Memphis, you let me down. Here I thought we had an understanding - I picked you three years in a row but now you go and disappoint me, losing to NC State, 31-7, in the Gasparilla Bowl. My picks are now 2-5 on the season. I'm going to have to seriously rethink our relationship.
As for tonight's First-Round Playoff game between the No. 8 Oklahoma Sooners (10-2) and the No. 9 Alabama Crimson Tide (10-3), at last!, some real football and hot SEC-on-SEC action. However, I loathe (hate, despise, abhor) both of these teams, although choosing which one to cheer for was surprisingly easy this year.
First of all, Notre Dame fans, whiny little bitches that they are, do have a legitimate beef that they should have been in the 12-team CFP this year. But it's not Miami that kept them out as per their complaint - the Hurricanes deserved a playoff berth, too. No, it's the Alabama Crimson Tide that doesn't belong there.
On Week 15, at the end of the regular season, Alabama, Notre Dame, BYU, and Miami were ranked numbers 9, 10, 11, and 12, respectively. Notre Dame and Miami were idle that week, but No. 9 Alabama played No. 3 Georgia for the SEC championship. Alabama got blown out, 28-7, and finished the game with -3 rushing yards.
But the CFP Selection Committee, rather than drop Alabama down in the rankings for their loss, kept them at No. 9 and leap-frogged Miami from No. 12 to No. 10, and dropped Notre Dame from 10 to No. 11. Both teams were idle that week, and with the automatic bowl bids in the playoff seeding, the Irish were excluded from the postseason.
For the record, I can't stand Notre Dame - I hate them even more than I hate Alabama and Oklahoma - but still, there's no denying they got screwed. With Alabama's loss (BYU lost that week, too), the Week 15 rankings of Alabama-Notre Dame-BYU-Miami should have become Notre Dame-Miami-Alabama-BYU in the Week 16 final rankings, with Alabama the odd team out in the seedings.
The Steering Committee (and Alabama backers) claimed that a loss in a conference championship game shouldn't count against a team in the final rankings. That makes no sense - what better indication is there of how well a team plays against elite competition that the conference championship games? And if they don't count against a team, why was BYU dropped from No. 11 to 12, and why did Ohio State drop from No. 1 to 2 after losing to Indiana in the Big10 championship?
No, it's really just another Alabama exception rule - losses don't count against Alabama in conference championship games, but they do against everyone else. And that's why it's easy for me to choose to cheer for Oklahoma in this game - the Tide doesn't belong here. And even though I don't like them, Notre Dame does (although God knows there's more than enough unwritten "Notre Dame exception" rules to go around).
As stated above, I don't like Oklahoma either, but at least "Choke-lahoma" fairly reliably beats Texas teams when those teams dare to cross the Red River and play out-of-state teams. Also, as everyone knows, this is a rematch game and the Sooners beat the Tide, 23-21, earlier this season. Even though it's hard to beat any team twice, and 'Bama had the advantage of a revenge factor working for them, I still won't be cheering for them in this game.
The Sooners are 1½-point favorites in this game. This actually should be the only first-round playoff game that's actually competitive - Texas A&M-Miami tomorrow might be interesting too, but the other two games have 17½- and 21½-point spreads.
The winner of this game will go on to lose to Indiana next week.
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