It was the score few could have foreseen but the result so many should have expected.
The Pac-12 has been shut out of the College Football Playoff. Again.
Oregon 37, Utah 15 as the Conference of Cannibals gazes longingly at the sport’s biggest stage for the third consecutive year and fourth time in the past five.
But at least there are lessons to be drawn from Oregon’s dominating performance, which likely knocked Utah out of a New Year’s Six at-large berth (i.e., the Cotton), leaving the conference without an additional paycheck.
Two lessons come to mind immediately:
No. 1: Oregon should never have played Auburn.
Had the Ducks walloped Idaho or Wyoming, for instance, they would be a 12-1 conference champion with a top-10 win (Utah), a top-25 win (USC) and a terrific chance to grab the fourth playoff berth.
Admittedly, that’s a shortsighted reaction. But it’s not unreasonable for Oregon fans to play the what-if game.
And to grimace at the thought of their athletic director, Rob Mullens, actively pursuing a high-profile matchup against the SEC while chairing a selection committee that is fixated on teams with zero or one loss.
No two-loss team has ever been invited to the CFP.
Oregon won’t be the first, even though one of the Ducks’ losses was in the final minute on a neutral field to a top-10 team.
That’s a game Oklahoma and Baylor and Utah didn’t attempt, and yet the Ducks were punished for playing it.
To be clear: This isn’t on Mullens. He did the right thing by scheduling Auburn — the stage and opportunity and payday made it worthwhile.
And coach Mario Cristobal voiced his support for big-stage intersectional games.
“There’s no way we’re going away from that mentality, to schedule down,” he said.
The problem is the system …
A system established before Mullens took charge of the committee …
A system that has opted for one-loss non-champions over two-loss champions.
A system that placed Utah eight spots above Oregon largely because the Ducks lost a challenge the Utes didn’t accept.
It’s not Utah’s fault.
It’s not Oregon’s fault.
It’s the system’s fault.
“It’s a question that myself and my peers still have,’’ Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said Friday afternoon when I asked about the apparent downgrade the committee has given Oregon — and all two-loss teams over the six years of the CFP.
Scott cited the established selection criteria.
He then explained that the playoff management committee meets annually with the selection chair to “make sure we’re all comfortable with how the selection committee is calibrating those things.”
He went on:
“I felt the year Washington got in (2016) that strength-of-schedule helped them. But there are other examples you could point to. There’s tons of evidence — no two-loss champion has ever gotten into the playoff. That would suggest won-loss record is kind of a negating issue.
“I don’t have a clear answer yet. In the (internal) conversations we’ve had through the season looking at Oregon compared to other one-loss teams across the country that were ranked higher than they are that may have played a weak non-conference schedule.
“We’ve raised the question as to how seriously was Oregon punished for playing Auburn at a neutral site the first game of the year without some star players and dominating most of the game.
“It seems like they have been penalized pretty hard for that.”
Indeed, they have.
Which brings us to lesson No. 2 from the Ducks’ blowout victory:
Scott should be on the phone Monday morning with his peers — the Big 12’s Bob Bowlsby, the Big Ten’s Jim Delany, the SEC’s Greg Sankey and the ACC’s John Swofford — advocating for an expanded playoff.
No, not advocating. Insisting. Demanding. Waving the flag through the lobby of the Gaylord Texan hotel, home base of the selection committee.
(As the Hotline reported earlier today, an eight-team playoff would be worth hundreds of millions of additional dollars for the conferences, as well.)
To this point, Scott has taken the broadest, most magnanimous approach possible:
* The five power conferences and Notre Dame agreed to the four-team event.
* Everyone knew at least one champion would be left out.
* The system has increased the popularity of the sport.
He was given another opportunity Friday to stump for an expanded playoff. Asked about the possibility of Utah winning the championship and getting left out of the CFP, Scott said:
“When we designed the playoff, we understood there were four slots, there are five big conferences, independents. There would (be) years that teams couldn’t get in. So we understand that.”
He shouldn’t understand that any longer.
The playing field isn’t level.
Teams that play nine conference games are at a disadvantage.
Teams that challenge themselves in non-conference affairs put themselves at risk in a system that sees a chasm between the first loss and the second.
Pac-12 teams do both.
Don’t change the scheduling. Change the system.
Scott must shove aside his instinct for doing what’s best for the sport, for working with his colleagues and following the broader sentiment of the Power Five commissioners and the management committee.
The Pac-12 needs to lead the charge for an expanded playoff or, short of that, recalibrate the selection process.
Oregon’s plight is the latest proof.
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