Ohio State and Indiana have been the No. 1 and 2 teams in every College Football Playoff ranking reveal this season, so it is no surprise that when the fourth iteration of the rankings was released on Tuesday night, the two Big Ten squads were once again at the top. In fact, I would venture to guess that unless the result of the Big Ten Championship Game on Saturday is 2014-levels of lopsided, OSU and IU will still be Nos. 1 and 2 on Sunday when the official seedings are revealed; they also happen to be the two prohibitive favorites to win the national title, according to FanDuel, for what it’s worth.
So, that brings me to the question: why are we still doing conference championship games? Now, obviously, I know the answer (as it is with everything across college football) is money, but beyond that, why are we going through this?
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In an era where leagues have 18 teams, and there’s no guarantee that the conference schedules will be balanced, how are we really sure who the top teams are?
Look at the ACC, Miami (10-2, 6-2) is the No. 12 team in the CFP rankings this week, but is not playing in the conference title game. The Hurricanes are five spots above Virginia (10-2, 7-1) in the CFP. UVA is the No. 1 team in the conference standings, and rightfully so, as they are the only team with one ACC loss. However, they are playing Duke (7-5, 6-2), because of convoluted tiebreakers also involving Miami, Pitt, SMU, and Georgia Tech, because they all finished with the same conference record, but didn’t all play each other, so there was no definitive winner. So, instead, the best team in the conference is likely going to be left out of the CFP, and the ACC could get shut out altogether if Duke wins the title.
If we are going to stick with this conference title thing, then ties that can’t be decided with results from actual games should be broken by CFP ranking; none of this record against common opponents, scoring margin against teams with feline mascots, or coin toss stuff. Just put the best team in the game, that’s what’s best for the conference and for the sport as a whole.
In terms of the penultimate rankings, the Buckeyes (12-0) remained No. 1 while the Indiana Hoosiers (12-0) held onto the No. 2 spot. Georgia (11-1) moved into third place, with No. 4 Texas Tech (11-1) and No. 5 Oregon (11-1) rounding out the top five.
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The other Big Ten teams in the rankings included USC (9-3) at No. 16, Michigan (9-3) at No. 19, and Iowa (8-4) at No. 23. Additionally, the Buckeyes’ season-opening opponent the Texas Longhorns (9-3) are at No. 13, almost certainly too far down to make the, despite knocking off Texas A&M on Saturday.
Currently, FanDuel has the Buckeyes as the odds-on favorite to win the national title at +185. IU is their closest competitor at +380. UGA is all the way back at +750, followed by Notre Dame and Oregon at +1000, and Texas Tech at +1100.
So if both the committee and the bookmakers think Ohio State and Indiana are definitively the two best teams in the country, why are we forcing them to play an essentially meaningless game in the chase for the national title? Don’t get me wrong, I know that conference titles still have immense value to the teams and fans, but I’m talking about from a structural level.
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If a season of college football is designed to eventually crown a champion, why are we insisting on adding a layer to the process that has little to no impact on that outcome? If Ohio State beats Indiana, literally nothing will change from where it is now. If Indiana beats Ohio State, they will flip spots and have different paths to the title, but as the two prohibitive best teams in the country, there’s a pretty good chance they will both be there regardless of their seeding, and some people argue that the No. 1 seed is the worst of the teams that receive first-round byes.
All this game does is give the conference another way to make money and give the teams a chance to have their players get hurt before heading into the playoffs. Despite not being all that old, the conference championship is antiquated in modern college football.
Obviously, we still want to have conference titles, especially if champions get some sort of auto-bid to the playoff, whatever format that takes down the line. But someone needs to be the adult in the college football room and step in and say these 18+ team leagues are bad for the sport. I’d be good with 10 to 12-team leagues where everybody plays everybody else; that way, it is very easy to figure out who the best team is.
Start the season in what is currently Week 0, and with the elimination of championship weekend, you can start the playoffs the second weekend of December, so that the title game happens earlier in January, to avoid getting completely drowned out by the NFL playoffs.
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I know that there are likely never going to be common-sense decisions made by organizations that rely on billion-dollar checks to stay afloat, but no one seems to have thought ahead to how any of this was going to play out when they started cashing those checks. A little forethought and planning singularly focused on what’s best for college football would, in many cases, lead to the end of conference title games.
So, I am going to enjoy Saturday’s matchup between the two best teams in college football, and I will look forward to them meeting again in Miami on Monday, Jan. 19, when it actually matters.
