No one is in charge of major college football. The NCAA runs some things, the power conferences run some others, some are left to the wild, and ESPN handles a lot. The TV giant’s assumed duties include laying out most of the sport’s weekly schedule and having rights to almost the entire postseason, headlined by the College Football Playoff.
If ESPN doesn’t squash this Washington Huskies drama, 2017’s first Playoff rankings are gonna look really awkward
The Huskies’ back-loaded schedule means they probably aren’t gonna rank very highly in the rankings announced on Halloween by ... ESPN.
ESPN
That means it’s easy for fans to see signs of ESPN BIAS in anything that doesn’t go their way.
Seriously, every fan base feels unfairly victimized by ESPN, even ones whose schools have massive financial partnerships with the company.
So when, all on a single Saturday, different ESPN personalities tell Washington’s Chris Petersen that he should be grateful the network airs his games at all, call Petersen “irascible,” run a graphic implying Pac-12 games should all be late on East Coast time, and use literal cupcakes as a metaphor for UW’s schedule, Huskies fans understandably became this year’s lead conspiracy theorists.
There’s some context to each of those, and ESPN will surely spend part of the following Saturday trying to win UW fans back over, but still. Not a great look to have all of that on a day when the Huskies beat Cal by 31 points.
The cupcakes thing, though, does tie into the other major thing ESPN oversees, and that’s how this whole thing could linger beyond just one weekend.
The playoff committee’s first rankings of 2017 come out on Halloween. Washington will likely be 8-0 at the time, likely having beaten Arizona State and UCLA. An 8-0 team that won a power conference the year prior should rank in the top four, right?
Except Washington’s strength of schedule really is going to be weak at the time, which means you’d see ESPNers having to explain during their rankings reveal show why the lowly ranked unbeaten team happens to be the one their colleagues dissed.
Awkward!
Schedule strength will almost certainly rank Washington at the back of the undefeated pack — history says that’ll be five to seven teams — and probably even behind a one-loss team or two. It would not be surprising to see a team with this breezy of a schedule to that point rank down at No. 8 or so, despite being a Power 5 unbeaten.
If you throw in a Pac-12 Championship berth, the five best teams on Washington’s 13-game schedule are all in a row after the initial Playoff rankings. As of Halloween, the Huskies might not’ve played a single likely bowl team.
But the season doesn’t end on Halloween.
Washington made the playoff the year prior despite a similar non-conference schedule, and wasn’t even the most controversial choice (that was Big Ten non-champ Ohio State). So far in 2016, they’ve handled a gentle schedule like a top team should, averaging a 39-11 win in FBS games. And 2017 business picks up in a hurry, with the Huskies having opportunities to beat Oregon, Stanford, Utah, Washington State, and maybe USC, teams ranging from likely bowl participants to playoff contenders.
Or maybe there’ll only be one or two unbeaten teams left on Halloween anyway, which would likely resolve the rankings part.
So these things will likely work themselves out, but ESPN’s set itself up for a whole lot of BIAS hollerin’ in the meantime.
Now, if we get to the end of the season and see a 12-1 Washington battling another 12-1 Power 5 champ for that last playoff spot, ESPN will be charged by Washington fans with all sorts of favoritism, though the other fan base will feel exactly the same way.
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