Mark Wiedmer
One day you’re the bug. The next you’re the windshield.
Is there a better way to describe the emotional roller coaster Tennessee fans have been on over the last two weeks or so as they try to come to terms with the College Football Playoff rankings?
Let us review. Before the Clorox Orange got soundly whipped between Georgia’s famed hedges a little more than a week ago, they were flying high with a No.7 CFP ranking and the prospect of hosting their first game in the 12-team playoff, possibly against Notre Dame.
But when they lost to the Bulldogs, they were all the way out of the playoffs in last Tuesday night’s rankings.
Remember the lyrics from the old “Hee Haw’ tV show? “Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery.” That was the Big Orange Nation after last week’s rankings came out.
But then the sunshine returned over the weekend. Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart literally threw away a game at Florida. Alabama got run over by Oklahoma’s Sooner Schooner in Norman. Texas A&M somehow lost at Auburn in four overtimes. BYU fell to Arizona State after a Cougars Hail Mary prayer was caught but tackled two yards shy of the end zone.
Suddenly, emphatically, all of Saturday night’s talking heads pointed to the Vols as the big winner from all these unexpected losses.
Now all UT has to do is avoid what happened to the Crimson-faced Tide when Bama lost at Vanderbilt on October 5. Let the Vols win at Vandy two days after Thanksgiving in the Music City and that loss to Georgia will be instantly forgotten. The Vols will be back in the playoffs and possibly hosting a first-round game. Such is the power and parity of the Southeastern Conference on any given Saturday.
Tennessee may or may not be capable of winning a national championship. But in small but steady steps, it seems to be getting better weekly. Yes, Georgia was a tough loss. Lots of teams have found winning between the hedges to be an almost impossible task, and the Sanford Stadium Tennessee invaded a little more than a week ago was about as hostile as it gets. That matters and it should factor into the playoff committee’s decisions, just as Georgia’s loss at Ole Miss should be softened by the crazy crowd inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium that day.
Life on the road in the SEC is just different than anywhere else. While three-loss Alabama and three-loss Ole Miss are assuredly out of the playoffs and probably deserve to be, it could be argued that with the possible exceptions of top-ranked Oregon and Ohio State, every other team in America might have a minimum of three defeats if they played four road games in the SEC.
So when the latest CFP rankings are revealed tonight at 8 o’clock on ESPN, expect Tennessee’s name to be called among those delighted dozen now expected to be in the field. And expect the Vols’ to also be there when the final list is presented on December 8.
My hunch is that by then, assuming the Vols vanquish Vanderbilt, UT will host a first-round game on December 20th or 21st, perhaps against Indiana. What is evident between now and then is that while a 12-team playoff has made college football more interesting down the stretch, it hasn’t necessarily made it a less controversial endeavor than the old system of picking four teams. We’re now just going to have fiery second-guessing about the 12th, 13th and 14th teams than the fourth and fifth picks.
The reality is that Georgia, Ohio State, Oregon and Texas were the top four teams in the Associated Press preseason poll and they could easily be the top four teams when this 12-team playoff reaches its semifinal round in early January.
And should that be true, it will be interesting to see how many young men suffered serious injuries in those two or three added playoff games at the end of a longer and more taxing and stressful season.
But it will undoubtedly offer higher TV ratings and thus more money to pay athletes who not so long ago would have played for the sadly diminished gift of a free college education. And because of that, as well as the greater threat of career-altering injury, it could be argued, regardless of the winner on the field, who’s the real bug and who’s the real windshield in this 12-team playoff.
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Mark Wiedmer can be reached at mwiedmer@mccallie.org