Reusse: CFP committee shaped discussion to avoid real fiasco

There was a look through the collection of irrelevant bowl games and one detected was the First Responder Bowl in Dallas. The excitement of those individuals who have stormed into dangerous situations to have a pair of prestigious football machines such as Texas-San Antonio (6-6) and Florida International (7-5) playing in their honor on Dec. 26 must be spine-tingling.

What came as a surprise was this football festival is being played at Gerald Ford Stadium. Yes, he was a Republican president, but rather moderate by current Texas standards to have something named his honor.

Guess what? It’s not a stadium named in honor of the former president. This stadium, used by SMU, is named for Gerald J. Ford, an alum and businessman who gave the school $20 million as major funding for the venue, which opened in 2000.

Ford also is a longtime member of SMU’s board, although he wasn’t around when Bill Clements, a two-term Texas governor and chairman of SMU’s Board of Governors, was approving those under-the-table payments to Eric Dickerson and other great athletes.

This led to SMU receiving the infamous “death penalty” from the NCAA in 1987. Now, nearly four decades later, Clements’ descendants can claim their patriarch was just ahead of his time in granting financial rewards to players (particularly great ones).

This is the second season the 12-team playoff will decide a FBS champion. The “B” stands for bowls, and six of those are now attached to the playoff: Rose, Cotton, Orange and Sugar (the four that mattered for decades) for the quarterfinals, and Fiesta and Peach for the semifinals.

There are 35 others, most of which don’t mean diddly, including one on Dec. 26 in Phoenix involving New Mexico and a team from the north that gave up 525 yards to Northwestern.

They did a great job of turning the debate for the last spot into Miami vs. Notre Dame and avoided the real fiasco, that being the inclusion of Alabama as a fifth team from the SEC.

What the committee didn’t want was a national discussion on the obvious: No matter the selectors’ affiliation, when push comes to shove they are lap dogs for ESPN, the main television home and financial source for the CFP through the 2031 season. And ESPN’s main collegiate connection is the SEC.

“Five teams from the SEC, three from the Big Ten … that sounds about right,” was the message sent by ESPN’s $7.8 billion, six-year extension in March 2024. The CFP committee heard that loud and clear.

The committee claimed Alabama had the toughest schedule of all, and that the Tide deserved no downgrading for their miserable effort vs. Georgia in the SEC title game.

Let’s see here: They finished 10-3. Two of the wins were against Louisiana-Monroe and Eastern Illinois. Another was against the worst Wisconsin team since Barry Alvarez made his turnaround with the Badgers in 1993.

Alabama lost its season opener 31-17 to Florida State. The Seminoles went from there to a 5-7 record, including 2-6 in the ACC — such a feeble collection that five-loss Duke wound up winning the conference title game.

The CFP committee explained Notre Dame getting dumped in favor of Miami by claiming it went back and looked at the season opener — a 27-24 home victory for the Hurricanes.

Apparently, no one was able to get those same ESPN/SEC lackeys to go back and look at Alabama’s season opener against Florida State. Or to believe their lyin’ eyes as the Tide totaled 209 yards in last weekend’s 28-7 thrashing from Georgia.

Meantime, Notre Dame won its last 10, and made the 100% correct decision to skip a bowl game after getting jumped by Miami during a week when neither team played.

Considering they made a run to the title game a year ago to prove the worthiness of their still-independent schedule, the Golden Domers gave postseason football what it deserved with this synopsis of their reaction:

Pete Bevacqua, Notre Dame’s athletic director, went after the ACC (the school’s partner in all sports other than hockey and football) for campaigning in Miami’s favor. And this won’t be a rematch of the “Convicts vs. Catholics” era when the schools played all the time, but Miami does visit Notre Dame next season on Nov. 7.

The Irish did get robbed, as did perhaps BYU, but Miami and the ACC were the wrong target for Bevacqua and the Irish.

Alabama had earned the right to play in the Pop-Tarts Bowl, by polluting the stadium in its opener vs. sub-mediocre Florida State and with its no-show in the Georgia rematch.