The College Football Playoff folks are meeting again on Wednesday to discuss, among other things, all of this monkey business in Texas.
To call it all complicated and messy doesn’t even come close. Put it this way: there are a lot of feelings involved when it comes to the shenanigans taking place in Austin. I mean, how could anyone leave the party like that and go searching for something that was supposed to be locked away. I’m talking about the SEC sticking its hand where it doesn’t belong, alright?
Alight.
Alight, so here’s what we know.
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The current College Football Playoff involves four teams, which ends up looking like a complete zoo of corruption every year, but makes sense on paper because it’s two banks of teams on either side of the bracket. There needs to be more teams in this thing, obviously, and that’s why the College Football Playoff exhibitionists are meeting again, but let me stop you right there because the SEC looks like a conference assassin after stabbing the heart of the Big 12 with a dagger.
Man, what a freak show that new-look SEC is going to be with the addition of Texas and Oklahoma. But mostly Texas. Might need to drink a Monkeynaut IPA or two from our good friends at Straight to Ale Brewery in Huntsville just to come back down to earth before the first season.
Like a monkey ready to be shot into space, as Brad Pitt’s character in Fight Club once said.
Texas just wants back on that great big poll in the sky, in other words, so no one can really blame the Longhorns for such an exotic breach of the public trust. Oklahoma really has no excuse, though.
Monkey see, monkey do, right?
And now all that monkeying around might be the thing to ruin the current effort to expand the playoff to 12 teams. It’s like someone threw a monkey wrench into the whole system. Maybe this monkey’s gone to heaven, as lead singer Black Francis of the Pixies once warned us.
It can’t be. The future of college football is too important. Save this dancing lab chimp, whatever you do, Greg Sankey. Please. Super teams are ruining the game. Geor-GIA is already a 500-pound gorilla destroying everything in its path and it must be stopped.
Sankey was on the CFP working group that originally proposed a 12-team playoff, and that’s where this gets trick-or-treaty. After Sankey and the SEC took a bite out of the Big 12, there are some conference commissioners who only want to expand the playoff to eight teams.
Nah.
That’s like being served monkey brains inside a College Football Playoff Temple of Doom. Gross.
Eight is not going to work because the big white elephant in the room has a monkey on its back and that monkey is the Group of 5, finally, maybe, hopefully being allowed into the haunted house of mirrors with everyone else.
Cincinnati beat Notre Dame, remember? Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle, apparently the CFP committee did just that when it released its first rankings on Tuesday. The committee put Cincinnati (8-0) at No.6 despite being ranked No.2 in the AP Top 25. The CFP’s first Top 5: Georgia (8-0), Alabama (7-1), Michigan State (8-0), Oregon (7-1) and Ohio State (7-1). The cartel has been busy.
Don’t try to overthink this thing, Alabama. There is absolutely no way a two-loss Crimson Tide will make the CFP over an undefeated Cincinnati. A two-loss Auburn? Well, that’s a different shot in the dark all together.
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Sidebar, but am I the only one who thinks a Bearcat looks kinda like a monkey in the same way that Cincinnati’s cinnamon-flavored spaghetti kinda tastes like chili?
The AP Top 25 Poll doesn’t really mean anything anymore now that the College Football Playoff committee orchestrates its grand charade beginning this time every year, but consider this before writing off the writers. The last time only two SEC teams were ranked in the AP Top 10 going into Week 10 of a season was in 2017.
It was Georgia and Alabama, which gave us the single greatest play in a college football national championship game (2nd and 26).
Still, if the College Football Playoff committee tries to grease their poll to hurt those furry spaghetti-eaters, then beware. It’s a dangerous game they’re playing because everyone who knows anything understands that stuff with teeth can bite. Doesn’t matter how small it is or how cute. Caged animals are not pets.
Maybe it’s just a down year for the SEC, or maybe we’re finding that this “Alliance” between the Big Ten and the Pac-12 might actually have some teeth, too. Those cheeky monkeys. At the same time, Michigan State’s undressing of Michigan feels like it’s only preparing us for another unfulfilling striptease like back in 2016. Nothing more naked in the history of this playoff system than Alabama 38, Michigan State 0.
And, by the way, the semifinals are on New Year’s Eve again. I’m not saying they’ve made a monkey out of the College Football Playoff, but we’re getting close.
The College Football Playoff was designed to ease the fears of a broken system, or so they say, but now we know that this circus ride actually needs plenty of therapy itself before it can service anymore dreams.
There’s always a controversial poll involved, but who am I to judge how college football chooses to make a living. And at least it’s always more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
Don’t shock the monkey, as Peter Gabriel forewarned, but someone has to think about the children. We can’t just always accept what these people making banks of cash are constantly selling. At some point, biting back isn’t such a bad thing.
Keeps people honest.
Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr. His first book, “We Want Bama: A season of hope and the making of Nick Saban’s ‘ultimate team’,” will be released on Nov.9.
