Former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer has never backed down from offering a different opinion. When it comes to the College Football Playoff, the three-time national championship coach maintained the same beliefs all along.
Switzer — the Sooners’ coach from 1973-88 — participated in an Allstate giveaway in Norman, Okla., ahead of Oklahoma’s appearance in the Sugar Bowl against Auburn on Jan. 2. He shared his thoughts on the playoff debate.
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“I’ve always advocated eight teams,” Switzer told Sporting News on Friday. “Everyone is going to disagree on who is four. The only way to settle that is, no one even gives a damn who is eight. No one can tell you who the eighth-, ninth- and 10th-ranked teams in the country are, but everyone knows who the fourth is. … There’s a lot of empathy for that selection, but not for the eighth or ninth team in the country.”
Oklahoma finished 10-2 and won the Big 12 championship this season, but the Sooners finished No. 7 in the final College Football Playoff rankings. Penn State (10-2) finished No. 5 despite winning the Big Ten. Leaving two conference champions out created a debate on whether the playoff should expand to eight teams.
Switzer is all for it.
“It would mean more and you’d have to play a little bit longer but you’d get a true champion,” Switzer said. “I think we could work that out.”
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Switzer, however, didn’t use that as an excuse for Oklahoma. He said the Sooners didn’t earn that playoff berth on the field this season.
“We’re not in it and we don’t deserve to be in it,” Switzer said. “We’ll be back in it some year. We lost to two teams that are good football teams. We lost to Houston and we lost to Ohio State; one that is in it. We lost pretty significantly to that team. There are other teams that played a lot better than we did.”
Switzer participated in a meet-and-greet Friday at O’Connell’s Irish Pub and Grill in Norman as part of an Allstate Sugar Bowl giveaway in which five pairs of tickets for the game were awarded to fans. Those fans also had a chance to interact with Switzer at the event.
“I don’t think we’re more than 300 yards of the stadium,” Switzer said. “We’re asking the fans — Oklahoma Sooners fans — come down here during finals week. We’re going to see how many we can get down here.”
