Mike Gundy Shared His Thoughts on the College Football Playoff Committee

The College Football Playoff selection committee will release its initial 2020 ranking on Tuesday night, a few weeks later than in past years thanks to the erratic and uncertain season that COVID-19 has caused.

It will be the start to a weeks-long adjudication that is complicated enough without all the pandemic-specific talking points (and baggage) that will undoubtedly drive the conversation.

I don’t envy the committee in its charge, and neither does Mike Gundy.

During his Monday morning Zoom teleconference, Gundy was asked if there was a case to be made for including a two-loss Big 12 champion, even if his argument was somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

“I think they should [get in], said Gundy of one of potentially four teams (including OSU). “I think anybody that wins in this league and has just two losses oughta get in the Playoff. I don’t think they’re gonna take what I say into account.”

But should and would are two different things entirely, and Gundy isn’t naïve to that fact.

“My honest opinion there is, if you have several one-loss teams in the country ranked in the top 10, it would be extremely difficult for that to happen. People in this part of the country I don’t think will want to hear that, but I think if you’re just looking at it and being reasonable, it would be difficult in my opinion.”

The fact is that any legitimate case the conference stood to be represented for the fifth time briefly flickered and was snuffed out on a windy night in Norman last Saturday.

A one-loss Oklahoma State winning Bedlam and then winning out would have provided the league with the most straightforward case to CFP votes, but it would have still been an uphill battle to climb.

As Gundy alluded to, that dominant win — putting OU back in control of its Big 12 title hopes — has caused some in this part of the country to posit for a two-loss Sooner club getting in. But no team has ever been selected to the CFP’s Final Four with more than one loss, and that’s not changing this year.

Oklahoma has been selected four of the last five years and possesses the only brand name in flyover country strong enough to support such a coup, but a Sooner playoff bid would contradict everything the process has shown us in its six years. And that in a year when the group is probably looking only to simplify things.

Thanks to COVID scheduling being handled on a per-conference basis, the committee could potentially be scrutinizing pedigrees between an 11-0 Cincinnati team that wins its conference, a one-loss Clemson and teams like Ohio State, which will play only seven regular season games, or Oregon or USC that will each play just six.

If you look at ESPN’s Allstate Playoff Predictor, OU’s got just the 14th best chance of getting in at just 0.8%. Iowa State, with one losses only to AP ranked Lafayette and Oklahoma State, is not even on the board. All the teams I mentioned above are in the top 7.

Things could still get even more muddled at the top as things work themselves out on the field. But in a year when the committee will be comparing apples to oranges, why further complicate things by breaking such a cut-and-dry precedent and allowing in a team with two losses?

“I think they’ve got their hands full,” Gundy said of the selection committee members. “They’re gonna earn their money if they get paid. I don’t know if they get paid. (They don’t.)

“I don’t have any idea how they would take into account what’s gone on across the country. I just looked a week ago and noticed that the ACC, most of those teams are up to nine games. Then you’ve got some other teams across the country that have played two.

“I would say they have their hands full. They should be able to get down to like six or eight teams pretty easily, though. I don’t follow it like you guys do, but you would think that they’re gonna get down to six or eight teams pretty easy.”

Unfortunately, Gundy, his Cowboys and the rest of the Big 12 will be relegated to an ancillary role in the weekly spectacle that is ESPN’s CFP show and we’ll be reserved to comparing the strengths of Big Ten and Pac-12 schedules.