When my mom gets on a soapbox, she can make her point with the best of them.

When Ohio State made the College Football Playoffs, she had plenty to say about it. Paraphrasing from her Facebook post on Sunday, she wondered how the selection committee could justify putting a team in the No. 3 slot despite it having only played six games. She went on to say it gives the Buckeyes a competitive advantage going into the playoffs, since the wear and tear of six gamed doesn’t compare to the 11 played by the other three teams who were selected.

When the Big 10 made its initial decision to cancel the 2020 college football season in early August, the league’s presidents and commissioners no doubt expected the other Power 5 conferences to do the same. The Pac-12 soon followed. All eyes were on the SEC, ACC and Big 12, as if just one of them chose to cancel their season, it was considered unlikely the other two would try to play this fall.

Only the other three never went along with the Big 10 and Pac-12. Perhaps one of Greg Sankey’s best decisions as the SEC’s commissioner was to postpone the start of its season until the final week of September rather than starting it around Labor Day like usual. This allowed the inevitable wave of COVID-19 cases at its member institutions following the arrival of students to campuses in late August to settle down a bit, thereby making the prospect of playing games safely more plausible.

The ACC and Big-12 began their season mid-September, and Notre Dame, realizing it had no choice but to join a conference if it wanted to play in 2020, was added to the ACC’s slate for this fall only. Instead of there being pressure from the Big 10 and Pac-12 to halt athletics, there was now pressure on those two conferences to have a season. They eventually chose to do so and cranked things up toward the end of October/beginning of November.

By doing so, however, they couldn’t play as many games as the other three Power 5s, since mid-December was for all intents and purposes a cutoff date due to the Big 12, ACC and SEC’s championship games taking place the weekend of Dec. 19. The playoff committee were scheduled to pick their Final Four on Sunday, so everyone had to be done with the regular season by then.

Undefeated Alabama and one-loss, ACC champion Clemson were shoe-ins for the top two spots. The debate for the third and fourth slots, though, was heated. Do you reward Notre Dame for beating a Trevor Lawrence-less Clemson on Nov. 7 despite the Fighting Irish not winning the ACC? Do you let Ohio State in despite only playing six games? What about Texas A&M, whose lone loss was to No. 1 Alabama? What about the undefeateds from the non-Power 5s, Cincinnati and Coastal Carolina?

In the end, the belief that Ohio State is one of the country’s four best teams won out, along with the notion that Notre Dame’s best wins — Clemson and No. 19 North Carolina — made it deserving of the No. 4 seed. Texas A&M was left out, and the problem for the Aggies was likely the fact that its best win was versus a three-loss Florida team while getting blown out by Alabama. In the case of Cincinnati or Coastal Carolina, I think it’s obvious by now the committee heavily favors Power 5 teams, and the only way for someone outside those conferences to even be considered would be several perfect storms at once, where there’s no clear No. 4.

My mom raised an interesting point: How can you justify rewarding a team that only played six games? Does this not set a dangerous precedent where a conference could manipulate schedules of its playoff contenders to hopefully lead to more favorable outcomes? If we’re going to come to terms with the College Football Playoff Committee, I think we need to dispense of any notion that it’s intended to be “fair.”

Maybe there was a “fairer” pick than Ohio State. Maybe there’s an argument that A&M deserved a spot over Notre Dame or Ohio State due to the perception the 10-game SEC slate was tougher than Notre Dame or Ohio State’s schedules. If we’re not OK with a BCS-type system picking the contenders based on a combination of human polls and formulas — and maybe we need to have that discussion separately — then Sunday’s selection show should have erased any doubt that the committee’s function is to pick whichever it feels are the four best teams from the Power 5 conferences.

“Fairness” was never a consideration, and under the current system it never will be. Maybe expanding the playoffs to eight slots would make it fairer. Maybe readopting the BCS system to do the picks would as well. We would still find the solutions to be imperfect, and while that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least consider ways to improve things (I will never stop arguing for robot umpires in Major League Baseball), it does mean making peace with what we have in the interim. 

My mom wasn’t wrong, the committee just doesn’t seem to particularly care about any perceptions when it comes to its picks if it feels they’re selecting the country’s four best teams. Barring major changes to the postseason format, that’s likely going to continue being the case. 

Drew Kerekes is the sports editor at The Meridian Star. He can be reached at dkerekes@themeridianstar.com.