Better to miss conference title game? At-large teams may prefer that playoff path

The clubhouse becomes the safest place at golf tournaments played on a perilous course. Post your score, and get off the course before conditions worsen. Hacking away in elements nasty to scores can wreck your leaderboard position.
A similar theory takes shape in this inaugural year of the 12-team College Football Playoff.
If a team, particularly in the SEC or Big Ten, has established a playoff résumé after 12 regular-season games, would that team be better off not qualifying for the conference championship game and not risking a loss or injuries in an additional game against a rugged conference opponent?
CFP rules reward conference champions. Five conference champions will earn playoff bids, and four will receive a first-round playoff bye.
As for conference runners-up? They’re left jockeying with others on the bubble for one of the seven at-large bids.
Conference runners-up would have to play a total of 17 games to win the national championship. A compelling case could be made that a team would be better off placing third within a strong conference and resting up on December’s first weekend, rather than playing a tough opponent in a conference championship game it might lose.
No written rule protects a conference runner-up, and nobody knows how the selection committee will approach a team that had an at-large playoff résumé entering a conference championship game, only to lose in that title tilt.
An extra loss could threaten to bounce a conference runner-up from the CFP bracket, or at least damage that team’s playoff seed.
Playoff committee members who will evaluate conference runners-up have no clear rules to guide their actions.
In one breath, CFP executive director Rich Clark says a conference runner-up won’t be “unduly penalized,” and in the next breath, he says the runner-up’s performance in a conference championship loss will be considered.
“It will be taken into account appropriately,” Clark said, “and the committee will do that in a sophisticated way.”
Hmm …
“Unduly,” “appropriately” and “sophisticated” are nebulous terms that can be molded, as necessary, to justify the committee’s selections and seeding.
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“If the third-place team is sitting out and they’re not putting it on the table and actually risking a loss in that conference championship, the committee is sophisticated enough to understand and take that into account,” Clark said.
“All wins aren’t created equal, and all losses aren’t created equal, either.”
OK, that explanation sounds promising for playoff contenders like the SEC’s LSU and Texas A&M.
Every SEC team has suffered at least one conference loss, and as many as seven SEC teams could finish 10-2 or better.
LSU and A&M each have one conference loss but two losses overall. Either could reach the SEC championship game at 10-2 and risk a third loss in Atlanta.
Would a third loss knock them from the playoff field? That depends. Clark acknowledged the committee’s evaluation of a conference runner-up may be influenced depending “on what the loss looks like.”
In other words, perhaps it’s OK to lose, but don’t dare get blown out while the conference’s other playoff contenders sit at home eating popcorn.
“How did (the runner-up) perform in that conference championship game? The committee will look at that,” Clark said.
“I wouldn’t say they get extra points because they were in the championship game, but certainly their road to get to the championship game is going to give them a boost, because clearly they had to have a pretty significantly good performance in their season to get there, so that’s going to be the boost, and then how they perform in that game will be judged, but the fact that they’re in a championship game, I don’t think that that is going to be a major data point.”
Bon appétit on that word salad.
What Clark described as a sophisticated process, I call a kangaroo court known to make up any justification necessary to rationalize selections and seeding.
The more I hear, the more I think building an at-large résumé and placing third in the SEC or Big Ten becomes the safest place – especially if the alternative is earning selection via tiebreakers into the conference championship game and playing as an underdog.
This conference runner-up conundrum isn’t lost on coaches.
One Power Four coach, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity to the subject, told USA TODAY Sports that if his team has at-large playoff credentials come December, he’d prefer not to play in a conference championship game and risk a résumé-damaging loss and potential injuries. He’d rather let his team’s résumé stand and await playoff selection.
Not earning selection to a conference championship game would mean surrendering the opportunity for a first-round bye. However, this coach noted that being seeded fifth in the CFP bracket, as the top at-large qualifier selected to host a first-round playoff game, would be an enviable draw.
And losing a conference championship game would not seem to benefit a team’s chances to earn the No. 5 seed.
“You want the 5-seed,” the coach said, “because then you play the 12,” which probably would be the playoff representative from a Group of Five conference. Then, “you play the 4-seed, which is the (weakest) conference winner.”
Put differently: Place third in a strong conference, sign your scorecard, and watch the conference championship games on TV while enjoying a drink at the “19th Hole.”
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.