First and foremost, congratulations to Clemson University for their huge win over the University of Alabama in the 2019 College Football Championship. Their program fought hard all year, never lost a game, and displayed true talent to get to the big stage and perform the way they did.
Clemson University winning 44-16 over the University of Alabama
But throughout the entire playoff process, this year especially, there was controversy. While there is always a level of controversy about who makes the four-team playoff, the controversy extended further to the first round of the playoffs. Let’s discuss.
UGA lining up against Alabama
In the final weeks of the college football season, the University of Georgia played the University of Alabama in a tightly fought game. At half time, the Bulldogs were up by 7 and gained a 14-point lead early in the 3rd quarter. Despite this performance, the Crimson Tide still came back to win 35-28, handing the UGA their 2nd loss of the season and basically eliminating them from playoff contentions. What is interesting, however, is in a post-game interview, Coach Saban said the only team they truly feared in the playoffs were the Georgia Bulldogs.
The Final Selection for the 2019 College Football Playoffs
After this loss, the fate of the playoffs was pretty much set. The first and second seed would go to Alabama and Clemson, while the third and fourth seed went to the University of Notre Dame and Oklahoma. While these were techinically the best four teams on paper, many disagreed with the selection. Notre Dame played an extremely weak schedule the entire year, beating only a couple of good teams while Oklahoma was extremely inconsistent, beating great teams but losing to terrible teams as well. It was these last two seeds that people had the most concern about, and rightfully so. Long story short, when the two top ranked teams played the questionable teams, they got absolutely destroyed, proving that they did not deserve to be in the playoffs.
The College Football Playoff Trophy
The true controversy comes down to these two simple questions: Should the college football playoffs be expanded from only 4 teams? And, should a team who played an extremely weak strength of schedule be even consider when other teams, who might have one or two losses, played extremely hard teams all year?
Personally, I believe that something needs to change. But I also believe that expanding the college football playoffs might not be the best solution. The committee needs to find an alternative to creating thousands of angry fans or college football will lose major viewership very soon. What do you guys think a viable solution could be? As always, very interested in your thoughts surrounding the controversy.
Thank you for reading. Signing off, Woz.
