I. Conference titles matter in the selection of the College Football Playoff. As of now, 11 of 12 teams the CFP committee has chosen have been conference champions.
Penn State’s Big Ten title and win over Ohio State mattered. But other things mattered, too.
Look at the entire season, not just two games. That’s why the Buckeyes made the Playoff.
Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images
Ia. Winning a conference title game matters. It helped to push Ohio State ahead of the Big 12’s Baylor and TCU in 2014. (The Big 12’s odd “One true champion, but hey both are good, so let’s try to get both of them in” machinations at the time probably didn’t help.)
II. Head-to-head matters. It helps to decide conference champions, which, as we learned in (1), matters.
III. Other things matter, too. Lots of things. Like every other game contenders play.
Penn State beat Ohio State on Oct. 22. Great game. The Nittany Lions trailed, 21-7, heading into the fourth quarter but blocked both a punt and a field goal to turn the tables; the former set up a field goal, and the latter was returned for a touchdown. PSU pulled off an awesome, improbable 24-21 win.
Better yet, the Nittany Lions followed up this win with a steady run. James Franklin’s squad waylaid Purdue and put on a nearly perfect performance in rocking an Iowa team that would go on to beat Michigan. They survived a tricky trip to Indiana and sleepwalked through a still-easy win over Rutgers.
Maybe the best second-half team in the country, Penn State finished the regular season by outscoring Michigan State, 35-0, in the second half to win, 45-12.
PSU’s win over Ohio State, combined with Michigan’s losses to Iowa and Ohio State, gave the Nittany Lions the Big Ten East title and a No. 7 ranking from the committee. The Nittany Lions’ conference championship win over Wisconsin bumped them to No. 5, ahead of a Michigan team that destroyed PSU, 49-10, in September.
Penn State’s head-to-head win over Ohio State helped to earn the Nittany Lions the Big Ten title and nearly made up for the fact that they lost to Michigan and Pitt early in the season.
Nearly.
- Ohio State lost via blocked kick on the road to the No. 5 team in the country. But Penn State still lost twice, to the No. 6 team in the country (a team Ohio State beat) and to Pitt.
- The Buckeyes played Oklahoma in non-conference play and stomped the Sooners in Norman. The Nittany Lions played Pitt and lost via last-second interception. (At the time, we thought that result was important because of how it pertained to Franklin’s employment prospects. It ended up deciding a Playoff spot.)
- Ohio State is second in both the AP and coaches polls; Penn State is fifth in both.
- The Buckeyes are third in S&P+, second in Sagarin, and ahead of the Nittany Lions in nearly every other computer ranking.
- Scoring margin against six common opponents: Ohio State plus-149, Penn State plus-78.
That’s why Ohio State is in the Playoff and Penn State is not.
You can say the same things in comparing Penn State to semifinalist Washington.
The Nittany Lions didn’t beat the Huskies head-to-head, but they won what was considered to be the better conference of the two. (This is actually debatable: The top of the Big Ten is better than the top of the Pac-12, but the bottom of the Big Ten was egregiously bad, easily the worst of any power conference.)
Beating top teams like Ohio State and Wisconsin — and simply playing more top teams — nearly made up the difference between the Nittany Lions and the Huskies. But again, Penn State lost twice. Washington lost only to the team likely to play PSU in the Rose Bowl: USC.
We take Playoff selections as a referendum, just as we do elections.
We’ve spent the last month reading pieces on how this is why Hillary Clinton lost and this is why Donald Trump won. But in the end, tons of factors played a role in tipping the scales.
Penn State didn’t make it. That doesn’t mean conference titles don’t matter — again, the Nittany Lions moved from seventh to fifth with the win — but the entire season still matters. And the four semifinalists are the strongest combination of “best” and “most deserving” in the field.
Penn State will be alright. The Nittany Lions are a year ahead of schedule, and their future is incredibly bright. And their consolation prize is a trip to the Rose Bowl, the greatest venue in college football. They haven’t been there in eight years, and they’ll be a potential top-10 team and CFP contender in 2017. They almost got there this year, but the committee made the right call.
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