EUGENE, Ore. — Oregon fans stayed. Even on a frigid night in the valley of the Cascades.
Not until the final bars of the traditional fourth-quarter playing of “Shout” did the trickle of fans up the stairs at Autzen Stadium begin.
But college football fans at home? They had already tuned out of the final game of the College Football Playoff’s first round. What’s going on in Bears-Packers? Which streaming service has “A Christmas Story”?
Oregon delivered its forecasted beatdown of James Madison in a game that was far less competitive than the 51-34 score and final statistics suggest. Skeptics who rolled their eyes at JMU’s inclusion in the 12-team bracket as the fifth-highest ranked conference champion — or asked, “What? How?” — needed to see only Saturday night’s opening drive (four plays, 68 yards and a Ducks touchdown in 98 seconds) to confirm their priors.
It’s not James Madison’s problem. Not its fault, either.
“If you’re a Power 4 team, the ball’s in your court,” Dukes quarterback Alonza Barnett said after the game. “Most of those teams that didn’t make it, they controlled their own destiny.”
But college football has a problem. And there’s a common-sense solution that requires raising the bar for postseason admission, only slightly.
To hear some tell it, No. 12 seed James Madison and No. 11 seed Tulane ought to be dragged from the city square and banished from playing football on television ever again after losing by a combined 48 points to Oregon and Ole Miss, respectively. Saturday’s final two games offered little drama and a lot of wide-open receivers, unbothered quarterbacks and broken tackles. It reignited the debate about the place the non-power conferences hold in a sport whose rules and postseason have been in flux for the past five seasons.
The complaining might be annoying and ever-present, but it’s not entirely wrong. Oregon and Ole Miss spent 60 minutes proving why their programs are on another plane compared to James Madison, which just wrapped its fourth season as an FBS member. College football fans deserve a better product on the game’s highest stage. But it’s also worth noting this year was an anomaly.
The ACC’s champion (8-5 Duke) finishing below the Sun Belt’s champion and letting a second Group of 5 team in the field is a result more unbelievable than has been recognized, and it seemed unthinkable when the 12-team Playoff was put into place. But the answer isn’t to banish half of the teams in college football’s highest level to second-class status, never to be seen in the Playoff again.
For one thing, that plan would practically be begging many of the sport’s fans — and programs in the so-called Group of 6 conferences (soon to include the revamped Pac-12) do have fans, despite what some may believe — to check. If there’s no promised land to strive for, what’s the point of the journey?
For another, that move would raise just the kind of antitrust concerns that landed the Bowl Championship Series in front of Congress in 2003.
Rising athlete compensation and immediate eligibility for transfers have trimmed the gap between Power 4 programs but widened the gap between the Power 4 and Group of 6. Each year, every G6 all-conference team serves as an all-you-can-afford menu for larger programs. Previous mid-major juggernauts like Utah, UCF, Boise State and Cincinnati now only rarely keep the future NFL players that once dotted their rosters. And many of the past G6 powers have been lured away by power conferences, leaving leagues like the Conference USA and Sun Belt to largely repopulate from the FCS ranks. The Group of 6 is weaker than it’s ever been, through no fault of its own.
James Madison did little on Saturday night to dissuade anyone from the notion the Dukes didn’t belong. But by the rules of Playoff selection, they were a clear choice.
Considering all the changes in the sport, however, it’s fair for leaders to consider tweaking the requirements for automatic bids to the Playoff.
That doesn’t mean giving a bid to Duke, which wouldn’t have belonged, either. The Blue Devils already lost to Tulane in September, a week after losing by 26 to 8-4 Illinois.
Whether or not the Playoff expands in time for next year or 2027, adding a requirement that a conference champion be ranked in a certain range in order to activate its automatic bid is a fair compromise. The exact place to set the bar is debatable, but it’s a reasonable reaction to prevent the sport’s biggest stage from becoming a punchline for casual fans who barely have interest in the sport anyway.
The Group of 6 can still access the Playoff, and truly excellent teams won’t be denied a chance to compete. But it would eliminate the quirky outcomes that gave us the ugly nightcap in Eugene.
Everyone wants college football’s biggest event to deliver matchups that get fans salivating and then deliver on the hype. This year’s first round, with one SEC rematch, one game that featured a combined 13 points and two blowouts of G6 teams, didn’t do that. But the answer to making slightly better matchups isn’t to tell 67 of the 136 FBS teams they’re not allowed to compete in the Playoff anymore.
JMU coach Bob Chesney had no desire to wade into the debate postgame but pointed to bright spots throughout the game and the fact that his team was outgained by just five yards — though much of the Dukes’ 28-point second half came with Oregon’s defense playing reserves — as reason to believe his team belonged.
“(Our play) had to be elite to hang with this team,” Chesney said. “And it just wasn’t.”
Decisive losses aren’t unique to the G6, either. Last year, Power 4 programs Tennessee, SMU and Indiana were all beaten soundly by double-digit margins in the first round.
But assuring that any Group of 6 team who does qualify for the bracket does it by merit and not by a wonky tiebreaker and an upset in an oversized major conference is a step in the right direction for casual and diehard fans of the sport alike.
First-round CFP games in the 12-team era
WinnerLoserScoreMargin
Miami
Texas A&M
10-3
7
Alabama
Oklahoma
34-24
10
Notre Dame
Indiana
27-17
10
Texas
Clemson
38-24
14
Oregon
James Madison
51-34
17
Ohio State
Tennessee
42-17
25
Penn State
SMU
38-10
28
Ole Miss
Tulane
41-10
31
When Chesney addressed his team from the door to the cramped locker room outside Autzen Stadium, he told them to take their pads off slowly, to better savor the end of their history-making run and what for some players will be the end of their football careers.
Minutes earlier, he had guarded the tunnel between the field and their locker room and hugged nearly every player who walked past. Several stopped for long conversations with Chesney, who is leaving to take over Big Ten bottom-feeder UCLA after Saturday’s loss, further raising the degree of difficulty for James Madison to sustain success.
This is life in the Group of 6. Coaches have always left. Now, players can go, too. That doesn’t mean the programs shouldn’t get a chance to measure themselves against the best. But the rules can be tweaked to appease both sides of the most heated debate of college football’s opening postseason weekend.
In the game’s final moments, a “J-M-U! J-M-U!” chant rang out from the top of the northwest side of Autzen Stadium, where a packed section of purple remained.
James Madison’s players lingered on the playing surface long after security allowed Oregon’s fans to take over the field, a gameday tradition. The players hugged. They said their goodbyes. A new coach, Billy Napier, is taking over. Everything is changing. This team will never be together again.
But they were together on Saturday, running trick plays and scoring in late flurries to salvage some pride.
Careers ended. Tears flowed. Players embraced. As they did, Dolly Parton’s voice came over the stadium’s speakers.
“Eugene, Oregon, I’ll remember you for the rest of my life,” she sang. “I won’t forget how good you were to me.”
Until the rules change, teams like JMU will get the chance to make their own memories, with no need to apologize for the path they took.
