It’s November which means it’s that time of year to argue about College Football Playoff rankings that won’t matter and can arbitrarily be changed a month from now. It’s also time for fans to try to discern what voices to trust and just how much real or perceived bias might play into the arguments.
That’s never more true than anytime when ESPN stars tout the SEC, whom they happen to be in a very lucrative contract with. And there’s nobody who represents that more so than famed Alabama sportscaster and SEC authority Paul Finebaum.
The SEC has been on top of the college football world for a long time, but the balance of power may be shifting back to the Big Ten. After Michigan’s championship last season, 4 of the Top 5 in the latest CFP rankings (Oregon, Ohio State, Penn State, Indiana) hail from the Big Ten. And Finebaum is none too pleased.
ESPN has already started beating the drum of a potential 3-loss SEC school like Georgia making the playoff. And that continued on Friday’s edition of Get Up with Paul Finebaum blasting the CFP rankings and rewarding schools like Penn State and Indiana specifically for being placed highly without truly beating anyone of note.
Paul Finebaum blasts the CFP rankings having 4 Big Ten schools in the Top 5.
“It’s still ridiculous at this point for this committee to meet for 2 days and come up with an embarrassing slate of top teams.” pic.twitter.com/ZnhDYiI9fw
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 15, 2024
“Indiana is a phenomenal story and Curt Cignetti has done a masterful job and this is a really good football job, but this schedule is embarrassing. I look at Indiana’s schedule and say, ‘If you played Georgia’s schedule you would have your fifth loss tomorrow night against Tennessee. Penn State has played one good team, they lost,” Finebaum said.
For the record, SEC teams are 18473-0 in hypothetical matchups against non-conference teams since 2005 while any school that has hypothetically had to play an SEC schedule immediately decides to shut down their institution of higher learning because they simply can’t handle the impossible burden.
“It’s going to shake out, but it’s still ridiculous at this point for this committee to meet for 2 days and come up with an embarrassing slate of top teams,” Finebaum added.
“Embarrassing” might be a bit strong considering Indiana has beaten both national championship game contestants last season. We’ve also seen Georgia struggle mightily against Kentucky and Florida, who aren’t exactly setting the world on fire. But this is the subjective nature of college football. One person can see a win over Michigan State and a win against Auburn as two wildly different things.
In fairness, Paul Finebaum also questioned Texas ranking so highly even though their one quality opponent, Georgia, was a loss. But the overall point stands that the SEC schools, where real football is played, should have their win-loss records ignored and given more credit than teams from other conferences with better records that have played different schedules.
It’s an argument that rings a little hollow and makes you think that no matter what side of college football tribalism you’re on, you can make an argument that suits your case. The folks at Fox Sports, CBS, and NBC can look at the same teams and same results and call the Indiana schedule a murderer’s row of opponents. But if we’ve learned anything over the years, that’s all the College Football Playoff rankings are any good for anyways.