Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher made a wonderful point and a mistake in pleading his argument for Aggies no. 5 to play in the college football playoffs on Saturday, after ending a regular 8-1 season with a 34-13 lead in Tennessee. Fisher’s mistake was that the number of games a team played “should count and should matter.”
That would be the right argument to make if Aggies faces a 6-0 Ohio State team hanging its hat on victories over historic Indiana and Northwestern non-powers in the fight for a CFP slot. However, it looks like Texas A&M’s main competition for the playoff final place will be Notre Dame – a team that is 10-1 after losing the ACC 34-10 game to Clemson on Saturday.
Fighting Irish has played two more games than Texas A&M and would deserve to be over Aggies if the number of games played will be the deciding factor. But the argument that Texas A&M deserves to be over Notre Dame is based on the part of the argument that Fisher caught: that A&M deserves respect for coming out with a single defeat in the most difficult SEC season in history.
“I want to see someone else go 8-1 in this league and get up and do it,” Fisher said.
Whether the Aggies will look outside when the CFP Selection Committee reveals its final standings on Sunday would be a doubt, as the SEC has not seen since an undefeated Auburn team was left out of the 2004 BCS national title game. A few believers who oppose leading the creation of the college football playoff, because it was simply incomprehensible that an undefeated team in such a popular league could be deprived of the opportunity to play for a national title.
It would be almost as appealing to four-team playoff supporters if a 2020 SEC team were left out of the field after winning seven consecutive games in an SEC-only match, with only one loss to a dominant team. from Alabama.
An SEC program has won 10 of the 15 national championships since Auburn’s historic dismemberment, and the league has finished second in three of the five national games it has not won. In the decade and a half of dominance, one of the league’s main criticisms was that while other conferences adopted the league’s nine-game programs, the SEC was left with a league list of eight games. But that blow has been reduced this season, as the league has taken an exclusive approach to pandemic conference programming.
While COVID-19 robbed Aggies of playing a 10th conference game, they played more games against the SEC in the regular season than any team in league history. This should matter for something, as there is no evidence that the SEC is in full decline.
While Alabama, Texas A&M, Florida and Georgia have clearly emerged as the conference class this season, the alleged lack of quality wins in the Aggies program is based on the cannibalism produced by the conference list. Victories over Auburn, LSU, South Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee should not be seen as insignificant just because those teams limped through what were probably the most brutal slates in their program’s history. And don’t forget, Texas A&M defeated SEC East Florida champion.
If there is a perception that the SEC is declining this season, it can probably be attributed to the fact that many of the teams that routinely form the middle class of the league could not secure their total winnings in non-conference games. But through all the intraconference brutality, Texas A&M emerged as the second best team in the league. Sure, Aggies lost 52-24 to Alabama. But Fisher was wise to point out that the game was played before an unfortunate injury at the end of the season at one of the Crimson Tide for Jaylen Waddle players.
In fact, Texas A&M was in that game against Alabama for much of the first half before the Crimson Tide. Aggies’ loss to Alabama was certainly no worse than Notre Dame’s anemic effort in Saturday’s ACC title game.
Notre Dame has a regular season win over Clemson and a win over North Carolina to build its case for a CFP berth. Texas A&M has seven victories over quality opponents in the best league in the country and an eighth victory over the modest Vanderbilt.
Fisher made another good point when he mentioned that a SEC team with only one loss was never left out of the playoffs. When a one-loss Alabama team finished 4th in 2017 after not playing in the SEC Championship game, they qualified against a 12-1 Wisconsin team heading into the playoffs to a loss to the state. Ohio in the Big Ten title game.
Those Badgers of 2017 played in the only league that can give the SEC a run for its money in the conference supremacy race and were excluded from the playoffs after suffering their first loss in the league title game, as Notre Dame did on Saturday.
Alabama’s loss in 2017 came against an Auburn team ranked 6th at the time. It was a much worse loss than Aggies’ defeat to the great Crimson Tide two and a half months ago. But the Crimson Tide made the playoffs anyway.
Unless there is evidence that the SEC has dropped in three years since then and is no longer at the top of the college football order, the case that Notre Dame will make the playoffs for Texas A&M this year is the most shaky.
“Eight wins in the SEC,” Fisher said. “I want to see someone else do it.”