Honestly, it is far too early in the season to really begin worrying about the College Football Playoff. Every team still has at least 11 games remaining on their schedule. Every team still has plenty of chances to lose as well as plenty of chances to pick up big wins. We can estimate which teams are the most talented. The polls give their best guess as to who the best teams are so far. But really, in terms of resume, not enough has happened to really even begin discussing it.
Instead, I want to take a look at a few of the highest-profile games from this past week and see what implications they will have on the developing College Football Playoff picture.
Week 1 College Football Playoff Implications
The first game we will look at is possibly the most exciting game from this past weekend: Oklahoma State against #1 Florida State.
Oklahoma State kept a game with the widely-accepted best team in the country tight for the entire game. Both teams went out of their ways to schedule a difficult non-conference game to start this season and both teams get credit for that. So, what exactly does this mean to each of them?
Florida State’s gain is obvious. Assuming that Oklahoma State will be a solid team throughout the season, Florida State just upped their strength of schedule and picked up a solid non-conference win. Everything always depends on the national picture, but a one-loss Florida State was probably always going to get in to the CFP and nothing this week changed that.
How it affects Oklahoma State, though, is going to be one of the main difficulties that the selection committee will have to face. On the one hand, they lost. On the other hand, it would be quite counterproductive to count this loss against them at all. The CFP wants to encourage tough non-conference games, not discourage them. So if Oklahoma State is 10-2 come season’s end and has an equal resume to an 11-1 team, what will the committee do? Do they pretend Oklahoma State only has one loss and judge from there? Does the loss hurt a bit but that still encourages this game because a win would have made them a near-lock?
Even if this seems far-fetched in this particular case, the fact is that plenty of contenders play difficult non-conference games this year. All of the questions above can be applied to Wisconsin. All of the rewards above can be applied to LSU. And the same goes for Oregon/Michigan State, Auburn/Kansas State, and, to a lesser extent, every matchup between two power-conference contenders.
To answer the questions above, I think teams will see a slight punishment for that second loss, even if it was against a top team in a non-conference game.
College football is still used to caring about win-loss records first, and a change that drastic won’t come quickly. However, I do think that teams with overall very strong strengths of schedule will be given the benefit of the doubt over a team with a better record, especially if that strong SOS involves a high-profile non-conference game. Knowing whether or not Stanford would have been in last year would be a huge data point on this topic, but for now, all we have is conjecture.
The second type of game I want to talk about is Georgia vs Clemson.
No doubt, Georgia picked up a huge win that will help their profile all year. However, due to the lopsided nature of the loss, Clemson will likely not get the same benefit of the doubt as teams like Oklahoma State and Wisconsin.
Yes, if Clemson had scheduled a patsy they probably wouldn’t have lost. Still, teams get punished for not keeping games close. In this particular case, it doesn’t matter because Clemson has a strong enough SOS (and a game against Florida State) that they are almost definitely in the CFP if they win out from here anyway. But if any other high-profile games are blowouts, it will certainly hurt those teams’ resumes.
The last type of game I want to discuss is Texas A&M/South Carolina.
South Carolina got blown out here as well. However, any benefit of the doubt that teams like Clemson get in a blowout is lost here as well. This game may have been in Week 1, but it was still a conference game. This wasn’t either team voluntarily adding a tough opponent to the schedule to start the year. This was a game they had to play. Texas A&M gained clout by beating a good team (though if South Carolina doesn’t fix their defense this won’t be a good win by year’s end), but South Carolina lost a ton of credibility with this blowout conference loss.
Now, these three aren’t the only types of early-season games. And we didn’t have space to begin to touch on other games. But these are three very good archetypes to keep in mind when considering the national impact of big games in the coming weeks.
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