What matters more: the quantity of wins or the quality of wins? (Video)

Last week, Kirby Smart called one of his own players “stupid, I mean, just stupid.” On Saturday, he extended that assessment to the entire College Football Playoff selection committee.

Georgia’s head coach seems to be running out of patience, along with just about everyone else. Call it the pressure life of the playoff bubble.

Football coaches are used to winning every debate, at least internally. But when it comes to the playoffs, they are helpless. Expect rants, tirades and insults to abound across the country as Selection Sunday approaches.

As for this Georgian player’s mistake? Being filmed after the Bulldogs’ Nov. 9 loss to Ole Miss, enthusiastically greeting family friends who were wearing Rebel gear. The player apologized and offered a reasonable explanation. Smart said he, too, was sorry: “I shouldn’t have called that kid an idiot.” »

The committee may not be as sympathetic to Smart’s opinion that Georgia should not have fallen nine spots (and out of the hypothetical playoff field) in last week’s rankings because of this defeat.

Georgia, now 8-2 after an impressive 31-17 win over Tennessee, will find out what the committee thinks this week when the new rankings are released Tuesday night on ESPN. Not that Smart is willing to wait patiently.

“I don’t know what they’re looking for. I really don’t,” Smart said immediately after the win over Tennessee. “I wish they could really define the criteria. I wish they could do the eye test by coming here and looking at the people we’re playing against and looking at them. You can’t see this kind of thing on television…

“We’re trying to be a cumulative, whole, good quality team, and not be on this emotional roller coaster controlled by people in a room somewhere who maybe don’t understand football the way we do as a team. as coaches.”

There is an old saying among lawyers that if you have the facts on your side, analyze them. If you have the law on your side, beat it. If you have neither, hit the table.

Smart should stop pounding the table because he has the facts on his side: Georgia, despite these two losses, should be in a good position to make the playoffs.

The Dawgs played four of the committee’s top 11 teams and five of the top 20, with wins against Clemson at a neutral site, at Texas and at home against Tennessee. This is the best trio of victories ever recorded in the country. Their two losses were to No. 10 Alabama and No. 11 Ole Miss.

Smart is expected to argue that Georgia shouldn’t be penalized for playing such a tough and heavy schedule, especially while other schools are rewarded for not facing a comparable challenge.

No. 3 Texas is 9-1 with no wins over a currently ranked team and a 30-15 loss to…Georgia. No. 4 Penn State is 9-1, but its only significant win is against No. 24 Illinois. No. 5 Indiana has a 10-0 record and the best history in the sport outside of Army, but it hasn’t defeated anyone of substance (the Hoosiers can change this Saturday at No. 2 in the Ohio State).

This is not an overly friendly assessment of the SEC as a whole. Far from it. Some SEC schedules – namely Texas and Texas A&M – have proven to be weak. It’s about putting respect on the challenge the Bulldogs uniquely faced.

Should they have played softer teams to protect their record? Would that be preferable? Is it about accumulating as few losses as possible or rising to repeated challenges, even if there are setbacks?

Listen, the weekly rankings during the season are an exercise that undermines the credibility of the committee. It’s like judging a cake that’s half-baked. Every week, he is forced to create (then defend) contradictions. Angry coaches use the group as a motivational piñata. The committee is put on the defensive, which erodes public trust.

That doesn’t mean he “maybe doesn’t understand football.”

The 13-person group includes four former coaches: Chris Ault (Nevada), Jim Grobe (Wake Forest, Baylor, Ohio), Mike Riley (Oregon State, Nebraska) and Gary Pinkel (Toledo, Missouri). There are also three former players: Will Shields (Nebraska, NFL), Randall McDaniel (Arizona State, NFL) and President Warde Manuel, who is the athletic director at Michigan where he also played.

Last week, Manuel said one of his concerns about Georgia was that “their offense wasn’t consistent.” … They struggled with some turnovers,” was he wrong?

The Dawgs were coming off a 10-point offensive effort against the Rebels and had turned the ball over nine times in the previous three games. Quarterback Carson Beck had thrown 12 interceptions in his previous six games.

Against Tennessee, the offense got on track. They will undoubtedly be rewarded for it.

If Smart wants to fight for his team, then he must challenge the sport to declare what it truly wants to be.

Should competition be rewarded? What about aggressive non-conference scheduling? Or should it be a matter of playing dumb and hoping your oversized conference coughs up a favorable schedule?

The SEC (16 teams) and Big Ten (18 teams) have become so massive that there is no consistency in what teams face. This could be a challenge. It could be a cakewalk.

If the quality of a team’s wins matters more than just the quantity of wins, then Georgia should make the playoffs and teams in the future will need to think about the importance of trying to add non-conference challenges to impress the committee.

It would be good for sport. That should be enough for this committee.

No need to insult, Kirby.

You just have to analyze the facts.