Colin Cowherd knocks college football media for being too inclusive

Colin Cowherd watched Oregon shut out Texas Tech 23-0 in the Orange Bowl and decided the real problem with the College Football Playoff is that the media covering it is too inclusive.

“You would hope this would be instructive going forward for the committee,” Cowherd said. “Let’s stop this nonsense that everybody ‘Let’s be fair.’ It’s always one of my knocks on the college football media. And I understand newspaper guys tend to kind of lean left and inclusive, and everybody — it’s football. Football’s not inclusive; it’s for big, strong, violent guys; size, force, speed, raw talent wins.”

Cowherd is saying the blowouts happened because media members wanted to be fair to smaller programs instead of honestly evaluating whether teams like James Madison, Tulane, and Texas Tech could actually compete. Cowherd singled out the Red Raiders’ offense in particular as proof that talent gaps matter more than conference championships, questioning how many of their players could actually start for Oregon.

The problem is that’s not the conversation that’s been happening. The dominant storyline around this playoff hasn’t been media members championing Group of Five teams or pushing for inclusion. It’s been the opposite. If anything, college football media has spent the last month making the case against exactly what Cowherd is accusing them of supporting.

Texas Tech creates a problem for Cowherd’s argument because they’re the team he singled out for not belonging, but they’re not a Group of Five program. They’re a Big 12 champion who earned their spot the exact same way James Madison and Tulane did — by winning their conference. And they looked worse than both Group of Five teams Cowherd was criticizing. The Red Raiders gained 197 yards and got shut out. James Madison at least scored 34 points and racked up 509 yards against Oregon, the most anyone gained on the Ducks all season. Tulane put up over 400 yards against Ole Miss. The teams Cowherd said didn’t belong because of talent actually competed harder than the Power Four conference champion.

Alabama creates an even bigger problem. The Crimson Tide lost 38-3 to Indiana two days before Cowherd went after media members for being too inclusive. Alabama gained 193 yards and zero touchdowns. ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit said the Crimson Tide were “just existing” on the field. This is a program with elite recruiting classes, five-star players across the roster, and all the SEC pedigree that’s supposed to matter when Cowherd talks about raw talent winning football games. Alabama made the playoff with three losses specifically because evaluators looked at their roster and believed the talent level would show up when it mattered. Then they got embarrassed worse than any Group of Five team in playoff history.

If Cowherd’s argument is that blowouts happen because media members push for teams without the talent to compete, then Alabama blows that theory apart. If a Big 12 champion can get shut out just as easily as a Sun Belt champion, and if an SEC blue blood with elite talent can get destroyed worse than both, then the blowouts aren’t really about inclusive journalists or conference affiliation. They’re about a playoff format that’s putting together matchups where talent gaps exist regardless of how teams qualified.

The numbers back that up. Group of Five teams are 0-4 in playoff games. First-round bye teams — the ones supposedly built to win — are 0-6 in quarterfinals over two years. Blowouts are happening across the board. Blaming college football media for defending conference champions doesn’t explain why the teams with all the talent Cowherd champions are getting blown out too.

Maybe the issue isn’t that newspaper guys lean left. It’s that evaluating which teams belong based on raw talent doesn’t work when Alabama’s roster gets shut down just as easily as Texas Tech’s.