SMU paid a fortune to join power college football to be treated just like TCU | Opinion
The biggest mistake people made in evaluating SMU’s chances in its first season in the ACC and “power” football was deliberately ignoring the past, and minimizing the might of money.
Because there was a time, before cheating was legalized, when the Ponies were not only powerful but nearly the best. Because there was a time, before the “Death Penalty,” SMU football was relevant on the biggest of big stages.
From 1981 to 1984, SMU was a combined 41-5-1 and finished no worse than 12th in the final AP Top 25 poll; it finished fifth in ‘81, and second in ‘82.
People want to dismiss SMU’s current place in the power world of college athletics because the school bought its way into the ACC, but, so what? There are some people, many of whom prefer the color purple while professing their deep love of frogs, who declare SMU’s ascension not to be fair, or earned.
You may have noticed the bank tends not to care if the money deposited is earned, inherited, given, or often stolen. SMU is in the ACC, and that’s that.
Since SMU is here, and leading the ACC, it is learning the unwritten rules of major college football: It’s all about the name on the front of the jersey, “they” really don’t want you, not because your money is no good here but rather there are those who have so much more.
If there was a Top 25 of Surprises in college football this season, the undefeated Indiana Hoosiers would rank No. 1 through 24. SMU would be 25th.
It also should be no surprise that, as of today, SMU would not be invited to the 12-team college football invitational; it’s not a playoff; the bracket is invite only, and even if there are eight more teams, someone always is mad.
In the most recent playoff ranking, 1-loss ACC-leader SMU is 14th, five spots behind conference friend Miami. The Hurricanes are 9-1, and 5-1 in the league.
After SMU’s 10-point win over Boston College on Saturday in Dallas, the Ponies are 9-1 with two games remaining against that should be wins. SMU is on track to play Miami in the ACC championship game. The Hilltoppers need to prepare for the following: The only teams from the ACC the invitational selection committee will endorse are Clemson, Florida State, and Miami. Anyone else needs help.
This has all of the characteristics of what happened to TCU in 2014, when the Horned Frogs were not invited to the first four-team invite.
A few days before SMU played BC, SMU coach Rhett Lashlee met with the media and was asked about this development; answer sounds all too familiar.
“There’s conference biases,” he said.
According to those in the Big 10 and SEC, ‘conference bias’ is a myth.
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. “It needs to make it make sense.”
The “beauty” of this dysfunctional, and obscenely profitable, system is that need only make sense to ESPN, and those who run TheBig10SEC. They let you in their world, in SMU’s case at a steep price, and your task is to be grateful while doing everything possible to crash through their pearly, locked gates.
“When other leagues beat each other up internally, they’re considered a deep, solid league,” Lashlee said, indirectly referencing the SEC and the Big 10. “When we (the ACC and Big 12) beat up internally, we’re considered a weak league.”
Correct. In this world, 2-8 Mississippi State is may be good enough to win the national title.
“I just want our league to get the same respect that everyone else gets,” he said.
He means the Big 10 and the SEC. Lashlee was basically reciting an answer delivered by former TCU coach Gary Patterson years ago. Others have made similar statements.
“It’s insulting to say, ‘Oh, (the ACC) is a one-bid league, maybe two,” he said. “Yeah, we’ve got another league (the Big 10) that the metrics don’t add up any better, as a matter of fact, worse. And we’re acting like they just got four (playoff teams) and it’s done. Make it make sense? Yeah?”
No. The Big 10 will always jump the line because of size, not quality.
College football is a rigged game, a stacked deck on top of a pyramid scheme that favors the large schools that pay the money to play it.
That a school the size of TCU was able to not only score an invite to the then four-team playoff, in 2022, and then win one of those games, should be regarded as one of the most impressive achievements in the modern era. That was not supposed to happen.
Cincinnati’s playoff appearance in 2021 is in this discussion, too.
The current model, which was constructed by the Big 10, SEC and a handful of ESPN executives, exists to maximize revenue for those two leagues. You will notice when this was all hatched the leaders of no other conferences were invited to join the chat room.
The other two major conferences, plus one Group of 5 team, are allowed in to this farce of a playoff for marketing, to avoid a lawsuit, and to create the false hope of hope.
That SMU is a part of college football’s annual controversy is the ROI this school sought when it agreed to the absurd conditions to join the ACC. This chatter is the advertising the school desperately wants.
Everything about SMU says it should be in the top 12, but it’s not because there are some rooms where their money is no good.
This is one the Ponies will have to earn, because those who run this private room don’t want them in there.
This story was originally published November 15, 2024 at 1:17 PM.
