Davis Burick

T.J. Watt joins HOF Julius Peppers and HOF Lawrence Taylor as the only players with 100+ sacks and 9+ INT in a career in NFL history @steelers | #HereWeGo

⚠️ Warning: Extremely long post about the CFP — but it needs to be said. Since the beginning of the College Football Playoff, there has been only ONE team that was in position to make the playoff, lost a conference championship game, had idle teams behind them, and did not drop in the rankings the following week: 2025 Alabama. There have been only TWO teams total who were in CFP position, lost a conference championship game, and did not fall at all: • 2022 TCU • 2025 Alabama Let’s talk about why those situations are not the same — and why the Alabama one is a problem. ⸻ 2022 TCU TCU was ranked #3 and lost the Big 12 Championship by 3 points in overtime. The team directly behind them at #4 USC got blown out by 23 in their conference championship game. If the committee dropped TCU to #4 and moved idle #5 Ohio State to #3, Michigan would have played Ohio State twice in three games, and OSU would have faced Michigan back-to-back. That was a clear structural reason not to reshuffle the rankings. ⸻ Now compare that to 2025 This is where it gets uncomfortable. • Both teams around Alabama were idle — yet Alabama doesn’t drop to #10 • Both teams around BYU were idle — BYU drops to #12 • Both teams around UVA were idle — UVA drops to #19 So let’s be honest: Is dropping Alabama to #10 really “punishment” when they’re in either way? Or are we protecting the ACC’s last at-large team by making sure no one sits between Miami and Notre Dame? Because if Alabama drops to 10, suddenly there’s a problem the committee doesn’t want to solve. And let’s be clear — that’s the ACC’s fault, not Notre Dame’s. The ACC Championship tiebreaker was asinine. If Miami had been in the ACCCG and lost, does anyone actually believe they wouldn’t have dropped? ⸻ History is very clear Conference championship losers have absolutely been passed by idle teams and missed the playoff: • 2022 USC • 2017 Penn State • 2015 Iowa • 2017 Auburn — beat Georgia three weeks earlier, then lost the SECCG and got jumped So the argument that “Alabama beat Georgia earlier” is not a shield. We’ve seen that exact scenario before — and it didn’t matter then. ⸻ Ranking position shouldn’t matter Whether you’re ranked 1 or 22, the criteria should be applied the same way. 4-team playoff 12-team playoff 16-team playoff The rules don’t change. Yes, fringe teams will get squeezed sometimes — that’s the trade-off. Playing a conference championship game gives you control: • Win and you’re in • Lose and you hope the cards fall your way That’s how the system has always worked. So stop with the “we can’t punish conference championship losers” narrative. It’s simply false — and honestly, idiotic. ⸻ It gets worse when you look at the week before Go back one week before the conference championship games. Alabama got moved UP after a “great” 27–20 win over 5–7 Auburn — a team that was: • Winless at home vs SEC teams • Playing under an interim head coach Why did Alabama move up? Because leaving them at #10 would have caused issues if: • BYU won • Alabama lost the CCG Suddenly the committee might have had to bump Alabama out. So they preemptively solved the problem. ⸻ And the résumé argument doesn’t hold up “Alabama beat four ranked teams in a row and has the best win of the year.” No — they didn’t. • Georgia dog-walked them last week, proving teams change • Only two of those wins are still ranked • Vanderbilt, Tennessee, and Missouri have ZERO wins over ranked teams • Tennessee and Missouri have a combined ZERO wins over FBS teams with winning records Those rankings were inflated by preseason bias. ⸻ So what’s actually going on? Why can’t we question this? There has been no rule change saying conference championship losers can’t drop. This is not a Notre Dame problem. This is a CFP problem. And the longer we pretend otherwise, the worse the credibility gap gets.