Why SEC, Big Ten championship games could be a ‘screw job’ for loser

Things are going to be very different for college football during the 2024 season. There are new-look conferences and a 12-team College Football Playoff, which while adding more teams will surely lead to some unforeseen controversy.

And On3’s Andy Staples and The Athletic’s Max Olson might’ve highlighted one potential trapdoor for the selection committee: How it treats the losers of conference championship games in the Big Ten and SEC going forward.

As things currently stand, the four highest-ranked conference champions will get the Top 4 seeds. But Staples wonders if the losers of the championship games in the SEC and Big Ten — which are going to division-less formats going forward — could get dropped below the third-place finisher from the regular season in their leagues.

“And the SEC and the Big Ten championship games are going to matter and there’s — now, this is part I’m not necessarily looking forward to: I’m a little worried you’re going to have the loser of the SEC and the Big Ten championship game fall behind the third place team,” Staples said.

The scenario would go something like this, hypothetically: A one-loss Ohio State beats one-loss Oregon in the Big Ten championship, sending the Buckeyes to the CFP and assuredly a Top 4 seed. While Oregon is still a prime candidate to make the field at 11-2, Staples supposes that the selection committee could seed them behind, perhaps, a 10-2 or 9-3 Penn State or Michigan, for instance.

And that, both Staples and Olson agreed, could be a recipe for outrage from fans. And in a new way from years past.

“Yeah, the criticism of the committee, I can promise — even if they have the right 12 — the order of it is going to be a problem now, too,” Olson said. “I think the scrutiny on that group of people to not just get the field right, but then to get the seedings right, it’s just going to be different, because usually — you go through last season and there’s chaos last season, but we usually kind of all know, ‘Alright, well these three will probably still make the four.’ And there’s a lot on those people’s plate now. They better know what they’re doing.”

So while the committee could be spared the griping of the teams sitting at No. 5 and 6, now no longer upset about being excluded from the field, there could be plenty more griping — and from a lot more fanbases and programs — about being seeded behind a team they outperformed or even beat.

And if that does happen to a loser of a conference championship game, Staples wasn’t shy in calling it like he sees it.

“Which is going to be a complete screw job on the team that lost the conference championship game,” Staples said.