Alexander: USC is, finally, in playoff position

It is part of the charm of college football, and at the same time part of the sport’s legendary chaos: Rankings don’t settle arguments, they start them.

Given that, and maybe to the surprised delight of USC fans who feared the worst, the penultimate College Football Playoff rankings on Tuesday put the Trojans squarely in the mix at No. 4, behind Georgia, Michigan and TCU and ahead of Ohio State and Alabama. If the top four all win their conference championship games this weekend, we can assume the national semifinals would be Georgia-USC in the Peach Bowl in Atlanta and Michigan-TCU in the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz.

But don’t expect the debates to end even then.

The woofing (by fans) and politicking (by coaches) is an outgrowth of (a) a sport that at its heart is still intensely regional, even in the super-conference era, and (b) a postseason system that down through the years has been pretty much a closed shop, from “national champions” based on the AP and coaches’ polls through the Bowl Coalition, the Bowl Alliance, the Bowl Championship Series and the current CFP with its four-team alignment.

The almost certain expansion to a 12-team field in coming years will change the equation, but up to now the ultimate prize has remained closed to all but a fortunate few. Thus, the regular-season schedule is essentially an autumn-long tournament, as unsparing as it is riveting. If you’re a team with championship dreams and you lose early, you’re already in trouble. You lose late, you’re often out of the running.

Yet the debates get fiercer as the weeks unfold, with arguments involving strength of schedule, who you lost to, where it was played, and whether two close losses equaled or overrode one bad loss. (And the only consistency in the arguments seems to be, “My team good, your team not so good.”)

We’ve seen that play out in just the last few days.

Alabama is 10-2, ranked No. 6 and will not play in the SEC championship game. Yet Nick Saban provided the talking points for his fan base by suggesting that those two L’s, by a total of four points at Tennessee and at LSU (10-2 and 9-3, respectively), made the Crimson Tide more deserving of consideration than Ohio State, whose one loss came at home, in a rout, in a rivalry game against undefeated Michigan.

You can make that case. But I don’t buy it.

It was a decade ago that Herm Edwards, then coaching the New York Jets, created what would be a meme before most of us realized such a thing existed when he memorably said at a midweek news conference: “You play to win the game.”

And that should be the bottom line, as in fact it was at the top of this week’s CFP rankings. Zero losses are better than one, one loss is better than two, and so on. You can rant about style points, strength of schedule, perceptions of conference strength, etc., but the object is to win, whoever you’re playing. If you don’t, it should cost you.

So when one-loss USC was behind two-loss LSU last week in the CFP rankings after beating UCLA, 48-45, you can imagine the angst among a fan base that had finally started feeling better about its football team under Coach Lincoln Riley. Were there nefarious biases at work here? Was this another example of why USC is bolting the Pac-12 for the Big Ten?

Committee chairman Boo Corrigan noted after those rankings dropped that the committee was “looking for a stronger showing by the (USC) defense … a more dominant win in those situations to continue to move forward.” Thus, I was tempted to ask him on Tuesday’s teleconference what he thought of the Trojans’ defense now after Saturday’s victory over Notre Dame.

I didn’t. I was nice. But I did ask him if the resounding victory over the Fighting Irish on Saturday night indeed pushed the Trojans into playoff position, and if it in fact made it an easier decision.

“I mean, it’s a Top 25 win,” he said. “When you go into it, it better adds to their body of work as a team and as a program and the job that they’ve done this year. … Coming off of UCLA, it gives them back-to-back big wins.

“And, you know, the job that Caleb did in that game … Caleb Williams is, you know, he’s a player, you know, and I think all of that together is why we ended up with USC at four.”

He did note that the Trojans’ “body of work” – that seems to be a popular expression in the committee’s deliberations – also included a win over Oregon State (15th in the ranking) as well as No. 17 UCLA and No. 21 Notre Dame. And he suggested that USC’s loss, 43-42 at No. 11 Utah in October by the breadth of the Utes’ successful two-point conversion, compared favorably to Ohio State’s more resounding loss to No. 2 Michigan on Saturday.

As for an easy decision regarding USC at No. 4?

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“There isn’t a whole lot easy about any of this that we’re doing,” he said.

But there is still peril ahead. The Trojans and the other three teams at the top of the list have conference championship games to navigate this weekend. Ohio State and Alabama don’t. And those games this weekend are not just for seeding purposes but, Corrigan stressed, “will be part of their body of work.”

Is it fair that teams that didn’t earn the right to play for those championships could steal playoff spots if there are upsets? If you subscribe to the idea that every loss makes a difference, as I do, then yes, it is fair.

This is the Trojans’ opportunity. They know what’s in front of them if they win. If they don’t, they have no one else to blame. This is an unforgiving sport, and everyone involved knows and understands it.

And at the very least, true to this wonderfully chaotic pastime, whatever happens will be fodder for more arguments.

jalexander@scng.com