There’s no need to manufacture debate when it’s not needed. It’s better to embrace what we have now and could have on New Year’s Eve.
The College Football Playoff committee made the right call by putting Washington in the No. 4 spot Tuesday. The Huskies joined No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 Clemson and No. 3 Michigan.
Those are the four remaining unbeaten Power 5 schools heading into the final three weeks of the regular season. That's it. If it stays that way, that’s it. We don’t need a debate on top of it.
You can manufacture one if you want. Ohio State has a better strength of schedule. Louisville has the Heisman Trophy winner. Well, both of those teams have one loss. Washington can only play the schedule in front of it, and it has beaten every team so far. Imagine if the Huskies had one loss and were ranked ahead of those teams.
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We can run down the strength of schedule or whatever else, but the bottom line is Washington hasn’t lost yet, and it isn't going to get leapfrogged by a one-loss team. Plus, the Huskies will get to validate that ranking down the stretch. If they lose, then we can open that door for the Buckeyes, Cardinals or whoever else. Same goes for Alabama, Clemson and Michigan.
Why not embrace the potential of what might happen instead? Could you imagine if the College Football Playoff spit out four unbeaten teams after conference championship weekend? No team has won 15 games in a single season in the AP Poll era, even though Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban led Clemson and Alabama to 14 apiece last season. Now throw Washington’s Chris Petersen and Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh on top of that.
It would have the makings of the best college football postseason ever; perhaps the best postseason ever.
If all four teams stay unbeaten, then it would certainly meet the “best four teams” description, and then some.
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Think of it in basketball terms. The College Football Playoff’s goal is essentially to get the four No. 1 seeds to the Final Four. That happened in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 2008, when we got North Carolina vs. Kansas and UCLA vs. Memphis. The semifinals were dogs, but we truly got to find out who the best team was, and Kansas’ Mario Chalmers’ basket with 2.1 seconds left in regulation against Memphis was an added bonus.
The World Series just had the Indians and Cubs. Super Bowl LI feels like it could be the Patriots and Cowboys. The odds-on NBA Finals is Cavaliers vs. Warriors for the third straight year. Four undefeated teams in the College Football Playoff would be up there with all of those things, and then some.
Why wouldn’t you want that? It’s better than the watch-the-world-burn theory of seeing how many one- and two-loss teams we can mash together into one big argument that will end with most people throwing around their opinions and not getting the desired result. Facebook and Twitter provide that opportunity every day. We can only embrace debate for so long.
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Four undefeated teams might not be dramatic now, and college football is driven by its regular season. Yet there’s always something compelling about watching unbeaten teams on a collision course. That’s how we got USC vs. Texas in 2005. This is not the same as that — that was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, game of all time — but we get two times that with four teams. Alabama needing to go through two unbeaten teams sounds damn good to me.
I’ll take that over two-loss chaos. The goal is to get the best four teams in. Right now, we’re on schedule. Embrace that, for sure.
Save the debate for when one of them loses.
