It is Time for the College Football Playoff to give Cincinnati Some Love

Tonight is the eve of, I believe, the penultimate College Football Playoff rankings.

Right off the bat I want to say that I fully understand that this is a TV show. Up until they do their final vote, none of this matters. The committee is going to do things to get people talking about why they have certain teams where they have them. I also think rankings are extremely pointless until the end of the season. I loathe preseason rankings. I think ranking teams after three weeks is baseless. Some teams start off hot and cool way down, see UCLA. Other teams have a slip up, the university of Ohio State, and now look like one of the best teams in the country. Rankings are useless, to me, until the end of the season. For example, in the preseason poll, Clemson was second. They are currently unranked. Iowa State was fifth. They are also unranked. Iowa was tenth and they are in the 20's now. LSU was eleven, they are below .500. Miami was twelve, they are right at .500. UNC was fourteen, they need a win this week to become bowl eligible. Indiana was sixteen. They have had a ruthless season full of injuries and have won two games. Florida was seventeen. They just lost to Mizzou and fired their head coach. Texas was eighteen. They are not going to a bowl game this year. And Washington and USC were twenty-two and twenty-four, and they have both fired their head coaches.

On the other hand we have Michigan, who was unranked, sitting at six. Michigan State was a "projected bottom finisher in the Big Ten, they are twelfth. Oklahoma State is currently at 7 seven ahead of Oklahoma. BYU is thirteen. Utah is sixteen. UTSA, Texas San Antonio for those that may not know, is fifteen. Houston is sitting at nineteen. Wake Forest is twenty-one. San Diego State is twenty-two. And the Ragin Cajuns of Louisiana are twenty-three.

What I'm saying is, more than half of the preseason top 25 is gone, and there are teams that were outside of preseason top 50's and 60's that are ranked inside the top 25. Rankings are pointless in college sports.

With all of that being said, if the committee is too scared, if all they want is eyeballs and complaints, if they are so egotistical to not have Cincinnati in the top four tomorrow night, they are clearly trying with all of their power to not have a non power five team in the playoff. Cincinnati did their job last Saturday, and then some. SMU was supposed to really push them. They were going to be their biggest test in the conference. They were going to prove how good the Bearcats really are this season. Cincinnati won by 34 points. That is five touchdowns. They torched them. They held SMU, who has a good offense, to 14 points. It was a blowout. It was not on the level that the university of Ohio State laid on MSU, but a blowout nonetheless. Cincinnati more then proved their worth. And we have to bring up the win over Notre Dame, in South Bend, by two scores. I do not care what Lee Corso has to say about why Notre Dame belongs in the playoff over Cincinnati. Cincinnati beat them at their home by double figures. They are a better team. They have proven as much. I heard some folks on ESPN say that they think Michigan has a chance to be ranked ahead of Cincinnati. That is asinine. And as you all know, my fandom for Michigan football knows no bounds. I love that football team, but they are not a playoff team. They do not have any signature wins. Sure they beat Wisconsin in Madison, but that was week four. Wisconsin is a much better team now. And they did just win in Happy Valley for only the second time in fifteen years, but Penn State is 7-4. And they blew a 16 point 3rd quarter lead against MSU. Michigan is a better team than I thought they would be, but I do honestly think Cincinnati is a better team right now. And with Oregon getting the doors blown off of them by Utah, that totally opens the door for Cincinnati to slide into the 3 or 4 spot. I still think they should be 2. They are one of three teams in the top 25 that are undefeated. The other two are Georgia and UTSA. UTSA is too far down to make a play for the playoff, and Georgia is all but assured a spot. So why is it not written in pen that Cincinnati should be in the top 4?

When I look at the rankings, and if I were a member of the committee, I would have, from 1 to 4, Georgia, Cincinnati, the university of Ohio State and Alabama. When the rankings come out tomorrow night, I think the committee, if they do what is right, will have Georgia, the university of Ohio State, Alabama and Cincinnati. I do not like it, but that seems like the direction they should go in. What I think they will do is have Georgia, Alabama, the university of Ohio State and Michigan, with Notre Dame jumping Cinci. That would be absurd. But remember when I said it was a tv show until the last week of the season? When you look at the big games this weekend, the committee can see, as we all know, that the university of Ohio State is traveling to Ann Arbor to play Michigan this Saturday. The winner of that game is going to the Big Ten championship game. The winner of that game has a very real shot of getting the two seed in the final CFP poll. So they will one hundred percent make it a matchup of top four teams, thus screwing Cinci yet again. As for Notre Dame jumping them, the committee has shown they do not care about head to head when they slotted Michigan ahead of MSU a few weeks back.

The committee is hoping that they do not have to be put in a situation where they have to put Cinci in the top four. They want them to get beat. They want the winner of the university of Ohio State and Michigan game to get a big enough victory where they do not have to justify ranking one of them ahead of an undefeated Cinicinnati. They want Notre Dame to finish out the year with impressive wins. They want a team like Oklahoma State to win out and beat up on Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game so they can consider them. They would love it if Alabama were to beat Georgia in the SEC title game so they could easily have two SEC teams in the playoff. They want all the chaos so they do not have to put Cincinnati in the playoff. I think they are going to be forced to put them in the top four though. I think Cinci will easily win out. I think Georgia will as well. I am not confident at all in Michigan this weekend, so the university of Ohio State will almost be assured a spot. I think Cinci can push their way to third, especially if Alabama gets beat by Georgia in the SEC title game. That would give them two losses, and I already said that I think Cincinnati is going to win out.

Again, none of the rankings tomorrow night have any basis in what will happen two weeks from now, but I would not be surprised if the committee goes yet another week screwing Cincinnati over before their hand is forced. Rankings are stupid, and so is the CFP committee. Cinci should have already been a playoff team. Hopefully they get the proper respect they deserve by the end of the season. We will see.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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