DALLAS — Several of us in the SMU press box listened to Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire’s rant on our laptops and got a good chuckle. I listened again when I got home Saturday night and realized the man was 90 percent correct in describing the modern mess of college football.
If you missed it, after beating up on West Virginia to finish 6-3 in the Big 12, one game behind championship participants Iowa State and Arizona State, McGuire went off.
“The narrative of college football today is really screwed up. It comes down to a patch on your jersey,’’ he said. McGuire went on to detail how a team from last year’s Big 12 (Texas) might win the SEC, two teams from last year’s Pac-12 (Oregon and Arizona State) could capture the Big Ten and Big 12 titles and SMU, airlifted from the American Athletic Conference, went unbeaten in the ACC and could win that title Saturday in Charlotte, N.C. He said it’s embarrassing what the selection committee is doing to to the Big 12, which, as it stands, will get its winner into the 12-team field but not one of the top four seeds saved for the highest ranked conference winners.
Boise State is being viewed in a better light than anyone from the Big 12.
Initially, I thought he was simply lobbying for a second or third team from the Big 12 to get in which could include his Red Raiders. Tech is the only team in the country that beat both the championship teams in its conference. But really the greater point he is making is that we truly are stuck in the past in considering SEC and Big Ten teams to be one thing and everyone else to be something less — even though both leagues could crown teams most recently from the Pac-12 and Big 12 this Saturday.
There’s something larger at play, too, and it’s the problem conference administrators never considered when they just kept adding teams in an effort to create four super conferences. The SEC, the Big 12 and the ACC all have 16 teams now and the bloated Big Ten has 18. Numbers and geography are utterly meaningless. Two of the conferences play nine conference games (Big Ten, Big 12) and the other two play eight. That means we are about to declare league champions that didn’t have to face about half the field during the regular season.
What does that mean? Allow me to give three examples, including the two teams of the greatest local interest at the moment.
SMU went unbeaten in its first year of Power Four football. I have covered three of the Mustangs’ games, I will be in Charlotte on Saturday night and I think they are one of the great success stories of our time. They also got a heck of a break in the scheduling. SMU did not play Clemson (its championship opponent) or Miami, the teams that were battling different foes for a spot in the title game Saturday.
There were four ACC teams that went 5-3. SMU played two of them, beating Louisville by seven and Duke by one point in overtime. SMU beat Boston College (a 4-4 team) by 10. Their five blowout wins in the ACC — 26, 30, 23, 26 and 32-point margins — came against teams that went anywhere from 1-7 to 3-5.
No knock on the Mustangs. You play who they schedule for you. But they really just got a snapshot of the ACC this season, and the same holds true for Texas.
The Longhorns won the SEC regular season by going 7-1, and congrats to them. There were two 6-2 teams. Texas played one of them (Georgia) and lost by 15. There were six 5-3 teams and Texas didn’t face any of them until they beat the Aggies by 10 on Saturday. No Alabama, no LSU, no Ole Miss, no South Carolina, no Mizzou for Texas. The Longhorns’ other six wins came against clubs with conference records that ran from 4-4 (Florida) to 0-8 (Mississippi State).
How good are the Longhorns really? Maybe we’re about to learn in that Georgia rematch.
I would point out the Big Ten’s Cinderella story fits this same category. Indiana, a basketball school, rediscovered football this season and went 11-1 including 8-1 in Big Ten play. Gotta love the Hoosiers.
But of the seven other teams with winning conference records, Indiana did not play undefeated Oregon or 8-1 Penn State. They did play 7-2 Ohio State and lost by 23. Of the other four with winning records, Indiana faced just one and beat Michigan by five points. Indiana will get into the 12-team tournament because they destroyed teams like UCLA and Michigan State and Nebraska and Washington, and those teams sound like pretty good victories, but what are they really?
They are, as McGuire said, teams that wear a Big Ten patch this season. And teams like Indiana and Ohio State and quite possibly three-loss Alabama will sit home this weekend, avoid losses by not earning spots in their conference title games, and then receive invitations to the 12-team party. I’m not saying they aren’t deserving, but when we’re comparing teams across the country that have no common opponents, we need to dig deeper than ever. In the land of super-sized conferences, just saying a team plays in the SEC or Big Ten never meant less than it does today.
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