Scott Davis has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from the fans’ perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter year-round and a column during football season published every Monday on GamecockCentral.com.

Below is this week’s Scott Davis newsletter. To receive it every Friday, sign up here.

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This won’t be a rant.

Really, it’s not that.

If you lose three times by mid-October, chances are very good that you will no longer have a chance to win a college football national championship. That was true 30 years ago, it was true 15 years ago at the height of the BCS era, and apparently it’s still true today.

I get it, man.

Although the College Football Playoff is open to twelve teams this year instead of the measly four previously allowed, there are three losses Despite it three defeats. And after pulling out of Tuscaloosa in a devastating 27-25 loss, South Carolina had lost three times in just six games this season. It’s hard to climb out of this foxhole.

At that point, none of us thought about watching the Gamecocks play for a title this season. And as December rolled around and the first CFP rankings came out, it finally became official: We actually wouldn’t be seeing anything like that.

In the end everything turned out exactly as we had imagined two months ago. There’s nothing to see here, is there?

So…

During these months our Gamecocks were able to win six games in a row. They kept going up against top 25 teams and kept beating them. They’ve won impressively (Texas A&M, Vandy), they’ve won hard-fought heavyweight championship fights (Missouri), and they’ve won even when they’ve occasionally struggled on both sides of the ball (Clemson…while we’re at it: what if it with the tails Check out my column on the Clemson game here.

The common denominator in November in South Carolina? Victories.

The other common denominator was that their schedule was more difficult than that of all but a handful of other teams in this United States of America. Surely the committee would recognize that South Carolina is one of the top 12 football teams in the country, right?

They may have recognized it, but they didn’t reward it.

And that’s why so many of us today are disappointed, discouraged and even a little disgusted.

Twelve teams compete for a national championship. But the team that none of them want to play against will not be included.

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The power of the schedule fallacy

College athletics has always been about strength of schedule.

At least that’s what they always told us and what the college basketball selection committee always preached when putting together the Field of 68 for the NCAA Tournament each year. South Carolina fans should know. During the Frank Martin years, the Gamecock men’s team finished third in the SEC, winning 25 games and still being left out of the tourney team announcements.

The culprit? South Carolina’s weak schedule.

Fans often disagreed – sometimes vehemently – with the basketball committee’s decisions, but at least this group was consistent: they wanted the best teams there and didn’t particularly care who they were or what their records were, and they had no interest in reward programs that accumulated victories against lesser competition. If it meant banning teams from Power 5 conferences, then so be it.

The College Football Playoff committee hasn’t officially filled out its roster yet, but if its preliminary ranking holds, we can expect a major backlash from many disgruntled fans of many deserving programs – including South Carolina.

South Carolina’s schedule, depending on when you looked at it during the season, was typically somewhere between the fifth and 15th toughest college football schedule this season, and the Gamecocks were 9-3 against that schedule, winning six Complete the year in a row. That last part should have helped them, as the committee has also made it clear in recent weeks how important it is for its teams to “finish strong”.

Nobody was stronger than the Gamecocks.

Still, several non-strong graduates will finish the year before South Carolina, as will others whose schedule ratings approach “Wait, is that a high school schedule?” Territory (Boise State? Really?).

At this point, almost every national analyst who follows the sport believes the Gamecocks are definitely one of the top 12 teams in the country. And this was our first chance at a 12-team College Football Playoff?

Bad teams welcome!

Programs hoping to see themselves in the playoffs in the future received an unintended message from the committee this year: plan for bad teams.

The worse, the better.

Shane Beamer admitted this week that he needs to reconsider scheduling tougher non-conference opponents like North Carolina and Virginia Tech in the future. “Of course you can go an entire season without beating a ranked team and be in the playoffs just by winning,” Beamer said, adding, “The committee has made it very clear that they don’t care who you are beats.” .”

You should give a scream.

It should matter who you beat.

This is exactly why college football adopted the BCS system back in 1999. Back then, we relied on a ridiculous system in which sportswriters picked national champions based on whether or not one of 10 or 15 marquee teams finished their season undefeated. The goal in making the change 25 years ago was to figure out exactly who the best team in the country was — not leave it to a bunch of nerds typing on laptops.

Even with 12 teams in this year’s playoffs, we still might not find out in 2024.

Because as crazy as this may sound to all the pundits and number crunchers who decided the final CFP rankings this year, the best team in the country right now may be the one based in Columbia, South Carolina.

It would have been exciting to see the Gamecocks get the opportunity to prove that on the field. Instead, we’ll watch Ohio State and Alabama and Georgia and Notre Dame (and heck, maybe even Clemson) fight for the title…again.

Someone call Kennesaw State, Ball State and East Tennessee State. We have some available appointments to fill.

Tell me what you think about the CFP’s disappointing rankings by writing to me at (email protected).

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