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College Football Playoff Begins

After much controversy, the College Football Playoff finally begins with action this weekend. Instead of four highly anticipated first round games, the committee continued to bungle everything from the format, selection of teams and the seeding.

Aside from the headline of the glaring omission of Notre Dame on Selection Sunday, the ridiculous format rules completely backfired on the committee give us teams ranked outside the Top 20 being invited as guest participants.

Of course, we are talking about non-deserving Tulane and James Madison who get to come to the party because of their inclusion as "Group of Four Teams" because the committee thinks its cool to invite the little guys despite not having enough quality wins. T

Within three hours of lining up for the kickoff in their respective games, Tulane and especially James Madison are likely to be humiliated by teams that are bigger, faster, stronger and more deserving. This is clearly reflected in the betting lines. Ole Miss is favored over Tulane by 17.5 while Oregon is a 21.5point favorite over JMU. That's something to look forward to.

The committee's seeding has also been called into question. Indiana is a legitimate #1 seed having gone undefeated at 13-0 but Ohio State is seeded second in front of a more deserving Georgia team who is #3 despite having much better victories and who is the SEC Champion and resides in the nation's toughest conference.

Mississippi is ranked sixth despite having the circus of their head coach leaving for a neighboring rival while taking several of his assistant coaches with him. Luckily for Ole Miss they get Tulane in the opening round, a team that beat 45-10 earlier this season. Yes, we have rematch and mismatch in the first round. Go figure.

Meanwhile Alabama, who was buried by Georgia two weeks ago is seeded eighth and plays its own rematch at #9 Oklahoma. This game occurred five weeks won by the Sooners 23-21. They get to do all over again as well, meaning two of the four opening round games are repeats.

Miami who had two bad losses versus Louisville and SMU travels to Texas A&M who were blown out in their last game against Texas. This game features two quarterbacks who have thrown a combined eight interceptions in those three losses.

All of this means that we have to wait until New Year's Eve and New Year's Day for some decent matchups which is when the quarterfinal round will take place. That will be nearly a month removed from the last time we saw any compelling college football.

Leave it to CFP Committee to annually mess up anything that could be good in this fun and exciting sport.