The college football schedule starts with a bang and ends not with a whimper but with questions about whether such a significant opening week affects the College Football Playoffs in the end.
It’s the equivalent of the NCAA basketball tournament pitting the top seeds against each other in the early rounds without the chance first to build momentum against lesser competition.
Made for TV games on the first Saturday (Sept. 3) of the season include Oklahoma against Houston at the Texans’ NRG Stadium, LSU vs. Wisconsin at Lambeau Field, UCLA at Texas A&M and the heavyweight struggle of two traditional powers, USC and Alabama, at the Jerry Dome in Arlington. Notre Dame plays at Texas a day later, and in college football’s version of Monday Night Football, Ole Miss takes on Florida State at Orlando on Sept. 5.
The following weekend is somewhat tame with the biggest games pitting Penn State at Pitt, Arkansas at TCU, BYU at Utah and Tennessee going against Virginia Tech at the Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.
In that second week, the teams that played in the colossal games in Week One take a significant step backward in competition: Oklahoma hosts Louisiana-Monroe, Houston hosts Lamar, USC hosts Utah State, Wisconsin hosts Akron, Notre Dame hosts Nevada, Alabama hosts Western Kentucky, Ole Miss hosts Wofford, Texas hosts UTEP, LSU hosts Jacksonville State and UCLA hosts UNLV.
If you polled all of the coaches involved with these major programs, they would certainly want to swap the first week with the second in terms of having more preparation to put a better product on the field. They also know a team beyond September is much more advanced than one coming out of fall camp.
No team in the nation is hitting on all cylinders in the first week of the season but because of TV’s financial impact, these programs must jump right into the fire for our viewing pleasure. The teams have their eye on the grandest prize – a spot in the College Football Playoffs – still three months ahead.
Alabama coach Nick Saban approaches playing USC in the season-opener as a potential loss early enough that it will not be as influential for the College Football Playoff selection committee than if the Crimson Tide lost to the Trojans in late October or November.
“The fact of the matter is if you’re going to lose in college football, the best time to lose is early on,” Saban said on the Dan Patrick Show. “So, you kind of find out where you’re at.”
A different way to look at it for Alabama: A loss to a power opponent in the first week of the season, with a team trying to work out its kinks, puts it in a perilous position of having to run the table the rest of the year through an arduous SEC schedule.
On the other end, Ohio State’s Urban Meyer has a more favorable situation, tuning up his Buckeyes against Bowling Green and Tulsa in Columbus before playing a blockbuster game at Oklahoma on Sept. 17. That is the ideal setup for any major program: Schedule two non-Power 5 opponents in the first two weeks, similar to exhibition games in basketball in which the depth chart or rotations are refined, before playing a big-name opponent in Week 3 with the rigors of the conference to follow.
For the optimum results and truest barometer of a team’s strength, college football should have uniformity with its scheduling in this manner.
Look at the extreme differences between the schedules of Pac-12 North rivals Stanford and Washington State, for example.
The Cardinal for some reason ends its regular season at home against Rice on Nov. 26. Stanford’s slate until mid-October is ridiculous: Hosting Kansas State, USC and Washington State and traveling to UCLA, Washington and Notre Dame in that span.
Mike Leach’s burgeoning program does not have a Power 5 non-conference opponent although the Cougars must play at Boise State in Week 2. Baylor, a national contender before it was rocked by the off-the-field scandals that cost Art Briles his job, is scheduled to play a laughable non-conference slate of Northwestern State, Rice and SMU.
If every Power 5 program had a similar schedule design – two mid-majors to start the year before playing a Power 5 opponent in Week 3 — this kind of disparity in competition would not occur.
College football, with only 12 regular-season games, is the only sport with a playoff system without uniformity with its scheduling. All the professional sports have balanced scheduling with divisional champions emerging from similar slates. College basketball may have varying degrees of scheduling strength but teams have as many as 30 games, including a postseason conference tournament, to show their worth to the tournament selection committee.
Jim Harbaugh has the luxury of playing six of his first seven games in Ann Arbor this season with a non-conference slate with the likes of Hawaii, Central Florida and Colorado coming to town to start the season. At least the Wolverines follow the preferred format of two non-Power 5 teams before playing a Power 5 opponent. It’s not Michigan’s fault that Colorado of the Pac-12 is presently a lower-run major college program.
The heavily weighted schedule to start the season for some programs, and the unbalanced scheduling among Power 5 teams, makes the College Football Playoff selection process highly questionable.
For those who lose in the first week or two while still in the refining process, they hope the committee is all about what have you done for me lately come December. Why not put all of the Power 5 teams in the same situation with that potential first loss after two conceivable tune-up games instead of in the first week when personnel decisions are not yet set?
The fact that a late-season loss is more weighted than one early in the season contributes to the fallacy of the College Football Playoff committee looking at an entire season’s body of work.
That body of work should have the same scheduling structure for every Power 5 team for a true national semifinal field to be selected and a champion to be crowned.
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