Predicting the College Football Playoff committee’s excuses for Notre Dame, Michigan and Florida

Every week, the College Football Playoff committee releases its rankings. Every week, chairman Jeff Long has the unenviable task of explaining on TV why it ranked teams in certain places. Every week, he says something kinda confusing.

So now, every week, we predict the excuses he will make for teams that recently lost games. We’re joking ... but then sometimes Long says something equally confusing, and we wish he’d used our excuses instead.

”Notre Dame has a two-point loss on the road at Clemson, the No. 1 team in our rankings, and a two-point loss on the road at Stanford, a top-seven team in our rankings. Some would argue these two losses should exclude the Fighting Irish from our Playoff.

“But we feel that the close nature of these two games proves that the Fighting Irish are capable of playing competitive football against the caliber of opponent we intend on placing in the Playoff. Besides, at a neutral site, Notre Dame might have won those games, and the Playoff is at neutral sites.”

”Baylor’s first loss, to Oklahoma? In a rainstorm.

”Baylor’s second loss, to TCU? In an even bigger rainstorm.

“One of our semifinal games is in a dome. Our championship game is in Arizona. It’s just unfair for us to exclude teams from water-free environments because of their failure to handle wetness in regular season games.”

”The members of the College Football Playoff committee understand that no number can truly define a team. We take pride in our ability to examine each aspect that goes into why teams win or lose certain games. As such, we wouldn’t be doing our due diligence if we didn’t have a member of the committee dedicated to examining matters of the occult and how they effect the season. This year, our designated committee occultologist and head of our Paranormal Activities Subcommittee is former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese.

”Mike brought to our attention Jim Harbaugh’s pregame graveyard walk, in which he smashed a Buckeye on the grave of Bo Schembechler. One of the advanced statistics we examine closely is each team’s Ghosts and Ghouls Activity Quotient.

”We took a close look at Michigan’s GGAQ in the Ohio State game, and sure enough, it was the highest of the year of any Big Ten team, excluding all Purdue games, which of course are subject to The Haunting.

“Now, we on the committee don’t have the technology to track if these were friendly ghosts -- dead Michigan fans, coaches and alumni -- or if they were hostile ghosts. But we feel the GGAQ indicates the team was affected by an enhanced spookiness, and the committee will take that into consideration.”

”The Cowboys started 10-0 and ended with a pair of home games. It’s clear that their great start and comfortable surroundings lulled them into a false sense of security.

“In the College Football Playoff, there will be no false sense of security. Oklahoma State will know that they’re facing the nation’s best in the most prestigious single-elimination college football tournament in the history of the world. The Cowboys proved they are amongst the nation’s best for the majority of the season, and we won’t let their two late slip-ups prevent us from remembering that fact.”

“We have long said that the No. 1 criterion we use in determining which teams make the Playoff is which teams end the season as champions of conferences. We refuse to make any promises or proclamations about the Gators until after their SEC Championship game against Alabama.”

”The College Football Playoff deeply respects the men and women of our nation’s armed forces. And we truly respect the tradition associated with service academy football. It is with this respect for America in mind that we added Lt. Gen. Mike Gould, a retired Air Force general with over 3,000 hours of flight time, and Condi Rice, whom you remember from, like, war stuff, we think, to our committee. We respect the military a whole lot, is our point.

“So please, understand that we are not at all completely thrilled that Navy lost to Houston this past weekend, allowing us to release our final rankings of the season as previously scheduled live on ESPN on Dec. 6. We are not at all ecstatic that we no longer have to factor the year-ending Army-Navy game in our process. Not at all.”