And Ohio State couldn't come ready to play for a home game that had been dubbed by the media as the ultimate greatest single game in the history of sports and got their doors blown off.
Really this is just a year where one team has this iron clad grip on #1 and nobody else is close.
If TCU wasn't worthy of a 4 team playoff, the only argument left is that it should have been the top 4 SEC teams and nobody from other conferences. I mean that potentially is a valid argument, it makes just as much sense as saying Michigan is better than TCU or Ohio State is some ultimate perfect team after they got stomped at home in a huge hype game.
The Pac and ACC didn't exactly make a case that they needed representation more than Big 12 and Big Ten either.
It'll be very healthy to get a 12 team playoff where the SEC always gets 2-4 teams to reflect its strength, the Big Ten can get 2-3 teams to reflect its ownership of the selection process, and the other conferences just get to play and sometimes win without all this second guessing.
"Worthy" is an ambiguous term. I think one of the issues in this discussion is that folks have implicit feelings about whether the playoff should be the 4 best teams or the 4 most deserving teams. The committee itself hasn't help by applying unspoken and arbitrary rules. It would be hard to keep TCU out if the playoff is about the most deserving teams. If it's about the best teams, it might look different.
I used to be pro expanding the playoffs but now I'm not so sure. The biggest problem that I see right now, and I think this was on display last night, is that there are some really elite schools and then there's everyone else. There's just not a ton of parity between the top end and the also-rans. What the 12 team playoff is going to do is ensure those elite schools get a shot every year but I fear it's still going to be the same elites winning because they are just better. And I'm not necessarily talking about win-loss records, but it's the same schools year in and year out that get the best recruits and send the most players to the NFL. They've just accumulated most of the talent and they do so consistently. I also fear that conference realignment is only exacerbating this issue by clearly consolidating those schools into fewer conferences.
Controversially, I think the problem is the concept of "power 5" and a lot of fanbases not coming to terms with the fact that there are elite teams and then there is everyone else. This is probably a natural consequence of not having a real NFL minor league. Players really don't have a choice if they want to make a career out of football, they have to attend a university and they're going to go to the ones who have the best history of sending players to the NFL. It's a self-perpetuating cycle.
If I had a magic wand, I would create a new conference that contains these elite programs and could pay players and essentially segregate those who want to make a career of football from student athletes. The other schools would be partitioned by size and geography into conferences. Essentially, I would create an actual NFL minor league.
There are some issues with this though that I'm not sure how to solve, but some of those exist today. Does it make a ton of sense to force a young star earning a couple million a year to attend Psych 101 with students who will be doing well to make a couple million over their entire careers, especially when that star is really just looking for a way to make football a career? In that model, outside of trying to monetize the nostalgia alumni have, what association is there really between schools and football? Branding? Football subsidizing other sports? I think more and more people are going to raise this question when players have more ability to monetize what they're doing.
By designating a single conference as "the" conference for aspiring NFL athletes to go to to get recruited and get paid, we're effectively *explicitly* delegating the other schools to something "less." I'm honestly ok with that. I'd rather have ISU play our regional rivals in close games consistently than hang onto the dream that ISU is ever going to go to the playoffs. Winning is nice but college football is more than that to me.
Eh, just spitballing.