December 4, 2022 By: Mark Knudson

Going for Six: Looking back on the 2022 College Football as Playoff Expansion Nears

A year from now, we’ll be arguing about which teams were unfairly snubbed from the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff.

Won’t that be fun?

Before we get to celebrating the new tournament format – which will feature the Power Five conference champs, a Group of Five winner, and six at-large selections – let’s look back on six notable things about this season.

The Committee got it right.

After some questionable rankings during the season, in the end, it worked out.

Sorry SEC honks, Alabama had no business even being in the conversation for a playoff berth. As soon as they lost to 4-loss LSU (which was ‘Bama’s second loss) and failed to make the SEC title game, Nick Saban’s team should have been scratched off every list.

Didn’t stop him from campaigning of course. That’s who he is.

But TCU, despite their OT loss on Championship Sunday, belongs in football’s final four. The Horned Frogs defeated every team on their slate (having beaten Kansas State during the regular season) which gave them a top ten win. Alabama’s best win was a one-point decision over a Texas team that TCU also beat. The Tide’s resume simply didn’t measure up.

The Big Ten getting two teams in is ironic.

It wasn’t the league best season…not even close. The league only had three teams that deserved to be ranked at all. League champ Michigan won their way in, while Ohio State backed in, so for the first time ever, it’s the northern Super Conference with two reps. Penn State hasn’t gotten the respect from the polls that they deserve, despite having just the two losses to their top five ranked league rivals. But after the Nittany Lions, the rest of the Big Ten was a big collection of mediocre in 2022.

The Pac 12 – which will not have a team in the last four-team playoff – can stake a reasonable claim as the best conference in the country this season. The SEC will continue to get all the hype and accolades, but after top-ranked Georgia, the rest of that league was also down. A key injury to their QB killed Tennessee’s season after they had claimed the top spot for a week. The SEC’s fourth place team, Alabama was not as good as previous seasons. LSU lost four games, Florida and Texas A&M weren’t much. While they had five teams ranked in the final regular season CFP rankings, it was not a vintage SEC season.

Meanwhile the Pac 12 had six ranked teams, and by the end of the season, it was clear that USC and Utah were among the best teams in the nation. Utah will face Penn State in the Rose Bowl, which will go a long way in showing how really good the Utes are. They were the most impressive team of all on championship weekend.

The Group of Five conferences will be repped by upstart Tulane. Remember when this was supposed to be the spot that Boise State would claim annually? Since the New Year’s Six bowls set up began, Boise State has made it just once – the first year in 2014. Since then, the reps have been Houston, Western Michigan, Memphis, Central Florida twice and Cincinnati twice. Houston, UCF and Cincinnati will all be Power Five programs soon. The expanded playoff will guarantee a spot to a G5 school, so the future prospects for Tulane…and Boise State (still waiting for someone to invite them to join a P5 conference) are still good in that respect at least.

The Heisman Trophy vote was supposed to be an easy one after USC’s Caleb Williams went off during the second half of the season. But you can certainly see why those of us who waited until after the final weekend could have been swayed by the gutsy performance of TCU’s Max Duggan in the Horned Frogs title game loss to K-State.

Williams, the poster boy for the glories of the Transfer Portal and NIL, was sensational right up until he had to face a nasty Utah defense while he nursed a sore hamstring. He was just okay in the Trojans’ PAC 12 title game loss, which will still probably be enough to earn him the Heisman.

It’s amazing what one game can do to a candidacy.

Tennessee QB Henden Hooker looked like a lock after the Vols upended Alabama, but he fell off after the loss to Georgia and then dropped off the map after getting hurt late in the Vols upset loss to South Carolina. Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud also looked like a lock before the Buckeyes were shredded by Michigan.

You can’t earn the Heisman in one game, but you can lose it.

This is not wrong by any means. The award should not be a stats compilation deal. It should always be about what the best, most indispensable players do in the biggest games. Take Michigan’s fine running back Blake Corum. The Most Outstanding Player in America? Sorry. His team didn’t miss a beat after he was injured. He was replaceable.

Hooker wasn’t replaceable. Williams wasn’t replaceable. Duggan was absolutely not replaceable. Those are Heisman caliber players.

The Coaching Carousel hasn’t come to a stop yet, but a few teams can already claim victories. Certainly Nebraska fans can feel great about landing proven winner Matt Ruhle, fresh out of NFL purgatory in Carolina. Wisconsin appeared all set to keep favorite son Jim Leonhard, but shocked everyone by luring Luke Fickell away from Cincinnati. The Big Ten is loaded up with topflight head coaches.

The head scratching move came at Auburn, where former Liberty HC Hugh Freeze was hired and will return to the SEC, where he famously coached at Ole Miss before some controversial personal matters torpedoed his tenure. Auburn certainly could have taken a shot with Jackson State coach Deion Sanders, and it would have made sense. Here’s one reason why:

The Auburn campus is a 45 minute drive from the national headquarters of AFLAC, located in Columbus, Georgia. Sanders is an AFLAC spokesmen, along with Saban. Just imagine the Iron Bowl promotional opportunities.

All that aside, instead we get…

The extra point: Neon Deion in Boulder. It will be…entertaining for sure.

Sanders is the splash hire that the University of Colorado badly needed. He’ll bring instant attention to a moribund program that needs a jolt. Bad. It was going to be hard to sell almost anyone else to a fan base that just watched a 1-11 season. Sanders’ cache figures to bring some recruits and transfers to CU immediately. That will include his son, JSU QB Shedeur Sanders.

The questions are why no other Power Five school – including Auburn – didn’t pursue Deion? What are we missing? And how will he (and his son) make the transition to the FBS big boy football? Also, how long will Coach Prime, slated to earn $5 mil a year, stay in Boulder? If he has any success, and a P5 gig opens up in the SEC or ACC, it’s tough to imagine he won’t be one-and-done…ala Mel Tucker.

Can’t wait for 2023.