Tennessee's Josh Heupel says a team's whole body of work should be evaluated for College Football Playoff

Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel’s postseason message has been simple: Anyone, anytime, anywhere.

Sunday afternoon Tennessee will learn its destination in the College Football Playoff with most scenarios projecting the Vols travel to either Columbus, Ohio to take on Ohio State or going to Happy Valley to take on Penn State. 

Those scenarios seem most likely because little movement is expected from the results of the conference championship games.

“I don’t know that, that will happen,” Heupel said when asked on the Rich Eisen Show about a path to hosting a playoff game. “There’s a handful of games here that will certainly impact what is going to happen on Sunday with the playoff bracket.

“I don’t know if there’s actually a scenario that would actually get us a home game with what happens this weekend. At the end of the day, we are excited that we are in.” 

Heupel was asked by Eisen a follow-up question on the importance, or perceived lack of importance, of the championship games on the playoff bracket.

“At the end of the day I think they have to look at everyone’s body of work,” Heupel said. “The conference championship game, the match up that’s all a part of the body of work of the regular season. They have to place the conference champions in the bracket then look at everyones complete season and the body of work that they have had.

“We are really proud of what we have done. There’s a couple of results where we would have liked to have played better and coached better to help change those, but this is a really good football team here on Rocky Top that plays all three phases of the game together. I’m really proud of what they have done. We have to get ready for the next part of the season.” 

Playoff committee chairman Ward Manuel said on Tuesday, that teams who were not playing this weekend had been evaluated and there was nothing new to look at with them this week.

“If you take, for example, Tennessee is ahead of SMU, Indiana is behind SMU,” Manuel said. “Tennessee will not drop below Indiana at any point. Neither team is playing. But SMU could move up, depending on how we evaluate the game. They could stay where they are or they could move down depending on the outcome of the game.

“But Tennessee and Indiana in this example would never flip. Indiana would never move ahead of Tennessee and Tennessee would never drop below Indiana because we’ve already evaluated them. There’s not another datapoint because they’re not playing in the championship games. So we don’t have anything else to add to the evaluation of those teams, so we can’t move them above or below each other.”

In that scenario there’s no way Tennessee can leap ahead of Ohio State. 

The impact of the championship games is a hot debate that will only continue Sunday after the rankings come out. How much should teams be punished for losing in a week in which not everyone is playing? It’s why some coaches have questioned the purpose of the championship game.

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin has questioned why the extra game should be played. SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee made it clear if his team is not a part of the playoffs if they lose in the ACC title game, it opens pandora’s box.

“We have two choices,” Lashlee said this week on the Andy and Ari podcast. “One not play in the conference championship game and we are in. We would be in right now if didn’t have another game to play or go compete for a championship which we have earned the right to do and maybe risk falling out. That’s not a position you want to be in as a coach. It’s an easy decision, we are going to choose to compete.

“If our team all got COVID today and we didn’t play then we are in. We are in right? We don’t have another datapoint to drop us below anyone that’s behind us. I think if you open up that door you are going to see a lot of people do a lot of crazy things.” 

How crazy things might or might not get will largely be decided on Sunday when the final brackets are announced just after Noon Eastern Time.