Column: The 'it's better to be the No. 5 seed' argument falls flat on its face

As soon as the format for the 12-team College Football Playoff was revealed, there was a belief that it was more advantageous to be the No. 5 seed in the playoff and match up with a potential Group of Five team in the first round before facing the No. 4 seed, the weakest of the four conference champions that earned a first-round byes.

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And in the first year of the format, I believe that notion proved to be wrong way to approach things.

The Texas Longhorns ended up as the No. 5 seed after losing the SEC Championship Game to Georgia. Texas was the No. 3 team in the rankings but were seeded behind conference champions in Oregon, Georgia, Boise State, and Arizona State.

Boise State’s presence as one of the highest-ranked conference champions was not something anticipated by me ahead of the year. I also didn’t anticipate that not one, but two Power Four conference champions would be ranked and therefore seeded behind the Broncos of the blue turf.

But therein lies the folly of preferring the No. 5 seed. There was no guarantee Texas would face a “weaker” Group of Five team with a No. 4 seed Power Four champion on the other side. Instead, the 12-team format matched the Longhorns with the No. 12 seed Clemson Tigers, the champions of the ACC.

No disrespect to Ashton Jeanty and his performances that have led Boise State to its current standing. The Broncos were seeded No. 3 and ranked No. 9. A close loss to top-ranked Oregon was their only blemish.

But Clemson is a far more difficult opponent. Led by former five-star Cade Klubnik and 10 All-ACC selections, the roster talent that’s coming to Texas under the leadership of Dabo Swinney presents a formidable challenge. And it’s a challenge far more formidable than the one Boise State would have presented.

Maybe it was one not an outcome thought possible, but it was never rendered impossible.

Independent of the first-round foe of increased difficulty for the No. 5 seed’s opponent in the 2024 College Football Playoff, there was a basic issue with preferring to get the first-round game at home. Football is a violent sport, with hundreds of collisions taking place across the course of a three-to-four hour time period.

It’s better to not have an extra game of those hits accumulated, even if it were against a Group of Five team. Especially when, in the case of the 2024 Longhorns, as much time for Kelvin Banks, Isaiah Bond, and any other Texas football player to heal up ahead of the battle with Clemson is precious. Not earning the bye cost the Longhorns that opportunity.

This Playoff, in its current form, has its positive and its negatives. Conference champions earning admission into the 12-team field? That I have no problem with.

Giving those teams a first-round bye? I understand that was a condition needed for Group of 5 conferences (and Notre Dame, who has a vote that carries the strength of a conference behind it) to get on board.

But simply striving for the No. 5 seed means accepting less than the conference championship. In my mind, teams and players should strive to earn all the highest honors. College baseball teams often talk about five championships: conference regular season, conference tournament, regional championship, super regional championship, College World Series title. The last one is the most important, but the first four are worth winning, too.

College football now has its own version of that: conference championship, quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals. If the first one isn’t won, then it’s first-round game, quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals.

Think the SEC Championship didn’t matter to Texas? That the bye was preferred? Steve Sarkisian threw water on that idea multiple times in the lead-up to Texas’ loss to Georgia, and his comments postgame only accentuated his thoughts.

“This is the life of a competitor, okay,” Sarkisian said with a melancholy tone following the game. “You get into this arena, you compete at the highest level against quality opponents. There’s going to be sways and flows in a ballgame that are sometimes going your way and sometimes don’t.”

Preferring anything less than the best is not the right course of action. The best is championships, byes, and skipping the wear and tear of a football game.

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The old adage goes that hope is not a strategy. Hoping for an easier matchup from the No. 5 seed, even if it came without having to play in the SEC Championship, instead of earning the No. 1 relied solely on hope. It wasn’t the right strategy in the preseason, and that bore out with who Texas welcomes to town in the first round of the College Football Playoff.