Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. One of the biggest games of the NFL season is this weekend (Eagles-49ers), but we have college football to break down first.
In today’s SI:AM:
🏆 Conference championship weekend
⛹️♀️ South Carolina grinds out a win
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Let’s try to make sense of all this
The next three days are going to be a wild time in the world of college football. At 12 p.m. ET on Sunday, the College Football Playoff committee will announce the four teams that will be playing for the national championship—and it’s anybody’s guess who it will be.
To recap briefly, there are eight teams with one or zero losses that have a realistic chance of making the final four. Here’s how the committee ranked them this week:
- Georgia
- Michigan
- Washington
- Florida State
- Oregon
- Ohio State
- Texas
- Alabama
Of the eight, Ohio State is the only one not playing in a conference championship game this weekend and will need a few upsets if it hopes to sneak into the field. Georgia, Michigan and Washington are locks to get in if they win their conference titles—but it’s far from a guarantee that all three will win. While Michigan is a three-touchdown favorite in the Big Ten title game against Iowa, Georgia is favored by less than a touchdown against Alabama and Washington is, perhaps surprisingly, a 10.5-point underdog against Oregon at SI Sportsbook. (By putting the Ducks at No. 5, the committee has essentially declared the Pac-12 title game a play-in game.) The last undefeated team is Florida State, which is favored by 1.5 points against Louisville, but the Seminoles are hardly assured of getting into the Playoff even if they win. One or more losses by the teams currently in the top four would create some serious chaos. But where things start to get wacky is if the committee decides to stiff Florida State.
How the committee views the Seminoles is among the most fascinating parts of this equation. FSU losing to Louisville in the ACC title game would make this decision a lot easier, but it’s also entirely possible that the committee decides to omit a 13–0 Seminoles team from the Playoff. That’s because FSU was dealt a serious blow in its Nov. 18 win over North Alabama when star quarterback Jordan Travis sustained a serious leg injury. The committee says on its website that it will consider “factors such as unavailability of key players and coaches that may have affected a team’s performance during the season or likely will affect its postseason performance.” In other words, it may have believed that FSU was one of the best teams in the country with Travis under center, but it reserves the right to drop the Seminoles in the rankings if it believes they aren’t as formidable with backup Tate Rodemaker running the offense. That puts FSU in a difficult position tomorrow night. Just winning the game might not be enough to secure a spot in the Playoff. It would cause plenty of outrage, but it’s a possibility. As Pat Forde put it earlier this week, “[E]xcluding the Seminoles in that instance would invite a level of controversy that no committee has come close to taking on before.” FSU can strengthen its case by not just beating the Cardinals but winning by a lot of points in the process.
Part of the reason Florida State is in such a precarious position is that there are plenty of one-loss teams with strong résumés. The biggest challenge for the committee will be choosing which of those one-loss teams should earn a spot in the final field in the event that one or more of the current top four lose this weekend. Oregon would be a shoo-in if it beats Washington. The more difficult question is what to do with a one-loss Texas or Alabama. And there’s even the potential for Ohio State to slip back into the field if enough of the other contenders lose.
There is a distinct possibility that the SEC gets shut out of the Playoff if Alabama beats Georgia in the conference title game. It seems blasphemous, given that the SEC is the undisputed best conference in the country, but here’s why it’s realistic. The committee favors teams that win their conference championships. So even though Georgia is the top team in the rankings right now, if the Tide beat the Bulldogs in Atlanta, you’d figure the committee has to rank Alabama ahead. But another conference could spoil the SEC’s party in that event. If Texas takes care of business against Oklahoma State in the Big 12 title game, then the Longhorns would also be a one-loss conference champ—and, most crucially, they beat Alabama convincingly in Tuscaloosa. When choosing between two one-loss conference champions in that scenario, could the committee really ignore Texas’s win over Alabama and give the nod to the Tide just because their big win occurred more recently?
This is perhaps the most complicated the College Football Playoff selection process has been since its inception in 2014. I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.
The best of Sports Illustrated
Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports
- After Von Miller turned himself in to Dallas police yesterday for allegedly assaulting his pregnant girlfriend, Michael Rosenberg argues that the NFL can’t allow the Bills’ pass rusher to take the field.
- Greg Bishop likens Michigan’s current sign-stealing scandal to the Patriots’ Spygate controversy and argues that it shows the need for clarifying the unwritten rules of sports.
- Richard Johnson previews the SEC championship game, which, while it may feature two familiar teams, is different from those that came before it.
- The South Carolina women’s basketball team’s ugly win over North Carolina last night was its worst game of the season, but Emma Baccellieri makes the case that it showed why the rest of the country should be scared of the Gamecocks.
- The Eagles-Seahawks game in Week 15 is the first NFL game to be flexed into the Monday Night Football slot.
- LeBron James says he may skip a Lakers game to attend his son Bronny’s USC debut.
The top five...
… things I saw last night:
5. Alex Caruso’s game-tying three over Brook Lopez at the buzzer to force overtime.
4. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s bicycle kick goal.
3. Minnesota forward Parker Fox’s ferocious putback dunk that was sadly waived off due to a foul.
2. DK Metcalf’s sign language touchdown celebration.
1. Tristan Jarry’s goalie goal. He’s the 17th goalie to score in an NHL game and the first Penguins goalie to do so.
SIQ
Which school hired the first Black head football coach in SEC history on this day in 2003?
- Vanderbilt
- Mississippi State
- Ole Miss
- Kentucky
Yesterday’s SIQ: Which Auburn player returned a missed field goal 109 yards to beat Alabama on Nov. 30, 2013?
- Tre Mason
- Quan Bray
- Corey Mason
- Chris Davis
Answer: Chris Davis. The senior cornerback caught the ball after freshman kicker Adam Griffith’s 57-yard field goal attempt fell short and ran it all the way back, leading to Auburn radio announcer Rod Bramblett’s famous call of “Auburn’s gonna win the football game!”
In addition to being Auburn’s leading tackler that season, Davis was also the primary punt returner—but he wasn’t supposed to be the one back deep for the kick. Here’s what he wrote in a first-person piece for Sports Illustrated in 2015:
What’s crazy is, my roommate at Auburn at the time was defensive back Ryan Smith, and he originally went back on the return team to watch for the kick, right before the Alabama field goal attempt. Ryan was supposed to be the guy who would’ve caught the ball. But during a timeout, we went to the sideline, and I remember assistant coach Charlie Harbison said, “Put Chris back there, because he’s our primary punt return guy.” So, Coach (Gus) Malzahn made the change.
I remember afterward, somebody asked Ryan about the play: “Do you think you should’ve been back there?” But he said the coaches made the right decision, and I deserved every bit of it.
After leaving Auburn, Davis went unselected in the 2014 NFL draft but did enjoy a three-year career with the Chargers and 49ers.
