Pat McAfee’s Call Against College Football Playoffs Opens Eyes as Multiple Bigwigs Sympathize With Kirby Smart & Dan Lanning

Boasting a 13-0 record and being the N0.1 team in the country, Oregon was handed a bye in the college football playoffs. The B1G 10 winners took on OSU, who had seen off Tennessee in the quarterfinals. Well-rested and prepared, the Ducks were expected to continue their march to the national championship game. But they were beaten soundly 41-21. Georgia (No.2), Boise State (No.3), and Arizona (No.4), all conference winners, went out in their first game in the playoffs. The notion that automatic bids to the CFP playoffs was dispelled in no time.

The offers for bye week initially sounded too lucrative for the teams, but they are now paying the cost. Each of the four highest-ranked conference champions had 24 days off between their conference championship games and their first playoff games, something that obviously didn’t help their cause. While those four teams remained without competitive football for over three weeks, their opponents had already been through the intensity of one playoff game. So is the system rewarding or punishing for those who finish high in the rankings? 

This was the topic of discussion on The Rich Eisen Show on Friday. Eisen talked about how bye advantage counts for little in the current format of the college football playoffs, with the top-ranked teams getting idle, and suggested a solution to reward those sides. Eisen said,

“Whoever gets the bye, gets to have a home game because the advantage of the bye doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like the NFL where you play a week 18, then you get a bye and then you play a home game. But in the NFL a bye week does mean a lot cause you’re in the middle of a week-to-week slog. In college football, your last game is either the last Saturday of November or the first Saturday of December and then your first game is the 20th or the 21st or the 22nd what does the bye mean? Everybody who’s playing a first-round game just got a bye.”

According to Eisen, a team like OSU, who didn’t play in the conference championship had a similar advantage as their playoff opponents. This is due to the fact they had to wait close to three weeks after their regular season to play in their first bowl game. So the question is what is the advantage the college football committee is handing to its top conference winners?

“So it’s not perfect at all by any stretch of the imagination. But the one thing that I would say is that if you get a bye you shouldn’t just get a neutral site game, you get one at home,” Eisen added. The situation for Oregon was unfair in many ways.

Even before their defeat, concerns were raised over the tough path ahead for them if they wanted to get to the national championship. The Ducks were going to play the winner of the OSU vs Tennessee game, which, as it proved, was never going to be easy. Even if Dan Lanning’s side had managed to come out on top, their next opponents would have been the No. 5 Texas in Dallas, essentially a road game.

On the other hand, Penn State, beaten by Oregon in the Big Ten Championship, had a much easier route lined up with games against Boise State and SMU. The expansion of the college football playoffs was seen as a necessary development so that many of the deserving teams aren’t left out, but it seems it has its flaws, as Pat McAfee also pointed out.

Speaking on his show on January 2 McAfee said, “They say is it rest? is it rust? Some of these teams waited like three weeks before playing ball. That’s a long time, while another team is kind of gearing up. You can get healthy, but you can also get a little bit too comfortable you can also kind of fail on your fundamentals and techniques. You can also have to get like woken up in the first quarter which all these teams have had to do thus far.” McAfee wasn’t too off the mark when he said teams need to wake up in the first quarter.

The teams without a bye week outscored their bye opponents by 42-3 in the first quarter. In addition to Oregon’s defeat, No. 7 Notre Dame beat No. 2 Georgia convincingly by 23-10 while No. 6 Penn State beat No. 3 Boise State comfortably by 31-14. Only the No. 5 Texas had to go to OT to overcome Arizona State in an overtime thriller 39-31, but that was mainly down to their mistakes that allowed their Big 12 opponents to get back into the game.

McAfee’s fellow analyst

The semi-finals will have two teams that were beaten in a conference title game: Penn State and Texas. Notre Dame does not play in a conference, and OSU did not reach the Big Ten title game after losing to rivals Michigan in the final week of the regular season.

Dan Patrick too sympathized with Dan Lanning saying, “For Penn State to lose their Big 10 championship game and then get games against SMU and Boise State and the winner of the Big 10 Championship gets a week off in Ohio State it’s just not equitable right? It’s not equitable.” 

Despite the outcry, a change in the playoff system next season seems unlikely, some suggestions such as the one made by Eisen of giving the top teams a home game in the first round is a feasible idea. The loss must have hurt for Lanning given how his team has performed this season. While many have sympathized with his side’s predicament, the Oregon HC is not making any excuses for the defeat.

Dan Lanning takes responsibility for the loss

As the only undefeated team in FBS, many expected Oregon to go all the way. Yes, they were handed a tough first round and there is an argument that the scheduling didn’t help, Lanning has stayed away from using the long resting period between their two games as an excuse for their early exit.

Speaking after the game he said, “We had an opportunity. We didn’t take advantage of the opportunity. I’m not going to make excuses for our opportunity.” When asked whether the long wait time between Oregon’s games was a reason for the defeat, Lanning outright labeled it as an excuse.

“I think that’s an excuse. I thought our guys prepared well going in. Obviously, they had a better plan than us. But that’s an excuse. That’s an opportunity that we had to recharge. I thought our guys did practice well. I’d tell you if that wasn’t the case. I thought they had a great focus. I just don’t think our plan was good enough. I think they had a great plan to attack us. So credit to those guys,” he said.

When the new format of the college football playoffs was first announced, it was believed that it would benefit those finishing high in the rankings and that it would be a more fair assessment of a team’s strength and consistency over a longer period. But in the first season of the change, it has come to light that it is far from the ideal model.

Let’s hope the College Football Playoff committee realizes how the bye is giving rise to rust and there are some practical solutions in place for the next season or a year after that.