Associated Press photo
Congratulations to Ohio State for winning the college football national championship Monday night by capping an unprecedented, dominant four-game surge that would have made Woody Hayes proud.
You might have noticed that the Buckeyes won the big prize despite not even competing in the Very Big Ten title game last month, thanks to a shocking loss to rival Michigan in their regular-season final that served as motivation for their resurgence.
The Atlantic Coast Conference certainly noticed and is considering a move that would make the already subjective playoff format even more ridiculous.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told ESPN this week that his supersized league is discussing exempting the regular-season champion from future conference finals. Instead, the Nos. 2 and 3 team could meet for the title, or perhaps semifinals among the top four seeds a week would be held before the championship game.
The impetus for this insanity is that the ACC’s 2024 regular-season winner, SMU, lost to Clemson in December’s title game. That cost the Mustangs a guaranteed slot in the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff field, and almost knocked them out completely. SMU was seeded 11th and Clemson 12th, and both teams quickly lost their first-round playoff games by wide margins.
Put aside for a moment the absurdity of SMU even being a member of the ACC (along with Stanford and Cal). Geography ceased being a consideration in conference membership long ago.
No, the ACC’s tacit admission is that its gridiron programs — aside from Notre Dame, which is a conference member in every sport except football — aren’t anywhere close to being competitive with those of the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences. That fact became apparent last year, when Florida State was snubbed from the four-team CFP despite going 13-0 in a weak league.
This season, ACC schools went a combined 10-19 (including the two playoff losses) against opponents from the other so-called Power 5 conferences (the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12 and the now two-team Pac 12). They also posted a 2-8 mark in bowl games, which have lost most of their meaning due to transfer portal exits. But still.
This from the conference that helped drive the current expansion craze in the early 2000s by adding supposed football powers like Miami and Syracuse, only to dilute its men’s basketball juggernaut to the point where only one ACC team (Duke) is now ranked.
If it wasn’t before now, it should be crystal clear than money drives every decision in college sports — especially with athletes poised to be paid directly by their respective schools soon. Each bid in this season’s inaugural CFP was worth $4 million, and with its broadcast contract revenue lagging behind those of the SEC and Big Ten, the ACC needs all the income it can get.
Exempting your top seed from the conference championship game, just to avoid the risk of a loss that would knock it out of the 12-team CFP, is hardly a way to display your league’s supposed strength.
The easy answer would be to cancel conference championship games. That would ease a bit of the grind for the “student-athletes” who played up to 16 games this season (almost an NFL schedule)
But those games are also big money-makers for the leagues. So don’t hold your breath.
And although the inaugural 12-team playoff provided some memorable highlights, don’t expect future ones to include the most deserving teams. Just the ones whose commissioners have figured out a way to game the system.