CFB Playoff system a "clown show"
The Audible with Stew, Bruce & Ralph: A show about college football
The Athletic
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2020
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
The Athletic's Bruce Feldman & Stewart Mandel react to the 2021 College Football Playoff field. Did the committee get it right? Cincinnati has the #1 defense in the country and finished undefeated but got jumped by 2-loss Oklahoma. Do they have a legitimate gripe? Do we know enough about Ohio State on the field after only playing 6 games? Plus, mailbag questions on the Auburn coaching search, silly season & new ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the latest edition of The Audible. |
| 0:26.1 | Presented by Trader Joe's, I'm Bruce Feldman, joined as always by my colleague, Stu Mandel. |
| 0:31.7 | We are taping this just a few moments after the CFP rankings were finally unfurled on the ranking show, which I think |
| 0:43.4 | is probably still going on for another three hours. |
| 0:46.5 | But, Stu, no surprises here. |
| 0:48.6 | I think most people, maybe outside of some folks who are dire Texas A&M fans, it's one Alabama, |
| 0:57.6 | two Clemson, three Ohio State, four Notre Dame. You have any quibbles with that? |
| 1:02.7 | No, I don't have any quibbles up on it based, you know, on the way the committee system works. |
| 1:08.2 | It's supposed to look at, you're not supposed to let one game overshadow the entire body of work. |
| 1:14.1 | And as bad as that Notre Dame lost to Clemson was, they still had the better resume than A&M. |
| 1:19.6 | I just think overall, it's a very uninspiring controversy, if you will. |
| 1:24.9 | We've had some heated debates over the years over four versus five. This one kind of |
| 1:28.6 | felt like anticlimactic because you're basically talking about a team that already got |
| 1:35.3 | blown out by both of those teams, Notre Dame and A&M, have already had blowout losses to the other |
| 1:41.1 | two teams that are making the playoff. So I think you and I, we've mentioned this several times offline now, but you kind of wish you could, this is one year I'd be fine if it were the BCS and you're just having two teams. You think there's any factor in the committee that looked at it and said, you know what, whoever is in the number four team, whether it's Notre Dame or A&M, would have to play Alabama. And we saw that from A&M and it wasn't close. Do you think that that entered their minds? They say they're not supposed to consider stuff like that, but they're not even supposed to, you know, you've done the mock exercise. You're just going through the rankings. You're not really looking at matchups. But how could that not enter your mind, right? |
| 2:19.4 | We've already saw this game. |
| 2:20.7 | Do we really want to see it again? |
| 2:22.3 | I think that probably also impacted the, I wouldn't be surprised, I guess I'll say, |
| 2:27.6 | if it impacted how Ohio State was seated relative to Notre Dame because you sure as heck didn't want to have a third |
| 2:36.8 | Clemson Notre Dame game. |
| 2:39.1 | No, no, you wouldn't. |
| 2:41.1 | Although it's still technically possible you could get that matchup regardless. |
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