Predicting the College Football Playoff committee’s excuses for LSU, Stanford and Baylor

Week 11 wreaked havoc upon the College Football Playoff rankings. Four of the top 10 teams dropped games, leading to what should be a big shakeup.

But you never know with the Playoff committee. While the committee’s rankings have been pretty reasonable, each set comes with a televised explanation from chairman Jeff Long. These explanations are supposed to answer questions. Instead, their spotty logic and reasoning often leaves even more to be answered.

The first week of the rankings, Long explained that Baylor and TCU’s high-powered offenses had them over Iowa. The second week, when ranking Iowa above Baylor, he praised the Hawkeyes for their “consistency on both sides of the ball” and the fact that they were “not flashy, but consistent.” In 2014, Long confused many by repeatedly referring to the concept of “game control,” which was not the same thing as an ESPN stat by the same name.

The goalposts seem to move every week. With that in mind, I’m offering a new weekly service. Every Monday, I’ll predict the arguments the committee will present this week.

”Last week, the committee discussed how the Cardinal’s loss to Northwestern with a 9 a.m. Pacific kickoff was somewhat excusable due to Stanford’s maladjusted body clocks. Well, the same thing applies here. Oregon’s fast-paced offense scored 38 points while possessing the ball for just 17:56. That’s two points a minute, and that’s entirely too fast. There’s simply no way Stanford’s body clocks could’ve adjusted. The Cardinal remain one of the best football teams in the land. We cannot blame them for struggling with time warfare.”

”Sure, Baylor lost by 10 points to Oklahoma. But this game was played during a rainstorm! We’re less than three months removed from a record-setting dry spell in Waco, 48 days without rain. How could we expect Baylor to adjust its tolerance to wetness in just three months? Two of the three Playoff venues will be indoors. Why should we penalize Baylor because Corey Coleman is water-soluble?”

”Ahh, the Alabama hangover. Last week, the Tigers were playing the Crimson Tide, a team so dominant, brilliant, and altogether wonderful that as a committee, we consider ourselves lucky to even have the honor of ranking them. Then the next week you’re playing Arkansas, a team we’re not allowed to say is good. How do you stay up for that?

”The Bama Hangover is real. How else can we explain Ole Miss’ win and then subsequent drop off the map? Or Georgia and Texas A&M, undefeated before playing Bama, complete garbage since? Preparing to play Alabama takes the lifeblood from a team. It’s the greatest thing you can do as a football team, even if it ruins you. We consider teams in the weeks before Alabama games to possess temporary superpowers, and we’re not going to ding teams when those superpowers vanish.

“Quite frankly, these temporary superpowers just make Alabama’s wins even more impressive. Alabama is the best.”

“We, the committee members, were not awake for Arizona’s double overtime win over Utah. We cannot be 100 percent sure it actually happened.”