The College Football Playoff Committee's PR Problem
IOWA CITY, Iowa — This is about Iowa football and...hello? Are you still there?
I know: Iowa is boring. Let's face it. It's the country's heartland and possibly even its backbone, but the image of the place is of big fields of food...growing...very...slow...ly.
On the drive to Iowa's game Saturday against Minnesota, I came to a sign for the Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area. I drove on.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
Iowa's football is the same as its reputation. It doesn't seem to wow a lot of people. And that's becoming a strange problem for the College Football Playoff selection committee, which was heavily criticized last week for ranking Iowa No. 5, in striking distance of a spot in the final four.
The truth is, this isn't really about Iowa football. It's about looking at ourselves and figuring out why we believe in highlights with sound effects over cold reality. It's about why we don't believe in anything that requires patience or isn't screamed at us. It's about why we think the way things are done now must be better than how they were done before. Slow and steady wins the race, but it doesn't get the endorsements.
When you add that up, people will probably again be outraged Tuesday night when the new rankings are released, complaining that one of just five undefeated teams in college football is again ranked ahead of teams in the Big 12, which has the greatest wow factor but doesn't bother to play defense.
| Clemson | 1 | Won 37-27 at Syracuse | 10-0 |
| Alabama | 2 | Won 31-6 at Mississippi State | 9-1 |
| Ohio State | 3 | Won 28-3 at Illinois | 10-0 |
| Notre Dame | 4 | Won 28-7 vs. Wake Forest | 9-1 |
| Iowa | 5 | Won 40-35 vs. Minnesota | 10-0 |
| Baylor | 6 | Lost 44-34 vs. Oklahoma | 8-1 |
| Stanford | 7 | Lost 38-36 vs. Oregon | 8-2 |
| Oklahoma State | 8 | Won 35-31 at Iowa State | 10-0 |
| LSU | 9 | Lost 31-14 vs. Arkansas | 7-2 |
| Utah | 10 | Lost 37-30 at Arizona | 8-2 |
Last year, the Big 12 was left out of the playoff entirely and the conference screamed bias that Ohio State had been let in when it wasn't good enough. Ohio State is now the defending national champion.
"There are different ways to win," Iowa quarterback C.J. Beathard told Bleacher Report after Saturday's 40-35 win over Minnesota. "We'll line up with two tight ends, two running backs and ground and pound. That's the way Iowa's been for a while."
Bo-ring! Iowa is basically an old-fashioned team that has added a little bit of the modern uptempo elements. It also had a schedule that has allowed it to avoid playing Ohio State, Michigan State or Michigan so far.
Is there greatness here? Matt Millen, former Super Bowl winner and CEO of the Detroit Lions, was at the Minnesota game and said of Beathard: "He reminds me of [Joe] Montana. Did you see that run he made?"
Chuck Long, the Iowa quarterback who finished second to Bo Jackson in the 1985 Heisman Trophy race, was there, too. Does he see greatness?
"Yeah, I do," he said. "Beathard is a lot more talented than I was. He can run and throw better than I could. I had to use my mind. This kid right here has talent. He can make plays with his feet when everything breaks down."
If you do a Google search on Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz, you find that people have been calling for him to be fired for years. He became Iowa's coach in 1999 and was said to be too conservative and stuck in the past in the method that defines Midwest football. People want modern. People want now.
Beathard actually committed to play for Ole Miss, but when Ole Miss fired Houston Nutt and brought in Hugh Freeze to put in the modern spread offense, he changed his mind and decided to stick with old fashioned.
"Honestly," he said, "I didn't know anything about Iowa."
Last year's starter, Jake Rudock, was stable and consistent, but Beathard was showing promise. Rudock transferred to Michigan, and Beathard is better than expected.
Ferentz, meanwhile, had possibly stayed too loyal to his assistant coaches and his philosophy for too long until he and new offensive coordinator Greg Davis had a meeting after a disappointing 7-6 record last season.
"Greg's background is wide-open spread offense," Long said. "Kirk's background is phone booth-type offense. I do believe they finally came together in the middle."
Davis simplified things for Beathard, gave him two options on pass plays—and if neither is available, run.
So maybe that isn't too exciting. It was about taking time and developing, growing something. It was like watching corn grow.
But that's not evidence that Iowa isn't a top team. Just because a team smashes you in the mouth over and over until you give up—and that can't be contained in a highlight package—doesn't mean it can't play great football.
Last week on The Herd with Colin Cowherd, Fox Sports 1 analyst Joel Klatt made a case that the College Football Playoff committee had a bias against the Big 12 and Pac-12:
He explained that the committee ranks the teams from those conferences lower than the media members do in the Associated Press poll.
That theory took off, even more than ESPN's Paul Finebaum's rant:
The narrative became this: Committee members Barry Alvarez and Tom Osborne, the former coaches who preached the ground-and-pound style at Wisconsin and Nebraska, have something against the uptempo modern games played in those other conferences. They are dinosaurs.
It was an interesting theory. Wrong, but interesting. The truth is that at this same point last year, the same committee was ranking the Big 12 way above where the media polls did.
It isn't about bias. It's accurate, and maybe Alvarez and Osborne understand that better than anyone.
Keep in mind: The great spread teams that revolutionized the game the past couple of years—Auburn, Oregon, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, TCU and Baylor—have not actually ever won a title. They are the ones with something to prove.
Saturday in Iowa was like a celebration of Americana. Early in the day, Iowa had 42,000 fans at a wrestling meet in a sport that has a home in the Midwest, built by the tough kids of farmers and blue-collar workers. Midwest football had been struggling the past few years as the economy forced that population base to move away.
One of the amazing things happening this year is the reemergence of Midwest football. At Iowa, it has been about patience and loyalty and toughness and, yes, a lucky break on the schedule.
Maybe that's boring because Iowa isn't flashy and doesn't have the grand football history. It has big fields of corn. Maybe that's hard to cheer for, but it shouldn't be. Maybe next time when I get to the Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area, I don't just drive by.
Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregcouch.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
