Does a 6-0 Ohio State team deserve a College Football Playoff spot? | Yahoo Sports College Podcast

Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Pete Thamel, and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde discuss the possibility that Ohio State ends the season 6-0, without a Big Ten Championship, and if that team would deserve a playoff spot of teams like Notre Dame, Clemson, Cincinnati or Texas A&M.

Video Transcript

DAN WETZEL: All, right so the question is, does the, can the Buckeyes play Saturday at Michigan State? Now that is, Gene Smith, AD, called it the "primary focus" to get his team back on the field. If they can't, they will only play five regular season games before the determination of the Big Ten title game, which, by Big Ten rules, means they cannot appear in the Big Ten title game. And thus Ohio State, because they've set up this championship Saturday deal, would then play a crossover opponent, which I'm going to presume might be Wisconsin. So they'd actually get a pretty good game out of it.

But they could end up going into champions-- into the Selection Sunday at only 6-0. Like, how, how do you ever take, not take Notre Dame? At what point is 6-0 just not enough for Ohio State? Even though I think everybody would go, yeah, that's one of the best teams. So really dicey situation as we go forward. There's no more wiggle room on this. Pat, what do you think?

PAT FORDE: Yeah, no, it's fascinating. Fascinating. And this is kind of what we were thinking all along, we were going to end up in some of these situations, where you are looking at really disparate resumes from that standpoint. And those people on that committee, after they have their ice cream and their steak and their jalapeno cream corn, have got to make some tough calls on who's in, and whether a 6-0 resume matters as much as a 11-1 Notre Dame, as a 11-0 Cincinnati, a 10-1 Texas A&M. You know, I mean, it's going to be really difficult.

I mean, you know, I think part of what has the committee believing it has to take into consideration is, there has to be some merit given to people who could keep their team on the field and play enough games, play that many games. So you know, in terms of best four, I think there's a very good chance, since the Ohio State would be one of the best four. Are they going to be given that opportunity? I don't know. It's a heck of an argument, it really is.

PETE THAMEL: Yeah, these are the debates of inequity that we were sort of, we were expecting all along, right? This is not a surprise, that there's going to be these just drastically different resumes from these top teams. And I've mentioned this on the pod before, but I go back to what Brian Kelly said after the Boston College game, when Notre Dame went, I believe, 8-0. He said, we've already played a Big Ten schedule. It was like politicking a month in advance, but it was an excellent point. I mean, Texas State has already completed a 12-game season. I believe Utah played its second game last night.

PAT FORDE: Yeah. Yup.

PETE THAMEL: Was that right? Yes.

PAT FORDE: Yep.

PETE THAMEL: So Utah played its second game. This is where we are in college football. This is what we signed up for. There's no regrets for where we are, but there are going to be some difficult decisions. I do think that Ohio State is going to do everything possible to play on Saturday.

- Sure.

PETE THAMEL: Now, reading between the lines of the Illinois game, and I'm not insinuating anything nefarious. What I'm saying is, they had a COVID outbreak, the tests showed it. And they said, if we go get on a plane, and even like, you know, have meals, because they were going to fly the morning of, we are risking spreading this thing, contact tracing. We are risking this operation going off the rails for a couple of weeks, if we have a major outbreak.

So like, again, nobody said this overtly. And I asked Gene Smith this. But like, reading between the lines, they could have played. Gene Smith said that. So I think they said, OK, what we're going to do is, we're going to pull back now. We're going to see if we can tamp our numbers down some. And then we're going to try to move forward.

DAN WETZEL: I do believe you're, Pete, you're right. They said, we're going to pull back. This is actually the Big Ten's plan working well. Now, I know the Big Ten got a lot of crap. But if the goal is to limit spread, then giving a team the option to do exactly what Ohio State did is a good thing. And I think as all of us, as college football fans, we'd much rather have Ohio State play the next three weeks, particularly the two after this.

But you want to play Michigan State, the Michigan game, and the Big Ten title game, then the Illinois game that no one was going to watch anyway. So there is a, for all the crap the Big Ten has gotten on this point, they allowed the Buckeyes to make a, I think, a savvy choice that could save their season. If they had had to go and play this game, and then miss the next two, the season's over.

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