Now that the 2020 season is here, now that the ACC and the 12 major powers like Clemson and Notre Dame and Oklahoma are about to play their first game of the year this weekend, now that we’re just two weeks from the start of the SEC, it’s still fair to start having general debates about school football.
Like who will participate in this year’s school football playoffs.
On the CBS Sports website, his list of school football writers and hounds presented predictions and were there the same old suspects playing this year: Alabama, Clemson, Georgia and Oklahoma.
But at the back of the table, in the space reserved for the no-sowing. four in school football playoffs, there were two relatives for American Athletic Conference fans accustomed to being unfairly excluded from those conversations.
Cincinnati and Memphis.
Two national media members predicted that a team in the organization of five, or for this year’s sake, a three-team organization, would reach school football playoffs for the first time, one of them even chose the Tigers.
In a year that’s been so demoralizing, it’s replaced our lives so much, is that something?
“These schools have never been so close to the playoffs,” said Dennis Dodd, a high school football editor at CBS Sports, who predicted Cincinnati would be on the PSC, “but it will be a heavyweight. “
However, let’s take that idea a step further: if an AAFC team remains undefeated, whether Memphis, Cincinnati or UCF or any other in the league, this team will be one of four schools included in this year’s playoffs. of the Sun Belt Conference or Conference-USA or an independent such as BYU or Army remains undefeated, it will also have to be taken into account.
There is simply no clever explanation why this year will exclude approximately 50% of the 76 groups in the Football Bowl Subdivision that play football from the chance to win a national championship.
As daunting as it may seem, the answer to the question of what it would take for a Group of Five team to weigh the school football playoff game is simple: we want a global fitness crisis, and even that would possibly not be enough.
“As long as Memphis wins, Memphis enthusiasts can at least say we’re alive for school football playoffs, and that’s anything that in a general year is just impossible,” SEC Network Paul Finebaum said this week in an interview on FM’s 92. 9 “Jason and John Show. “”I don’t think you’re going to see anyone outdoors with the Power Five, but it’s not impossible. You may see an absolutely strange season in which you get some groups that literally cannibalize each other.
The Tigers are already seeing this year’s profits, with Big Ten and Pac-12 on the sidelines.
His first game of the season as opposed to Arkansas State was played at ESPN on Saturday night, and his next home game, as opposed to Houston on September 18, will also be at ESPN’s highlights. There will be more people watching Memphis play football than if it were a typical season.
But the barriers between AAFC and College Football Playoff are the same.
Finebaum noted that the Tigers don’t have a game on their program “that gives them enough juice. “
But the excuse of “they didn’t play with anyone” doesn’t paint this year. Not with what the pandemic has done on calendars.
Memphis, for example, intended to play Purdue this weekend, but that game was canceled when the Big Ten chose to postpone their season. The same thing happened with the Cincinnati game in Nebraska.
UCF still has a game opposed to Georgia Tech, but its game opposite North Carolina’s 19 takes position due to the ACC’s resolution to play only 11 games this season. SMU saw its opposition to the destruction of TCU due to an outbreak of coronavirus in TCU.
The only off-conference scoring games left on the AAFC calendar are USF against Notre Dame and Tulsa against Oklahoma State. Both games are scheduled for September 19, but it is very likely that neither is a fair representation of the league’s strength this year. It was decided that USF and Tulsa would be two of the 3 worst AAFC groups in the league’s preseason press poll.
It is quite ridiculous that AAFC’s preference to host and host the playoffs without a conference, and the Power Five’s reluctance to face the league’s most productive groups, oppose the conference. It would be frankly corrupt if an undefeated season, especially in those conditions, is not rewarded because of pandemic adjustments.
Dodd said his prediction was based on the assumption that Cincinnati was undefeated and that the finalist for an SEC department or the ACC or Big 12 team had ended with two or three losses.
“I think (the CFP committee) would place each and every excuse not to do that,” Dodd said of the inclusion of a non-Power Five team. “Think of political intrigue. That would give AAFC commissioner Mike Aresco and the league access to every single thing they said it was.
This is the year of the pandemic, the year of tactile research and the year we would all like in many ways This is a year when school football playoffs will not even take place because of all the COVID-19 obstacles that those groups are going through, although the fact that we have come here suggests that those who have committed to line up a football team this season will be a way to do so.
So it’s also the year school football playoffs have become fair, or a little closer to fair, for schools like Memphis.
You can contact commercial appeal columnist Mark Giannotto by emailing him and mgiannotto@gannett. com on Twitter: @mgiannotto