Last week, Kirby Smart called one of his own players “an idiot, I mean, just stupid.” On Saturday, he extended that assessment to the entire College Football Playoff selection committee.
The Georgia head coach appears out of patience, with just about everyone. Call it the pressured life of the playoff bubble.
Football coaches are used to winning all arguments, at least internally. But when it comes to the playoff, they are powerless. Expect the rants, tirades and insults to increase from across the country as Selection Sunday approaches.
As far as that Georgia player’s mistake? Getting caught on camera following the Bulldogs’ Nov. 9 loss to Ole Miss excitedly greeting some family friends who were wearing Rebel gear. The player apologized and offered a reasonable explanation. Smart said he, too, was sorry: “I should not have called the kid an idiot.”
The committee may not be as responsive to Smart’s opinion — namely that Georgia shouldn’t have dropped nine spots (and out of the hypothetical playoff field) in last week’s rankings because of that loss.
Georgia, now 8-2 after an impressive 31-17 bounce-back victory over Tennessee, will find out what the committee thinks this week when the new rankings are released on Tuesday night on ESPN. Not that Smart was willing to patiently wait.
“I don’t know what they’re looking for. I really don’t,” Smart said immediately after the victory over Tennessee. “I wish they could really define the criteria. I wish they could do the eyeball test where they come down here and look at the people we’re playing against and look at them. You can’t see that stuff on a TV …
“We’re trying to be the cumulative, whole, good quality team, and not be on this emotional roller coaster that’s controlled by people in a room somewhere that may not understand football like we do as coaches.”
There’s an old saying among lawyers that if you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table.
Smart should stop pounding the table because he has the facts on his side: Georgia, despite those two losses, should be well positioned to get into the playoff.
The Dawgs have played four of the committee’s top 11 teams and five of the top 20, with victories over Clemson at a neutral site, at Texas and home over Tennessee. That’s the best three-pack of victories of anyone in the country. Their two losses are at No. 10 Alabama and at No. 11 Ole Miss.
Smart should argue that Georgia shouldn’t be penalized for playing such a difficult, top-heavy schedule, especially while other schools are rewarded for facing no such comparable challenge.
No. 3 Texas is 9-1 but with no victories over a team currently ranked and a 30-15 loss to … Georgia. No. 4 Penn State is 9-1 but its only victory of significance is against No. 24 Illinois. No. 5 Indiana is 10-0 and the best story in the sport outside of Army, but it has defeated no one of substance (the Hoosiers can change that Saturday at No. 2 Ohio State).
This isn’t some overly friendly evaluation of the SEC as a whole. Far from it. Some SEC schedules — namely Texas and Texas A&M — have proven weak. This is about putting respect on the gauntlet the Bulldogs have uniquely faced.
Should they have just played more soft teams to protect their record? Would that be preferable? Is this about amassing the fewest losses or proving yourself up to repeated challenges, even if there are setbacks?
Look, the in-season weekly rankings are a credibility-sapping exercise for the committee. It’s like judging a half-baked cake. Each week its forced into making (and then defending) contradictions. Angry coaches use the group as a motivational piñata. The committee is put on the defensive, eroding public trust.
It doesn’t mean it “may not understand football.”
The 13-person group features four former coaches — Chris Ault (Nevada), Jim Grobe (Wake Forest, Baylor, Ohio), Mike Riley (Oregon State, Nebraska) and Gary Pinkel (Toledo, Missouri). There are also three former players — Will Shields (Nebraska, NFL), Randall McDaniel (Arizona State, NFL) and chair Warde Manuel, who is the athletic director at Michigan where he also played.
When last week Manuel stated that one concern about Georgia was “their offense hasn’t been consistent. … They’ve struggled with some turnovers,” was he wrong?
The Dawgs were coming off a 10-point offensive effort against the Rebels and had turned the ball over nine times in the previous three games. Quarterback Carson Beck had tossed 12 interceptions in his previous six games.
Against Tennessee the offense got on track. They will, presumably, be rewarded for that.
If Smart wants to fight for his team, then he needs to challenge the sport to declare what it truly wants to be about.
Should competition be rewarded? How about aggressive non-conference scheduling? Or should it be about playing patsies and hoping that your oversized conference spits out a favorable schedule?
The SEC (16 teams) and Big Ten (18 teams) have gotten so massive that there is no consistency in who teams face. Might be a gauntlet. Might be a cake walk.
If the quality of a team’s victories matters more than just the quantity of victories, then Georgia should be in the playoff and teams going forward will have to consider the importance of trying to add some non-conference challenges to impress the committee.
That’d be good for the sport. It should be good enough for this committee.
No need to insult, Kirby.
Just pound the facts.
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