Head-to-head results no longer matter to the College Football Playoff selection committee. Well, only sometimes. That’s what chairman Gary Barta has pushed the past two weeks in justifying Michigan’s ranking ahead of Michigan State despite the Spartans’ win over the Wolverines on Oct. 30 and the teams having identical 9-1 records.
No. 7 Michigan State was ranked third earlier this month in the first CFB Playoff poll, but dropped behind Michigan following the Spartans’ first loss of the season to Purdue and have yet to recover in the eyes of the selection committee.
Barta said Tuesday night due to the Wolverines’ statistical strengths in several categories comparatively, Michigan is the higher-ranked team at this point. Those remarks led to an array of hot takes from media members and fans blasting the committee’s decision.
We’ll get to Barta’s full quote later, but the point stands — when the leader of the selection committee infers that “watching the games” is secondary to something else, there’s fault there. Isn’t that the group’s job, to watch more games than most and then power-rank those teams based on eye-test and various other factors?
