Chairman Warde Manuel and the College Football Playoff committee are under fire from Georgia coach Kirby Smart, who said teams and coaches shouldn’t be guessing what evaluation criteria might be applied to formulate the 12-team playoff rankings.
Georgia is No. 10 in the latest CFP Top 25 with a resume that includes two Southeastern Conference losses but also wins over No. 3 Texas, No. 11 Tennessee and No. 17 Clemson.
“I’ve repeatedly said I don’t know what they’re looking for. They can’t define that, and it’s not simple either,” Smart said on the SEC teleconference Wednesday.
“It’s not. I mean, anybody could be on that committee and say, ‘Well, this is what we’re looking for. This is our criteria.’ And there’s so much that it overlaps things, and everybody debates it, and I don’t have time to really waste energy on it. So, I think it’s more than your nonconference games and who you play.”
Manuel said the factors the committee is applying to each team include head-to-head competition, schedule strength and a more arbitrary variable, the “eye test.”
“Well, obviously Georgia has a very good win at Texas,” Manuel said of why the committee sees a significant gap between Texas and Georgia. “As the committee analyzed the body of work of Texas versus where Georgia is at the present time with two losses, even to Top-25 teams, we came out that Texas was still a very strong team deserving of a 3 seed.”
Smart is not clear on what the “eye test” entails.
“It just seems unjust to me when you evaluate somebody’s got a third-ranked defense or somebody’s got a fifth-ranked defense,” Smart said. “Well, don’t you think that third- or fifth-ranked defense (ranking) is dictated by who they’ve played on offense and how many top offenses they’ve played?
“Because last time I checked, our offense and our defense have played the top offenses and defenses across the country. Well, you’re not going to be ranked as high if you play top ones than if you play lower-ranked ones, and that’s what gets me is they talk about the eye test.”
Ohio State is No. 1 in scoring defense, ahead of Notre Dame (third), Texas (fourth) and Ole Miss (fifth). Ohio State is fourth in run defense, two spots behind Ole Miss and one ahead of Penn State.
Indiana is No. 2 in scoring offense behind Miami with the two teams that beat Georgia this season, Ole Miss (fourth) and Alabama (eighth), in the Top 10.
“How do you play in the game? Well, how you play in the game is dictated, No. 1, by where you’re playing — home or away — and No. 2, who you’re playing. That’s the two No. 1 indicators of how you play is who you’re playing,” Smart said. “Who you line up across from matters. But point differential, I don’t know that I believe they actually look at just that. I don’t know if that’s actually the case.
“They’re looking at the whole picture of how you play, and that’s dictated by who you play.”
LSU head coach Brian Kelly said on the teleconference that the 2024 season was accepted as one that would produce a flawed sample the committee could adjust to in future years. Not only because of the expansion from a four-team playoff to 12, but because of the expansion of the four remaining football power conferences.
“I think it’s going to be heavily decided on schedule. And I think that we’re going to get that historical lesson this year,” Kelly said. “But I think strength of schedule is going to play a major role ultimately in how this shapes itself moving forward.”