It was College Game Day, it was before Indiana’s first playoff game against Notre Dame, and Curt Cignetti, the Hoosiers’ coach, was on. Boy was he on. “We don’t just beat top 25 programs, we beat the s— out of them,” Cignetti declared. Uhhh…no, you don’t. Actually, top 25 programs beat the s— out of you. Or did you forget that 38-15 shellacking you took from Ohio State, the only top 25 team you played?
However, it seems Cignetti was referring to his personal record as a coach and not specifically his first season at Indiana. Problem with that is that as a coach, Cignetti is a little loose with his top 25 rankings. He has never beaten a team that finished in the top 25, although he has beaten teams that were in the top 25 at the time he played them.
Make of that what you will, but that was part of the reason Cignetti and Indiana were at the center of a controversy as the College Football Playoff began last week. The Hoosiers went into the Notre Dame game with an 11-1 record and were thumped, 27-17, by the Irish in a game that wasn’t that close, Notre Dame leading 27-3 with just a couple minutes left in the fourth.
Given the fact that Indiana did not beat a single team with a winning record this year (Nebraska and Washington were both 6-6) there was a lot of talk from a lot of different places that the Hoosiers should never have been in the playoffs to begin with. And you can certainly make that argument. A lot of people weren’t that happy about 11-2 SMU getting a bid, either. The Mustangs got beat, 38-10, by Penn State after losing their conference championship game to Clemson, 34-31.
Still, the playoffs are doing what they’re supposed to do, generating a lot of excitement about college football, even if most of it seemed to center around two teams that lost. Other than that, one of the main sticking points seems to be the way teams are awarded byes. Under the current setup, the four highest ranked conference champions get first round byes. Georgia (SEC), Oregon (Big Ten) Boise State (Mountain West) and Arizona State (Big 12) were the picks this year. Giving Boise State a bye is ridiculous, and would have been avoided had the four top-ranked teams, Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas, been used instead.
But the central issue remains how teams are chosen and which ones are left out. To a certain degree, going from a four team playoff to 12 teams was supposed to solve this; to hardly anyone’s surprise, it didn’t. That’s because it’s an insolvable problem. No matter how many teams are in, someone’s always going to be left out and they’re going to complain.
This year, the primary aggrieved parties were Ole Miss and Alabama, particularly Alabama which went 9-3 but played four top 25 teams and beat three of them, No.2 Georgia, No. 14 South Carolina and No. 23 Missouri. The Tide lost to No. 7 Tennessee. Proponents of Alabama – and Ole Miss, which also beat No. 2 Georgia and No 14 South Carolina – said they deserved to be in based on the difficulty of their schedules when compared to Indiana and SMU.
On the surface, there’s an argument to be made there. But Ole Miss also lost to Kentucky, which didn’t beat a single Power Four conference team except Ole Miss, and Alabama lost Vanderbilt and Oklahoma, two mediocre teams at best.
“I’m disappointed that we weren’t one of the 12 teams selected,” Alabama Coach Kalen DeBoer said during a press conference on You Tube. “I certainly feel we’re one of those (a playoff caliber team).
Kiffin made fun of Indiana and SMU getting torn up by Notre Dame and Penn State while Ole Miss and Alabama stayed home. “I think this is what you’re going to have to get used to as fans,” he commented via On3.
But SMU’s Rhett Lashlee and Indiana’s Cignetti were quick to jump to the defense of their teams. “We earned the right to be in (the playoffs),” Lashlee said according to On3. “It’s unfortunate that, you know, a bad game is going to maybe make it feel like maybe that’s not the case.”
Asked if his team deserved to be in following the loss to Notre Dame, the usually firey and bombastic Cignetti was more subdued. “Is that a serious question? I’m not even gonna answer that,” he said. But then, after a moment’s pause, he shook his head “yes.”
And by the way, Tennessee, ranked No. 7 in the country, was man handled by Ohio State, 42-17. Guess they shouldn’t have been in, either.
