Credit: Tommy Gilligan-Imagn Images
By Sam Neumann on

How you felt about the College Football Playoff depends on which network’s coverage you consumed.

As Awful Announcing’s Matt Yoder astutely wrote, watching ESPN made for a miserable and negative experience. When the network wasn’t taking potshots at SMU and Indiana, Kirk Herbstreit was going after the “lunatic fringe” portion of Ohio State’s fanbase while also pulling no punches when it came to his own network. Herbstreit didn’t criticize ESPN’s coverage, though just about everyone else did; instead, he took aim at First Take.

That saw Shannon Sharpe warn Herbstreit not to “play with him.” And while cooler heads have since prevailed, with Herbstreit largely ignoring what was said about him on First Take, defending his prior comments in the process, it’s clear that ESPN-on-ESPN crime, for better or worse, is having a moment.

But that moment has subsided for now, with Sharpe saying he’s since cleared the air with Herbstreit. Stephen A. Smith responded to the notion that he pushed for Deion Sanders to be the next head coach in Columbus due to his “sizzle,” but he stopped short of hitting back at Herbstreit as his counterpart did.

He even agreed with him.

Smith, much more civil in his disagreements with Herbstreit surrounding Ryan Day, seemingly endorsed the Herbstreit comments to Linda Cohn on SportsCenter following Ohio State’s 42-17 drubbing of Tennessee. He agreed that the CFP had been “terrible” but didn’t co-sign that idea that it should be an SEC Invitational — well until he did.

“Kirk Herbstreit made a very, very valid point with this,” said Smith. “One of the things that we should really, really appreciate about this new 12-team College Football Playoff format is that I’m very happy it increased from four teams. I have no problem with the 12 teams. Here’s the issue: an automatic top-four bid goes to a conference champion who’s ranked highest amongst the conference champions.

“But, what if you’re a conference champion, and you rank 10th? Why should you have top four seed? What if you’re ranked eight? Why should you have a top two or three seed? That shouldn’t be the case because what we have now is Ohio State beats down Tennessee — and now they’ve got to go up against Oregon, who’s the No. 1 team in the nation in the quarterfinals.”

It’s a valid point that transcends the CFP conversation. A Houston Texans team that lost 31-2 to the Baltimore Ravens on Christmas Day will be hosting a home playoff game. Are they deserving? Of course not. But there has to be a reward for winning your conference or division, just like there has to be a consequence for not.

Smith also took the opportunity to address what he saw as misquotes by Herbstreit and Chris Fowler, though not as aggressively as Sharpe did.

“I had to get at them because they misquoted me,” he said. “They were talking about how I wanted Ryan Day fired; that’s not exactly what I said. You know what I’m saying? They pulled a conservative media joint from Fox News the other day because that’s something they did. Here’s the thing: I said that Ryan Day, the head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes, he can’t get bounced by Tennessee, he gotta lose his job. You can’t lose four straight to Michigan and then go and get beat by Tennessee in the first-round and think you get to keep your job at The Ohio State.”

We’re glad that’s cleared up.

But Smith also wanted to clarify the idea that SMU, Tennessee, and Indiana, which only lost by 10 points to Notre Dame, somehow ruined the first year of the CFP.

“Getting back to what my colleague at ESPN and ABC had said, he was saying, ‘Hey guys, forget who’s most deserving; take the best,'” Smith said of Herbstreit. “So, if you know that Alabama, Ole Miss, South Carolina is better than these other teams like an SMU or an Indiana, he’s saying, ‘Nah, come playoff-time, we got to pick the team that we know is the best.’ Now, that’s a troubling situation for me… because football, unlike basketball, you don’t get to play everybody. You can only play the schedule that’s in front of you.

“So, I understand how unfair that can be. You Florida State last year; you 12-0 and you don’t get picked for the College Football Playoff(s). That’s unfortunate. You SMU, you 11-1 this year, and if they hadn’t picked you, that’d be unfortunate. But the eye test has to matter. And if we see a team that we know they ain’t better, we got to pick the best teams for the College Football Playoff, then that’s what the hell we gotta do.”

SMU and Indiana dominated their opponents all season long and seemingly would’ve passed any eye test, but now one game against a better team that leads to an unfortunate result, and we’re rewriting history.

“Indiana, listen, their coach talked a lot of smack on College Football GameDay… that night, he went out and got his ass kicked by Notre Dame,” Smith added. “I mean, that’s a problem. We can’t have the Georgia’s versus the TCU’s for the National Championship game. We can’t have a team like Georgia, who didn’t make the Playoffs last year going up against Florida State, who also didn’t make it, and Florida State going to send half their team to the bowl game and they get trounced, 66-3.

“We can’t have stuff like that in the College Football Playoff(s). We can’t have teams that we look at and we can see clearly they don’t necessarily belong with the crème de la crème from another conference, it’s just that the other team that was a crème de la crème from another conference didn’t win their conference championship. They’re playing conference championship games, so they have to get punished.

“We got to make sure we have the best 12 teams in the nation. Not the most desired, OK? The best. We can’t be shy about this. We just can’t be. I’m sorry, Kirk Herbstreit is absolutely right. You want the best teams from the nation in the damn [CFP]. And if all of them got to come from the Big Ten and SEC… so be it. You gotta do something. You can’t have these roughriders, these dogs, watching these inferior teams shoot for a national title when you know those teams can’t shine their damn shoes.”

Well, we might as well not play the games then…

[The Stephen A. Smith Show]

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann