. The only team I really thought had the argument would have been Ole Miss. You know, they beat South Carolina by more points, they beat Georgia by more points, and they had beat Oklahoma.
And, you know, as soon as I saw Ole Miss, you know, as low as they were, I knew it would be Miami and then Alabama, because Miami, currently out of the current top 25, they'd only played one team. They lost to them. They have. They have no wins to really bolster them up. It's just, you know, they only have two losses, but when you have two losses but you haven't played anybody in the top 25, no top 25 wins, and you lost two out of your last three games, I didn't see how they were going to put Miami above Alabama. So I think they, you know, got it right.
The Notre Dame matchup, I like. I like if, you know, we'll have to see if all this works out the way that it would end up. You know, right now, SMU with that three seed, I would feel very confident facing SMU at a neutral site with them sitting for a month in Alabama getting that game against Notre Dame.
But can Alabama win on the road? You know, we thought they had fixed it when they went to lsu.
Then you had the game in Oklahoma. So I'm, you know, I'm going to be Worried about them going on the road, but that specific. I feel better about them going to Notre Dame or if it ends up being a Penn State then I would going to Ohio State, going to Georgia, going back to Knoxville. I, this, I would rather have this matchup than the other one that it could be.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. I mean, I feel like this was kind of expected. You saw the betting odds at least today shift dramatically in Alabama's favor. They went from I believe a plus 200 ish to minus 200, you know, by the end of the day. And even teams like Miami and South Carolina just kept getting further and further away, which kind of just ended up being what happened. I feel like the College Football Playoff committees come become pretty predictable at least with, you know, last year I definitely was in the camp that believed that they were going to put Alabama in over Florida State simply because of, you know, the quarterback injury. You saw them in the ACC championship game that year and how terrible they looked in that game.
It just plays a big factor and how you look going in obviously makes a big difference here. Now with that being said, we're in a new 12 team playoff era. There's more spots open. I feel like the whole thought, you know, I didn't really see a lot of people saying that Miami was going to get in. Their resume as a whole is pretty weak. Especially you know, they won a lot of games that were extremely close, a lot of games that were decided on some questionable calls at the end.
So it doesn't surprise me. It surprises me that they are above Ole Miss and South Carolina. South Carolina obviously had the win over Clemson, which I'll argue is pretty overrated, but it was the most solid win out of the three that we really thought were contenders. I was really shocked to see Miami put above Ole Miss and South Carolina, both of which I thought were stronger teams. Um, but obviously two lost team. Um.
The chair of the College Football Playoff committee, Ward Manual said what it really came down to was Alabama was 3 and 1 against current top 25 teams and Miami lost their only top 25 matchup. Now here's something interesting. Obviously they're in the 11 seed right now, you know, matchup with Notre Dame. And a lot of people have been discussing how this SMU Clemson ACC title game, which will be the last one on, you know, conference championship weekend.
It's been said that like if SMU was to lose that game, then Alabama could potentially be out. But I think a lot of the, a lot of the talk, or at least what it seems like the committee is saying might kind of signal otherwise.
He was directly asked about SMU and its security if it was going to lose the ACC title game. He said that he can't predict the future and it would depend how the game is played. So, you know, potentially not the same kind of safety that the SEC and the Big Ten teams are getting. And he also said directly he was asked, can SMU drop below Alabama with a loss? And he said potentially, yes.
If you go off of the same kind of logic that they're going by off these top 25 wins, you, it would appear that Alabama is in regardless. Now I do, I think that's necessarily true. No, but what this tells me is that smu, if you lose that game, it better be close, better be last second loss because otherwise you might be on the outside looking in.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. You know, if it ends up being like, you know, you were talking about, you know, if it ended up being like an SEC or the Big Ten game where it was like a 40 point loss, maybe they could drop them. I still don't see, I mean, I don't see those games going that way. But the acc, you know, we, you know, we haven't, at least we've seen Georgia and Texas play and it was double digits. But you know, Texas started figuring some stuff out in the second half a little bit. We haven't seen Oregon and Penn State, but you know, most of those, you know, Big Ten games were competitive. We don't know really what we're going to get out of SMU and Clemson. And so if Clemson came out, they ended up winning by 40. I don't think it's that hard to believe that they would drop SMU because it's only two teams in between Alabama and smu so they could definitely drop. But if it is close like you said, Nick, you know, how do you drop them? And basically saying, you know, we've talked about how we're not going to punish you for the conference championship and now, you know, a close loss and now you're a two loss team with that second loss being an extra game. You know, I think that might set a bad precedent going forward. Now. They could obviously maybe decide to expand in two years because the 122 playoff is only for sure this year and next year and then they got to figure out what they're going to do after that.
[00:08:06] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a trial run. And I think the interesting thing is that the committee's put themselves in a really awkward position on this one because you run into this Situation with in the case that SMU loses to Clemson. But let's consider Indiana for a second. What exactly is Indiana's resume besides only having one loss?
[00:08:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:26] Speaker C: So now there's two schools that like. Well, I say schools, I mean schools of thought in this case that as like someone who's scheduling like these games for like your team can take you can a play a bunch of really bad teams and ensure the fact that you go undefeated, like, you better win your games and you're in. Or alternatively, you can play a little bit of a harder schedule and then knock off some top 25 teams and then you're also in. So I think that it kind of screws over SMU in this regard. So if they lose their conference championship, okay, well, there's a chance that maybe they get bounced out. If it's a bad loss, who exactly is Indiana played? And they're insulated from having to play another game because they missed their Big Ten championship game. They can't play it. Right. But the one time that they played a top 25 opponent, they got boat raced. It wasn't even close. And quite frankly, frankly, they might be one of the weakest teams on the list as of right now.
I think if I'm. Well, I'm looking at this, the only other ones that I would even say are remotely near them in terms of like very beatable by any team are probably Arizona State, Boise State, and then smu. The ACC champion would be the other one. So really your Big 12 champion, your ACC champion, and then your Group of 5 team are all the other ones.
And so the question would be like, what do you do with a team like, like Indiana in that case? Because it's hard. Some people were arguing on Twitter, right? Should Alabama be ahead of Indiana in this case? Because they're saying, keep the same energy that you had with Miami. You said that they had the better record against top 25 teams. They had a better record against teams with the winning record. I'm pretty sure Indiana has only played like two teams that have a winning record all season and they've played like 12 games. So how can you really reward a team that's just playing a bunch of teams that cannot win in that regard? So I don't know. It's just a weird precedent that kind of opens it up. Adam, you kind of mentioned expanding.
Would that be good? Would that be bad? I don't really know. We'll have to see how it works itself out. I just do not see the ACC having two teams. I think they're going to have to pick one.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. First off, let me just get on the train early, please. No more expansion. We do not need to be arguing between which four loss teams should get in.
I did see a great idea somebody proposed like the, the NIT for college football where you put like five lost teams. That would, that would be a blast. Let's make that happen. That actually sounds like fun. But you know, obviously you talked about Indiana and they were unfortunate, like to be honest, with the way that their schedule fell, you know, they did not. Their in conference schedule was extremely weak. Now obviously they had some out of conference games that, you know, they could have scheduled harder opponents. The only thing that I'll say about that is that these, you know, out of conference schedules for football teams are not like college basketball teams. They're decided well, well in advance. Now you've seen recently some teams, you know, canceling certain matchups and getting better ones in play. So it is something that can happen. But this is not like college basketball where you can just, you know, the season before, hey, we're going to go. I'm NATO, so I'm going to go stack my entire schedule with difficult teams. Although I wish that's how it was.
You know, go ahead.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: I'll just say it'll be interesting, you know, seeing how, you know, this, this year worked out. You know, some people were saying before, like if Alabama got left out, maybe they should stop trying to schedule these horror out of conference opponents that they started scheduling the home at homes with. And you know, next year Alabama is going to have Wisconsin in Tuscaloosa and Florida State in Tallahassee and who knows if Florida State's going to be, you know, good next year. They kind of, you know, fell off the map after almost made it to the playoffs. So, you know, it might not look good, but you know, Alabama tried to schedule two out of conference tough games for one year.
So it'll just be interesting how, you know, people think about that going forward.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's, there's a lot of concerns. There's a lot of things that are going to have to be ironed out as we continue to move on.
You know, like I've discussed on other episodes of this podcast, like there are going to be concerns raised from the sec, from the Big Ten, from, you know, especially from the sec. You see two teams who they thought were pretty solid in South Carolina and Ole Miss being ranked below a Miami team that lost the only ranked game it played this season.
So that you know, it's, it is concerning personally some other things, you know, just kind of looking at the rest of the bracket, which are the rest of the rankings that I'll kind of go through quickly. Oregon, Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame up to four, but remember they cannot be seeded higher than fifth because they do not have a conference championship to win. Georgia at 5, Ohio State, Tennessee, SMU, Indiana, Boise State, Alabama, Miami to close out the top 12. And Arizona State is currently the highest ranked Big 12 champion which would get the auto bid that would be in the 12 seed as of now, although Iowa State is very close behind at 16.
And I'll pose this question to the rest of you as far as you know, how you feel about the rest of the rankings, those sorts of things. But the one thing that jumps out to me immediately is Ohio State being ranked above Tennessee. It would not really impact the bracket as of right now.
But that, that, that one's a head scratcher to me. I mean Ohio State had a horrible loss to Michigan. I mean it is hard for me to put into words how bad that loss was. Right. I would say like obviously Alabama had a horrible loss against Oklahoma.
The Ohio State losses almost on the same kind of level as far as what we've seen from a team, from those teams this season. Right. Just completely unexpected results fed them the game. I mean Ohio, Michigan has not been able to pass the ball all year. They're a very one dimensional team and for Michigan to win that game, all of these very specific dominoes had to fall into place. And they all did because I mean, in my opinion Ohio State kind of threw the game away. But to see them ranked above, you know, they only dropped what they were three in the last rankings.
Two, something like that, two or three, one of those and then to only drop to six. You know, I don't know that's a bit of a concern for me.
[00:15:15] Speaker C: Well, I mean I think the, what you're seeing is a little bit of, you know, the bias that the SEC and the Big Ten have. But the committee can only take so much of this. I think you can stomach maybe trying to have a two loss Ohio State not drop as far. But as for you kind of mentioned South Carolina, you mentioned Ole Miss being ranked below Miami. It is a hard sell. And you're going to run into the same issue that you ran into last year where the ACC is going to say, well, why is our two loss team ranked behind three three loss SEC teams? You're giving SEC bias. Now the problem again that the committee ran themselves into is that they gave this explanation as to why Alabama is ranked ahead of Miami. The problem is, is that Ole Miss in South Carolina also fit the exact same mold.
So realistically, all three of them should be ranked ahead of Miami. But you're going to be really hard pressed to try to find like a two loss Miami team that's ranked at like 14 or 15. That's just going to be a really hard sell to a lot of people. So what it seems to me is that they kind of bit the bullet with Ohio State. They didn't drop them as far a little bit of Big ten bias. But then when it came to the three SEC teams in Miami, they're like, let's pick the one that we want out of these three. We'll rank them ahead of Miami, but the other two have to stay behind. And that's what it kind of feels like to me.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, with Miami, you know, it's, it's really about how many, six of how many bowl eligible teams they beat on the road. Right. You know, that was, that was the thing going around why they should be ranked ahead of Alabama. You know, they beat more bowl eligible teams on the road. Kind of ridiculous. But you know, with Ohio State, you know, you could kind of see the, the train of thought. One, the brand, you know, like you were saying, you know, it's kind of like you didn't say brand specifically, but you know, not drop in Ohio State. As far the 1 point loss on the road at Oregon beating Penn State on the road, you can kind of see why they kept them up there.
I do agree with Elliot's point on, you know, Miami probably should have been behind Ole Miss and South Carolina. If you're really going by that.
This is one thing, you know, I had issues with with the committee. I mean, it's different people every year.
All these people have their biases. They're all attached to different universities. So you don't really know, you know, exactly where they're coming from. That's why I, you know, wish there was a different way of selecting these teams. Maybe people that would be more impartial or you know, people have pointed this out, they've used the old BCS system and most of the rankings come back almost the same as what the committee's done. But would it be easier to say, you know, the computer ranked them this way or all these people came in and, you know, oh, this guy's the athletic director of Ohio State. Of course he's going to put Ohio State you know, higher even with those losses. So I wish we could figure out a different way of seeding these teams or picking these rankings.
But, yeah, it's. It's going to be interesting. You know, I know they said, you know, Alabama, Miami, Ole Miss, South Carolina, they said those were set. Those aren't going to change.
And, you know, if, you know, they said, if Penn State, they didn't say this, but when they were breaking down the bracket, you know, they were saying, basically Penn State losing to Oregon would still have the five seed because they were already ahead of Notre Dame. It'll be interesting to see if they end up start moving those teams around just because of what happened on the conference championship weekend. But, you know, you know, overall, the rankings I don't think were terrible. I just wish there was a different system for how we figured these things out.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. One of my biggest issues for the longest time, obviously you brought up some concerns with the committee. I have the same exact concerns. I mean, there is no way that this committee can be unbiased. Like, if we're just, if we're being 100% honest here. Let me just read to you some of the. I won't name names, right? Some of these are going to be easy to figure out. The first one I'll do. I will name the name. Ward Manuel. He is the athletic director at Michigan. Now. It's not like this is a college football program that, like, is a stranger to, like, being competitive. They won the national championship last year. I don't understand how a team, how somebody like that can be unbiased. I mean, it. Like, if we're, if we're being 100% real here, like, I just, I don't get that one right. And then you've got. Okay, so you've got a former Nebraska player.
You've got.
Navy's athletic director. Easily could have been in this discussion had they won more. Nevada's athletic director, Virginia's athletic director, Arkansas's athletic director, Baylor's athletic director, former Arizona State player, former Oregon State and Nebraska head coach. I mean, I, I do not understand the thought process when it came down to picking this. I understand that you probably don't want to make up your entire. You do want this to turn into the Heisman voting, which has been a complete mess. Right? Like, you want to get people who know what they're talking about who are going to make the right decisions, but this is almost a scenario where it is impossible to have people who are not biased. So maybe we really do need to go back. You know, especially considering like how close the metrics have been. Like, perhaps we need to go back. Now. If we had been in that kind of system last year, would that have kept Alabama out?
I don't know. It.
It depends. Right. And obviously there's going to be all these niche circumstances where we can say, well, what if this happens? Right. But like, I don't know, personally, for me, a major problem with the way that the committee is set up. And that's, you know, coming from someone who has most likely benefited from the decisions that the committee has made.
[00:21:23] Speaker C: Well, I think what you're referencing is the fact that there's a lack of consistency and there's a lack of transparency on the end of the committee because it's not exactly clear what they're doing and it's not exactly clear like what the actual metrics are, how they're actually determining who goes where. It would be one thing if there was like a set formula. We knew we as fans or we as coaches, we have, we as athletic directors could just plug in our statistics for the season and then see where we fall. But that's not the case. It's kind of one of those things where we're told it's on a case by case basis, it's season by season. But the reality of the situation is you can only do this so many times before you actually start making decisions that do not seem like they'd seem unreasonable to a certain degree. And like I kind of mentioned, you know, based on their argument for putting Alabama above Miami realistically, Ole Miss and South Carolina should also be above Miami realistically, Alabama should even be ranked above Indiana if that's what the metrics you're going by. But I know that that's not what they're going to do.
And so it's not really who is making the decision. It is the process of the decision making that they're doing. And until that they decide that they're going to release how they're doing it or they actually create a set formula on how that's going to be done. I don't think that's a problem that's going to be resolved.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: So I have how the BCS would have ranked teams at the end of last year, you know, going into the playoffs. And you know, you would have still had people upset. It would have just been a different fan base. So we have Michigan number one, Washington number two, Alabama number three, Florida State number four, and Texas number five. So you would have still had people upset. You Know, the Texas fans would have brought up the head to head argument over Alabama.
We ended up having Florida stayed upset that they were left out with a quarterback that was injured and couldn't play in the playoff. But almost every year it's either the same teams or close to the same teams. And now you got a 12 team playoff. I don't see why not. You couldn't use a system like that. I know they want to do the automatic bids for the conference champions. We'll see if that gets changed up with how they see teams in the future. But you know, it's interesting.
[00:23:41] Speaker C: I think you have to give the automatic bids to the conference champions because you're going to be in a situation where you're going to wind up leaving out an ACC or a Big 12 team. And that's just the reality of the situation. The conferences are weaker and there's no way of running away from that. There's no way of saying that that's not true, because it is.
But if we were doing strictly metrics, those teams are going to be left out and you're going to be left with either 1, 2 Big Ten teams, 1 Big Ten, 1sec or 2sec teams to replace them. That's realistically what's going to happen.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: You know, I think you could do something if you still wanted to be automatic bid in, you know, winning the conference, but I think maybe you could do it to where it's not, oh, four out of the five champions get the first round by maybe you actually seed them within the field. Like if they're, you know, the two worst teams, put them at the 11 and 12 seed. But you still made it into the playoff.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: Yeah. One thing that I think you're going to see pick up some significant steam over the next couple of years, like especially depending on just how everything plays out with a potential super league and, you know, conference realignment and that sort of thing is that you might see these individual conferences have their own playoff. Like there, there's no reason why you could not see a semifinal round of the SEC championship and then play a championship. Right. Put four teams in, see them based on record and the tiebreakers and whatever, and play it out for the one spot. Right. And then that gives you a whole nother. Now obviously you would have to adjust the conference schedule, those sorts of things, but then you could, you know, keep that, you know, keep the integrity of the conference championships. Because that's ultimately what I think like we're really getting away from. Right. Is that if we already, I feel like, you know, when you have conference title games that essentially are, I'll say, like, quote unquote, meaningless, right, because you get the first round by. But, like, you have Oregon and Penn State playing in the Big Ten title game, and the only, like, you can argue that, like, Penn State, like, if they were to lose that game, they're probably not going to drop in the rankings at all, and they would be in a better position than Oregon would. So then, like, you know, other than, like, pride, right, and like, you know, getting a ring, like, what is the point of, like, playing the game? And I think that if you continue to expand, it's going to get even worse. Right? We already saw the concerns with. Okay, now you've got. You had, like, teams actively, you know, quote unquote, saying that, like, they did not want to make the conference title game because, you know, it could have been a bad thing. Right. Obviously, that was before they all picked up a third loss. But, you know, I think that these are concerns that you're just going to continue to see. And then the other thing that I, you know, feel like needs to change here is if we're going to keep this how it is after the first round, you have to reseed the bracket.
It's. I mean, like, because some of these. Some of these matchups that we're getting, like, obviously me and Elliot talked about this before we came on Georgia, Texas, we could see that matchup three times in the same season.
[00:26:53] Speaker C: It's ridiculous.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: Like, with only a couple of games, like, gap in between. I mean, that's. I just do not. I do not see that we could potentially get another Ohio State, Oregon matchup, which, you know, probably. There are probably a lot of people that want to see that because it was a decently close game.
But, like, I don't know, it's like some of these paths. These paths are not. You're not being rewarded correctly for how, like, how you did, like, Oregon, as the one seed, as this bracket stands today, is that A is at a disadvantage, and they shouldn't be because they're one of the only undefeated teams in the country.
Like, yeah, it's not. Not solid enough.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: You're going to end up having, you know, Oregon have to play, you know, Ohio State again, and then you're gonna have, you know, potentially Penn State playing the weakest conference champion and then playing the second group of five in Boise State. So I agree with the receiving or, you know, maybe. I mean, I, like, I know it's not going to happen because it is about Money, it's about making money. I wish, you know, you still had those first two rounds to where it was on campus. So like, even then you could have that matchup that Ellie want so much of somebody going to the Blue turf and seeing if they can win in Boise.
But yeah, some. Something's got to change. I don't know if it'll be before next year's playoff, but it definitely will be before they figure out what they're going for for the foreseeable future.
[00:28:32] Speaker C: Well, I think the biggest thing that needs to be put on watch and so I'm going to call out a couple teams that are currently in this bracket.
Well, it'll be the winner of SMU Clemson because they're guaranteed to play. So your ACC champion, your Big 12 champion, and your Group of 5 champion, you are on notice right now because if you get waxed in one of these games, like if you lose badly, there's going to be an argument to be had that there actually should not even be an automatic bid for one of these weaker conference champions. So the biggest issue is that you better play up to a standard. And especially so as it currently sits, if Alabama beat Notre Dame and let's say SMU won and they go and they play smu, if Alabama beats the snot out of smu, a three loss SEC team just absolutely waxing the ACC champion, they're going to make the argument the ACC should have never had a team in the first place. We probably should have had South Carolina, we probably should have had Ole Miss, which is valid to a certain extent. This is about wanting to have, you know, the best matchups possible. You want to have the best teams in. Do I think that the team's at the top of the accident, top of the Big 12 and the top of your group of fives, are they up to snuff with like the mid tier Big Ten and SEC teams? No, absolutely not. But I think you also can't disenfranchise them. It's just you better play up to a certain standard. We've watched in past years. TCU got manhandled. That was embarrassing. You know, Texas for a good bit there against Washington, that was pretty embarrassing. But then Washington followed up with their own PAC12 embarrassment by letting them back in that game. So there's. And then Washington proceeded. It wasn't really a contest against Michigan. That was pretty bad. So you, you better, you better show up. You do not have any room for error because then you are going to open up a whole can of worms that this is going to wind up just being an sec, Big 10 like love fest in this.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Yeah. And another thing just to add on to that, you know, you. Even if SMU is talented enough in that game because, you know they played pretty well, I mean we still don't really know exactly how good they are because you know, we can talk about the strength of schedule and everything but you know, in the. We'll just take the projected bracket right now. Alabama, Notre Dame play.
Yeah, they waited a little bit, they had a few weeks off. But they play, you know, a tough game in South Bend. You know that basically the winner of that, that is a tune up game. You have, barring injuries and anything that happens, but they get a game to tune up. SMU would have sat for a month. You know, we've seen it in other games where teams take a while to wake up in a bowl game or they just don't show up because they're rusty. And it used to be both teams did it. Well, that's going to be for like an Alabama Notre Dame matchup. They might be rusty starting off, but they're going to have that whole game to wake up and then they go play SMU who's been sitting for a month and you know, like if they are sleepwalking in the first half or the whole game and they get blown out, you know people are going to bring up, well, they shouldn't have even been in there. And it might not have even been that they couldn't compete. It was just, you know, the way that the seating was. So, you know, there's. They need to show up for that reason. But you know, it's. I just wish it was. I wish it was kind of condensed down to where you didn't have teams waiting so long to play, especially when you're given the first round buys. And now we have a championship. You know, January 20th.
[00:31:55] Speaker C: Sure. I think it's okay to have this automatic bid for the conference champions by far. I think it is hard to argue against not giving the Big 12 in the ACC at least one representative.
Actually. If there's anything in this bracket, if there's any team that I have the biggest issue or beef with, there's probably two of them. One of them is Penn State. We've kind of already hit on it. You know, there's really no reason they should be ranked that high. They lose, they're really not going to fall down that much. They're a pretty fraudulent team.
I think everybody knows that to a certain degree. They're going to play one good team and probably fold like a launcher at the local barbecue. But the other team that I have an issue with is Indiana because quite frankly, I think if they played Alabama, Ole Miss or South Carolina, head to head, even Miami, I think that all of those teams beat Indiana. And this is where, again, the committee, I said it earlier, they put themselves in a hole by saying that this is the metric they're going off of. Indiana should not even be close to the top 12 if that's the case.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know that I disagree with you there. A lot of good points. There's a lot to hit on. Obviously there will be even more to hit on when we do get the final rankings on selection Sunday. This coming Sunday, December 8th. Our next show will be immediately following those rankings. So we will know the bracket, we will know if Alabama makes it, we will know where they will be headed and we'll have complete reaction on that. Before we go, I will ask one final question and we'll try and keep it brief. If SMU loses in the ACC title game, does Alabama make the playoff?
[00:33:33] Speaker C: Elliot, I'm going to say yes under the fact that it was kind of already hinted at that, yeah, they probably dropped. They're close enough to Alabama in the rankings as is. If they're going off of the metric of why Alabama is ranked ahead of Miami, I don't see why you can't do the same with smu. Arguably, SMU probably has an even worse schedule than Miami, so I would probably say yes.
Although could you make the argument that both Clemson and SMU could be an. Absolutely.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:34:02] Speaker C: If you're going to go just straight off of record. But based on what was said today and the metrics that they're doing, I don't see a. I don't see a world in which SMU makes it.
[00:34:11] Speaker A: For me, I think if SMU loses that game, I think SMU still gets in, whether I agree with it or not. I do think the committee will, you know, keep SMU in there one to, you know, kind of keep conferences away from getting rid of their conference championship if you knock them out. But also, you know, you're saying they had a second loss, but they also played a whole nother game than the rest of the teams did. So I think if SMU loses the game, Alabama will be on the outside looking in and SMU will take that final spot.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. I would say the exact same thing. I believe that SMU would be in and honestly, rightfully so, you know, Because I do not think you should be punished for losing in your conference title game if you only have like they only have one loss going in.
Now if this was like, let's say they had two losses going in, you know, let's say they were in Clemson spot. Absolutely you can be punished for playing in the conference title game. You are trying to play your way in just like in the Big 12. Right. But the SEC and the Big Ten are held to a different standard and rightfully so because they are much higher caliber conferences, regardless of what anybody will tell you than the Big 12 and the ACC and obviously the group of five. So I think rightfully so, I do believe SMU would be in and I believe that would be the right choice.
[00:35:36] Speaker C: But I want to just say I completely agree with you too. I think that smu, if they lose rightfully, should be up there. I just don't think that that's what the committee is going to do.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think kind of like I talked about earlier, you saw a lot of seeds being planted and man, like, if you think the backlash is bad right now, just wait until potentially SMU gets left out for Alabama, the backlash will be 300 times louder.
Fortunately, we're going to be here to discuss all of that chaos, all the fallout, whether Alabama gets in or not, the potential matchup. We will be back Sunday, December 8, sometime after the final rankings come out to discuss it all.
Gentlemen, it's been a blast here on this emergency pod on the Low Tide. Thank you for tuning in. We will be back. Thank you for listening here on 90.7. The capstone.
