Ohio State and Michigan State may well be two of the four best teams in college football. Unfortunately for them, even if all else goes right for whoever loses their November 21st matchup, only one of them will make the College Football Playoff.
For a conference that seemed like a wasteland outside of its world-beating national champion — and well, it still mostly is — mutterings of two possible Big Ten representatives in the CFP picked up steam this week after Michigan State took care of business at home against Oregon.
The Ducks will be the toughest foe the Spartans face until they travel to Columbus in late November. Facing Michigan at The Big House and Nebraska in Lincoln won’t be cakewalks, but there’s no reason Michigan State will be anything less than a 10-point favorite in each. As for Ohio State, they can clearly sleepwalk through their slate and still emerge undefeated before then.
Not only must one of them own one loss by regular season’s end, but it seems that’s all the two programs will have combined. Assuming whichever trumps the other also wins the Big Ten Championship Game — a reasonable expectation given the state of the B1G West — the selection committee would have quite a question on their hands.
Would they admit two Big Ten teams to the Dance?
No. They wouldn’t.
Again, this isn’t to say Ohio State and Michigan State both wouldn’t be worthy if the above scenario plays out. It’s just not going to happen. There’s some evidence that already suggests this will be near-impossible, not to mention the way things will probably shake out, there won’t be any room for the inferior Big Ten East team anyway.
For those who could foresee both in a national semifinal, how quickly you forgot what transpired just nine months ago. TCU and Baylor fans will tell you the selection committee will not bend over backwards for a one-loss team that didn’t win its conference championship game, let alone play in one. This is a shame in the Big Ten, as Ohio State and Michigan State are clearly the best two teams and should face each other in a conference championship game, but due to semantics, won’t.
That would make things easy, wouldn’t it? A sweep means one would be 0-2 against the other, without a conference title, and would be clearly unfit for the playoffs. A split would mean two one-loss teams, but only one conference champion. They would be the Big Ten’s CFP representative. What doomed TCU and Baylor last year will doom either Ohio State or Michigan State this year, and it’s not that they won’t have a conference title game to suss this out. It’s that they have silly, arbitrary divisions.
Alright, let’s backtrack. Suppose either OSU or MSU goes 13-0 and the other 11-1. What would have to happen elsewhere for the latter to crack the CFP? Well, there’d need to be no more than one undefeated or one-loss conference champion. The SEC champ goes undefeated or 12-1? They’re in. The ACC champ goes undefeated or 12-1? They’re in. The Pac-12 champ goes undefeated or 12-1? They’re in. It seems unlikely that this won’t happen in at least two conferences. Alabama or Georgia both feel like they could pull it off, Clemson seems like it’ll be largely untested, and USC, UCLA and Oregon all seem like they could still fit this bill. And if a Big 12 team goes undefeated, the Big Ten “runner-up” (let’s not put on airs over the future Big Ten West champion, whoever loses in Columbus on November 21st is the second-best team in that conference) has an even slimmer shot.
It’s only been one year, but the selection committee appears to have a conference champion fetish. So even if there are a slew of two-or-worse-loss conference champions, Ohio State and Michigan State’s strength of schedule would really need to kick ass, and well… they don’t really inspire (you do have a point, Bret Bielema!).
It depends on how these hypothetical losses would shake out, but it’s hard to see the committee nudging aside SEC champion Alabama if they lost to, say, Georgia and Texas A&M on the road, for a one-loss Michigan State that didn’t even play in the Big Ten title game.
The Big 12 not having a championship game is an inherent setback in the College Football Playoff Era, but the structure of the Big Ten (and other imbalanced conferences for that matter) isn’t helping either. Either Ohio State or Michigan State will be sitting at home on December 5th, when both should be at Lucas Oil Stadium, playing for a conference championship and a playoff berth.
And because of that, when the Cotton and Orange Bowl matchups are set, don’t expect to see two Big Ten representatives.
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