This is the kind of column that makes me want to take a shower after I finish writing.
ESPN released their College Football Playoff rankings last night, somehow dropping Indiana five spots after a bye week. As with week one, Internet Outrage ensued, ESPN got the outrage they wanted and I find myself contributing to the noise like a good little Talking Head in this horrible new ecosystem.
The worst part of the reality that is the College Football Playoff is that, no matter what happens, it feels like
ESPN wins. The same ESPN that’s destroying the integrity of the sport through its obvious slant, Playoff expansion, and general platforming of the worst personalities surrounding the sport.
It starts with the presentation. Did you, humble blogger, have plans last night that depended on these rankings being released at scheduled time? Too bad! The Champions Classic, also scheduled around ESPN’s wants and needs, pushed the show back two hours.
If this were anything other than a money grab, the results would be released weekly like the AP Poll – simultaneously without any pomp and circumstance surrounding the release. But how would the World Wide Leader in Sports sell advertising space for that?
Releasing the results in a made-for-TV spectacle every week destroys the illusion that the College Football Playoff Selection Committee is an entity separate from ESPN. Sure, the connections aren’t as obvious the network’s connections to Texas or Alabama, for example, but at the end of the day, that committee gathers every week to release a product with the primary goal of selling advertisements and fomenting the debate-only media landscape on Tuesday nights.
As much as I’d like to pretend otherwise, ESPN’s own coverage of the release betrays what the rankings actually stand for.
After showing Indiana in the nine spot last night, we all got to see a graphic that listed Indiana as the team with the fifth-best odds of securing a Playoff berth. Why not rank them within the top five then? Well, your guess is as good as mine.
While the weekly release format tries to convince viewers that there is a timeliness factor at play here, the immediate pivot to the final Playoff field betrays the rankings’ real intentions: setting up big matchups that can justify future rankings.
The overall impression one gets in seeing this play out every week is that none of this should be taken seriously.
From the standpoint of Curt Cignetti, this means treating USC like a must-win whether Indiana occupied the four or nine spot, something I’m sure he was doing anyway. From the standpoint of the fans/media, this means letting the rankings roll off of our backs without partaking too much in the debate complex ESPN tries to manufacture each week.
This is easier said than done, as the rankings are, at the end of the day, Real and determinative of who will make the Playoff. That said, Indiana’s play on the field in each of Cignetti’s first two seasons has been enough to overcome whatever bad faith doubts people throw out for clicks.
I can’t pretend that I’m not upset about Tennessee being ahead of Indiana at this point, but instead of engaging with the rankings in a way that will fuel the fire (tuning into one of the various programs dedicated to covering this shit, for example), I’m going to instead focus on what’s in front of Indiana rather than this set of rankings that will not matter when the actual field is selected.
That’s what a sane fan would do, at least.
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