ATHENS — Kirby Smart said he just wants to control the controllables and win football games.<\/p>\n
But Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz is taking issue with the College Football Playoff system, right down to the application of metrics and usage of former coaches on the selection committee.<\/p>\n
Drinkwitz, whose No. 22-ranked Tigers team playshost to No. 3-ranked Texas A&M at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, has been a proponent of an expanded playoff system that does not rely on the 13-member committee.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality of it is college football needs to be decided on the field,\u201d Drinkwitz said on the SEC coaches conference call when asked his thoughts on the new committee by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. \u201cThere needs to be play-in games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not another sport in the country that is decided besides NCAA basketball, NCAA baseball, and NCAA football, by committees, like decided on the field, just like pro sports do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under pressure<\/p>\n
The pressure to win in college football has arguably never been more amplified, as evidenced by eight Power 4 conference coaches being fired in season, including four from the 16-member SEC.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything right now is College Football Playoff or bust,\u201d South Carolina coach Shane Beamer said on the SEC teleconference on Wednesday. \u201cIt\u2019s like, if you don\u2019t make the playoffs, people are ready to fire everybody \u2026 That\u2019s what we\u2019ve created.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CFP selection committee is working to come up with the most accurate process possible to rank the best 12 teams \u2014 with automatic bids included \u2014 in a fair and accurate manner.<\/p>\n
CFP selection committee chairman Mack Rhoads explained on Tuesday night that a new metric called \u201crecord strength\u201d has been added for the committee to consider when ranking the teams, while the strength of schedule metric has been adjusted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe introduced the new metric, which is record strength, which measures how well a team performs against its schedule,\u201d Rhoads said, \u201cand that\u2019s a cumulative sum of scores as we progress through the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then we took schedule strength and we tweaked it \u2026 we put more weight on the stronger teams, and so that was the adjustment for schedule strength.\u201d <\/p>\n
Change debate<\/p>\n
Drinkwitz, however, said on Wednesday he doesn\u2019t see how the added emphasis on schedule strength affected the top three teams in the rankings, No. 1 Ohio State, No. 2 Indiana and No. 3 Texas A&M.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe top two teams\u2019 schedule rankings and strength of schedule is in the mid-30s,\u201d Drinkwitz said. \u201cA&M\u2019s (schedule strength) is in the top five, and they were ranked (No. 3), so I don\u2019t know what\u2019s changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drinkwitz, asked about the CFP\u2019s discussion of utilizing the three retired coaches on the 13-member committee \u2014 Mark Dantonio (Michigan State), Mike Riley (Nebraska, Oregon State) and Chris Ault (Nevada) \u2014 rejected the idea that would ensure fairness and accuracy in the rankings.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I don\u2019t think that matters, (because) every coach has a different taste in what they\u2019re looking for on film,\u201d Drinkwitz said. \u201cSome guys are defensive coaches, they\u2019re going to evaluate defensive strengths. Some guys are offensive coaches, they\u2019re going to evaluate offensive strengths.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people don\u2019t like other people, some people rank their conference better than others. Some people think that because they played in this conference, it\u2019s going to be different.\u201d<\/p>\n
New model<\/p>\n
Drinkwitz made headlines at the SEC Media Days when he proposed a 30-team playoff replace the current 12-team model that is contracted through this year.<\/p>\n
College football leadership has yet to decide what the next playoff format will be, but models with 16-team playoffs have been most widely discussed.<\/p>\n
If the SEC and Big Ten can\u2019t agree on a new model to utilize in an expanded playoff format, the field will remain at 12 until otherwise negotiated.<\/p>\n
Drinkwitz said his expanded playoff idea is based on the current 12-team playoff and would alleviate some of the controversial decision making that would come if the playoff field is only expanded by four teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe NFL takes 44 percent of their teams into the playoffs to increase the passion or keep the fan base engaged,\u201d Drinkwitz said. \u201cIf we\u2019re talking about 12 (college teams in the playoff) that\u2019s 9 percent (of the FBS teams), if we\u2019re talking about 14 that\u2019s 11 percent, (and) if were talking about 16, that\u2019s 12 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not really changing the math for the fan base.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smart said in August he would support a widely expanded playoff model \u201cif done the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m probably like most people in the majority, to be able to expand the playoffs if it\u2019s done the right way, in terms of giving more teams the opportunity,\u201d Smart said at an Aug. 19 press conference in Athens. \u201cI think that\u2019s what fanbases want.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smart pointed out that the college football postseason is not ideal, and that he would prefer championships be decided on the field more so than have heavy committee involvement.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are not excited about mid-tier bowl games,\u201d Smart said. \u201cI think those bowl games are great experiences, I played in them, (and) I\u2019ve coached in them \u2026 that\u2019s an opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the more teams you give an opportunity to decide things on the field, like you do, whether it\u2019s college basketball, high school football, old (Division) 1AA football … you\u2019re going to get things decided on the grass. So yeah, I\u2019d be for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fluid process<\/p>\n
Drinkwitz, like Smart has done in the past, pointed out there has been a lack of consistency in how the different committees have applied metrics to rank teams in the 11 years since the inception of the four-team playoff field in 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is we have a human committee that has no standard set of structure, of how they\u2019re going to select,\u201d Drinkwitz said at the SEC Media Days in Atlanta. \u201cThey\u2019re all human beings. They all have implicit bias. Now we\u2019re going from seven (at-large) selections to 11 and we think that\u2019s going to solve the problem. <\/p>\n
\u201cUntil we figure out what exactly the standards are, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drinkwitz suggested that instead of having automatic qualifiers a different playoff format could utilizing play-in games to keep more teams and fanbases involved at the end of the season.<\/p>\n
As an example, the Missouri head coach suggested the SEC and Big Ten would have eight teams each compete in play-in games for four spots each in the CFP field, while the Big 12 and ACC would have six teams playing for three spots in the field from each of their conferences.<\/p>\n
A Group of Five team would be granted a spot, along with an at-large selection.<\/p>\n
Whatever the format, the bottom line is winning as many games as possible, and staying focused on that task regardless of the ranking system or size of the playoff field.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll take care of itself if you handle your business,\u201d Smart said on Wednesday. \u201cIf you don\u2019t, you\u2019ll be worried about a lot of those things, and that\u2019s just the state of college football and where it is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATHENS — Kirby Smart said he just wants to control the controllables and win football games. But Missouri…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":360110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1428,1369,1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-360109","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-college-sports","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ncaafootball","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115503598488334505","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}