Georgia football fans are not happy with how the College Football Playoff committee treated the Bulldogs in their updated rankings this past Tuesday. Georgia falling to No. 12 makes no sense to anyone, and that includes Kirby Smart.
Smart has been somewhat reserved in his comments about the updated rankings because he is more focused on their showdown with Tennessee on Saturday. He however made an appearance on "The Pat McAfee Show" on Friday, and he couldn't help but question why the CFP committee moved them all the way down to No. 12.
Smart specifically spoke about how little the committee appears to value strength of schedule in these rankings.
“I don’t know how much the committee values it,” Smart said via athlonsports.com. “They’re looking, I think, through a sample size of — they’re looking at the game on the TV. They’re not at the stadium, hearing the crowd noise, knowing the atmosphere that you’re playing in. It’s very different when you play on the road in our league, I think compared to some other leagues it’s tougher.”
"So I think the news Tuesday came out, and it’s not something that we talk about, but it’s like, ‘OK, well what’s the importance of the schedule, if we play a really tough schedule, is there value in that? I think there’s value in that when you win and then when you don’t or you don’t play well, I don’t know.”
Does Strength of Schedule Still Matter?
What the committee did on Tuesday is very dangerous. Georgia currently has the No. 1 strength of schedule in the country and have two very impressive wins at Texas and at a neutral site against Clemson. But that clearly doesn't matter to the committee.
They looked at that metric, saw that multiple teams ranked above Georgia who have zero ranked wins this year, and still decided to drop Georgia outside of the 12-team field.
So what's the point of scheduling difficult games if they don't even matter? Sure UGA doesn't have control of their SEC schedule, but why not just schedule four cupcake non-conference games to inflate their record? That's clearly all the committee cares about.
Big non-conference games, like the one against Clemson this year, are what makes college football so great. But if the committee isn't going to value them, then Georgia may be better off scheduling four easy wins in the non-conference instead.
Hopefully the CFP committee learns from their mistakes, because they are setting a dangerous precedent for the future of college football if they don't start valuing strength of schedule more.