Second-guessing

The College Football Playoff selection committee made the right move on Sunday by jumping LSU over Ohio State to claim the No. 1 seed for the postseason.

Still, that move only rectified a mistake they made two weeks earlier, and it doesn’t save a system that has proven to be flawed.

As LSU fans, we’ve looked past those flaws for the past few years because the committee’s decisions didn’t affect our team. Well, now, for the first time since the playoff was created, LSU is in the final four. So now, we feel all the negative effects of this flawed system.

This selection committee has no formula written in stone when it comes to their decisions, and there is no consistency in their decision-making process. And when they do make one of these decisions, there is no accountability. They just have their spokesman stand in front of a camera and try to justify their moves.

The main problem with the committee is their reliance on the “eye test.” They get too caught up on making assumptions and relying on their opinions on which team is better.

Their personal opinions on who they think is superior should not be one of deciding factors in these rankings.

Ohio State may be better than LSU, but that’s something we do not know for sure. We won’t know that until they play each other.

Therefore, you have to make your decisions based on things we do know. You have to look at the actual results on the field. If you’re not doing that, then what’s the point of playing the games?

If you compare the resume of LSU with that of Ohio State, it’s clear that LSU has deserved the right to be the No. 1 team in the country this whole time.

It seems like the committee got themselves hot and bothered by the Buckeyes’ back-heavy schedule and decided to go by the motto of “what have you done for me lately,” while ignoring what LSU has done for the entirety of the season.

Ohio State played three straight top-10 opponents to close out the year. That’s nice. LSU has played five throughout the course of the season.

They played a ninth-ranked Texas team on the road in their second game. They then played Florida, Auburn and Alabama all in the middle of the schedule, and they ended with Georgia in the SEC Championship.

The committee constantly contradicts itself. They moved Ohio State ahead of LSU a couple of weeks ago because of the eye test. However, they refuse to use that same eye test when comparing the two teams’ marquee non-conference wins.

If they used the eye test, they could have conclusively decided that LSU’s win at Texas was a better victory than Ohio State’s home win over Cincinnati.

You don’t even need an eye test to realize that LSU’s win over Alabama in Tuscaloosa, with Tua Tagovailoa playing quarterback, was a better victory than anything Ohio State has on their schedule.

You don’t need an eye test to realize that LSU’s 37-10 drubbing of fourth-ranked Georgia in Atlanta was a more impressive victory than anything Ohio State has on their resume.

I’m thankful the committee came to its senses and jumped LSU over Ohio State on Sunday, but the Tigers should have never lost their No. 1 ranking in the first place.

They decided to drop LSU from No. 1 to No. 2 just two weeks after that massive win at Alabama, the biggest win of any team in college football this year.

They decided to drop LSU from No. 1 to No. 2 after they beat Arkansas by 36, while Ohio State looked sloppy and stumbled their way to a 28-17 win at home against No. 9 Penn State.

But there were many other questionable decisions made by the committee over the past few weeks.

Dropping Alabama seven spots after a three-point road loss to a ranked Auburn squad was absurd. Dropping a 9-3 Michigan team just one spot after a 29-point home defeat was even more ridiculous.

They dropped Cincinnati just one spot after losing to Memphis, and they jumped Wisconsin over a 10-2 Florida team that had their only two losses come on the road against LSU and at a neutral site against Georgia.

This week, Georgia drops just one spot after getting beat by 27, and a three-loss Wisconsin team remains at No. 8 despite losing by 13.

Luckily for the committee, Utah and Georgia both lost, making the decision for the fourth team easy as pie. But that won’t always be the case.

If something doesn’t change moving forward, we could have a real mess on our hands that could actually make us miss the BCS.