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Uncertainty Abounds as CFP Selection Committee Faces Tough Decisions

The questions on many people’s minds heading into the weekend are how Florida State can play without Jameis Winston for a half and how this will affect the entire season. We have been told that the CFP selection committee will take injuries into account when determining the four semifinalists. What exactly that means, though, is a little unclear. If Braxton Miller is healthy by January (he won’t be, but it’s a great example) will the committee give Ohio State a pass on a loss or two? At what point does speculation about the body of work replace the actual body of work? Should it matter at all? These are questions that the committee will have to grapple with if a major injury affects the outcome of the season.

The more immediate concern, as mentioned above, is Jameis Winston. The CFP has not told us how its selection committee will treat suspensions. Will they be treated the same as an injury or is a suspension different because while an injury is more or less out of the player’s/team’s control, a suspension is directly because of something the player chose to do. The NCAA basketball tournament selection committee makes this very distinction. They adjust seeding based on injuries, but not suspensions. It makes sense logically, though it can admittedly preclude putting the absolute “best” teams into the tournament.

This boils down to a major crux of the issue about the CFP—namely, that we don’t really know what they are going to do. They have no official protocols or criteria. There are no precedents for us to look at to see how they usually react to situations. In essence, we can’t know how they will treat injuries at all and if they will make a differentiation between injuries and suspensions because they’ve never done it before.

On the other hand, the members of the committee also lack protocols and precedents. It is entirely possible that they don’t even know how they will react to injuries and suspensions. I am sure that each committee member has their own ideas about what to do in these situations and, if the situation is relevant by year’s end, that they will discuss it and try to come to some sort of consensus about what to do. This issue though, like every other issue the committee will have to grapple with (e.g. how heavily to weigh SOS, how to treat teams that don’t win their conferences, etc.), feels more immediate in the committee’s need to deal with it. In a way, it is comforting to know that even though we have no solid knowledge as to what the committee will do, neither do they.

Also, the committee has said that they will release standings throughout the season. These standings will likely be very fluid but at least they will give us an inkling of how the committee is thinking. For example, if Florida State loses a close game to Clemson but still remains in the top few teams, we will know the committee is sort of giving them a pass for their star’s suspension. Once those standings come out in a few weeks, we will have a better idea of how the committee will approach the different issues presented to them.

Of course, this could very well all be academic. Florida State is still a double-digit favorite even without Jameis for the first half. They walloped Clemson in Clemson last year and the game is in Tallahassee this year. Clemson also lost a lot more (relative to value to the team) than Florida State this past offseason. Of course, crazy things happen any given Saturday and we could end up seeing a Clemson domination that leaves no doubt what would have happened even if Jameis had played 60 minutes.

The point of this, then, is to realize the principle behind what this game means. Even if how the committee deals with suspensions might not be a talking point after this game, we should make it a talking point because someday during the CFP era it will matter. It may not even be this year, but someday we—and the committee themselves—will have to know how to treat it. And the earlier it gets discussed, the more likely it is that the committee has a strong, well-thought-out opinion when the day actually comes.

 

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