First things first: I love live comedy. When does the Playoff Selection Committee go on tour?

That crew should open for Chris Porter or Sebastian Maniscalco, two of my favorites.

The Playoff farce is just 1 of the 10 things I’m absolutely overreacting to after Week 10 in and around the SEC.

10. How much would you pay to watch the selection committee huddle up?

Ratings gold. Knowing nothing leaves the room, I can only imagine what they must have said privately about Cincinnati.

I loved Luke Fickell’s response, too, after the committee kicked them to the curb with the predictable “who else have they played?” BS. Basically, Fickell said, who the —- is Gary Barta?

(He’s Iowa’s longtime athletic director. In other words, the guy upon whose watch Iowa’s flawed culture developed. Once exposed, credit Kirk Ferentz for cleaning that up, immediately, by the way. Iowa seems like a different program, a better program. Same football team, but better program. Still …)

I actually laughed when the first batch of rankings was unveiled. I don’t know how college football fans tolerate this nonsense, but I guess a 4-team brand-names-only Playoff remains a step up from crowning a national champion that loses its bowl game.

Thank goodness college basketball still determines its champion on the court, in a fair format that gives every team in America the chance to dream.

9. Where will Dan Mullen be coaching next year?

How about Ole Miss, replacing Lane Kiffin after he bolts for LSU … or Florida?

Wouldn’t that be something.

Regardless of where Kiffin ends up, Mullen won’t be at Florida next season. Not after Saturday night’s complete embarrassment in Columbia.

And to think his disastrous Monday press conference was his best moment of the week.

It’s all over except for the buyout negotiations.

8. Mike Leach, ladies and gentlemen …

Mississippi State missed 3 field goal attempts Saturday in a 3-point loss to Arkansas.

Coach Mike Leach didn’t wait long to start problem-solving. The man is always thinking. Occasionally it’s about football.

“Announce this,” Leach told reporters afterward. “There’s an open tryout on our campus for kickers. Anybody that wants to kick or walk on and kick at Mississippi State, we’ll hold a tryout any time you can get over there to our building, providing you’re cleared by the NCAA.”

7. 7 questions that popped into my head Saturday …

  1. What was Eli Drinkwitz thinking when Georgia, up big, trotted out JT Daniels — a preseason Heisman favorite — midway through the 3rd quarter of Saturday’s blowout?
  2. Would Jordan Davis be a better left tackle than nose tackle? Did you see his block on Georgia’s jumbo package TD run?
  3. Will an ACC team miss the Playoff for the first time? (Yes.) When that happens, it’ll leave the SEC as the only league to field a team in every Playoff.
  4. Is Bret Bielema Coach of the Year in the B1G? He just knocked off a ranked team for the 2nd time in Year 1. That equals Illinois’ combined wins over ranked teams from 2008-2020.
  5. Will South Carolina or Arkansas sell more bowl tickets? Two of the best, most loyal fan bases in the SEC.
  6. Who used to run Ole Miss’ gameday football Twitter account? Oof.
  7. Any chance Auburn can wear home jerseys to road games? Asking for Bo Nix.

6. An ACC rivalry game that wasn’t even a conference game …

In 2019, UNC and Wake Forest, both original ACC members and in-state rivals, finally got fed up about rotating schedules and did something historic to solve it.

They scheduled a home-and-home series against each other, knowing it wouldn’t count toward league standings. It was a first in ACC history.

Why do it? These teams met almost every year from 1909-2007. UNC and Duke are famously separated by about 8 miles, but Wake Forest is only 80 miles west on I-40 (and it used to be just 30 miles east, via a couple of 2-lane roads, in a small town called Wake Forest). ACC expansion drove a wedge in the rivalry, but smarter heads prevailed.

The result was beautiful and proactive. And absolutely entertaining.

UNC won last year’s game 59-53. Saturday’s game was even better — and more important.

UNC rallied for a 58-55 win, ending Wake Forest’s surprising Playoff bid, which was the ACC’s only hope. These were 2 of the best games in series history. Let that be a lesson to those who are fearful about realignment killing traditional rivalries. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Next year, they’ll meet in an honest-to-goodness ACC game, but then the series is back on hiatus.

Let’s hope both sides huddle up again and find a way to keep it going.

5. 5 games that clearly did not matter to the Playoff selection committee

  1. Cincinnati defeated then-No. 9 Notre Dame by 11 in South Bend. Whatever. You still remember that? That was forever ago.
  2. Oregon lost at Stanford, which fell to 3-6 this week. Who? What?
  3. Michigan State won at Indiana by 5. (Cincinnati won at Indiana by 14). Gritty win!
  4. Alabama lost to then-unranked Texas A&M. SEC bias!
  5. Michigan State beat visiting Nebraska by 3 — in overtime. Nebraska is 1-6 in the B1G, 3-7 overall. Nebraska would be undefeated in the American!

4. The 4 Playoff teams are …

No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 Alabama, No. 3 Ohio State, No. 4 Cincinnati, No. 5 Michigan, No. 6 Oklahoma.

Alabama stunk Saturday. The Tide ran for 6 yards — total. Six rushing yards is about the minimum Nick Saban accepts on a single 4-down series. Seriously, holding Bama to 6 rushing yards might be the most unthinkable stat of the 2021 season. Wilder than Saban losing to an assistant or the Tide losing to an unranked team. Regardless, there’s nobody behind the Tide deserving of jumping the Tide in the Playoff rankings.

Ohio State also stunk Saturday. Zero style points. Issues galore. But the Buckeyes are still the best team in the B1G, and a 1-loss B1G champion is going to the Playoff. OK?

For whatever reason, the committee liked Michigan State — even though the Spartans had won 3 B1G games by 5 points or fewer.

Wonder what that committee was thinking Saturday night, when Purdue put the finishing touches on a dominant, 40-29 beatdown. You can call it an upset. I won’t. Michigan State had no business being ranked ahead of Ohio State, Cincinnati or Oklahoma.

And if you’re going to complain about Cincy’s goal-line stand to hold off Tulsa, at least the Bearcats won.

3. I love it when coaches adjust …

Sam Pittman wasn’t going to throw OC Kendal Briles under the bus for the play-call that never had a chance on Arkansas’ game-winning 2-point try at Ole Miss in Week 6.

That play had no chance from the snap. The result was Arkansas lost in heartbreaking fashion 52-51.

Pittman said afterward that he loved the play-call. That’s what leaders say publicly.

In my next-day Overreactions, I said that’s fine, but given another chance, there’s no way Arkansas runs that play again.

Fast-forward to Saturday. Arkansas scored the go-ahead TD in the final minute against Mississippi State. Up 1, they decided to go for 2.

This time, instead of a roll-out and throw into an overcrowded boundary, KJ Jefferson simply handed off to Dominique Johnson for an easy 2-point conversion that pushed the Hogs’ lead to 3.

That’s the play the Hogs should have run against Ole Miss. They didn’t.

But give Pittman some credit. They didn’t make the same mistake twice.

2. If Jake Coker was good enough, Stetson Bennett is good enough …

Georgia picked the perfect year to hitch its title hopes to the back of the Jordan Davis party bus.

But this isn’t a trend. It’s a blip.

The only reason the Dawgs’ defensive-led quest could actually work this year is there isn’t an offense anywhere in America that comes close to the Playoff offenses of 2016-2020.

This Georgia team won’t have to win a shootout.

As fun as it is to wonder how 2021 Georgia would fare against 2020 Alabama, 2019 LSU, 2018 Clemson or 2017 Alabama, the reality is, none of the Playoff contenders this year have an offense on par with those champions.

By the way, here’s how I think those mythical matchups would go:

  • 2020 Alabama 38, 2021 Georgia 24
  • 2019 LSU 41, 2021 Georgia 27
  • 2018 Clemson 34, 2021 Georgia 17
  • 2017 Alabama 24, 2021 Georgia 21
  • 2016 Clemson 38, 2021 Georgia 17

You have to go back to the 2015 Tide to find a national champion that started a “limited” quarterback. And that Tide team, of course, was led by a Heisman Trophy award winner in Derrick Henry who broke Herschel Walker’s sacred single-season SEC rushing record.

Jake Coker embraced and defined the game-manager moniker and never would have sniffed the field for any of the Alabama teams that followed him. But he was good enough, careful enough, timely enough to direct the Tide to a national championship.

Anything Jake Coker could do, Stetson Bennett can do, too.

1. JT Daniels is gonna come off the bench and beat Alabama, a’ight?

I mean, it absolutely has to go down like that, right?

After losing back-to-back games to Alabama because of backup QB heroics, there’s no more fitting way for Kirby Smart to finally get over on Nick Saban.