If A&M beats Texas in Austin, the Aggies deserve a Playoff bye, regardless of the SEC Championship result
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In case you haven’t heard, Texas A&M is 60 minutes from some 21st century history.
It’s not a Playoff berth that’s on the line. At 11-0, that’s already in the bag for the first time in program history. That’s worth celebrating.
The Aggies haven’t played in a conference title game since 1998. Beating Texas in Austin on Friday night — or losing but also getting losses from both Alabama and Ole Miss — would end that drought. That’d be worth celebrating, too.
But if A&M improves to 12-0, I don’t care what happens in the SEC Championship. That would be a résumé worthy of a Playoff bye.
What about the fact that A&M got unbelievable schedule luck in conference play? Sure.
In case you haven’t heard, A&M’s first 7 conference games currently rank in the bottom 8 of the SEC standings. There’s no denying that while teams like Alabama and Oklahoma have had tougher paths in SEC play, A&M got some fortunate breaks.
Of course, the crowd who likes to harp on that seems to forget that A&M won at Notre Dame. Irish fans will say that a botched extra point hold and a missed holding call proved to be the difference in that game. Did A&M still go on the road and take advantage of those breaks in a down-to-the-wire game? Absolutely.
This would be an entirely different conversation if A&M had scheduled Indiana State instead of Notre Dame. That’s why the argument that Texas should’ve scheduled Kent State instead of Ohio State falls on deaf ears. Winning games helps you, and losing games hurts you. Duh.
How has that Notre Dame win aged? Like Tim McGraw and Faith Hill — flawlessly. It’s even more impressive to think that on extra rest, Jeremiyah Love was held to less than 100 rushing yards (he did have 53 receiving yards and an insane 1-handed touchdown grab). Why bring that up? Well, if the selection committee is out here talking about Alabama’s rushing yards against South Carolina, it feels perfectly relevant to reference holding a potential Heisman Trophy winner under the century mark.
But again, this is about more than that.
This is about potentially getting to 12-0 with road wins at Playoff-bound Notre Dame and at top-15 Texas
Those 2 true road wins would be more impressive than Ohio State’s 2 best (at Washington and potentially at Michigan), and they’d be at least on par with Indiana’s (at Oregon and at Iowa), if not better.
But those 2 teams, if they’re also 12-0, should also be locks for a Playoff bye, regardless of what happens against one another in the Big Ten Championship. For this conversation, A&M’s pre-conference championship résumé should be compared to other teams who could covet that Playoff bye. One-loss teams like Georgia and Texas Tech will want that consideration for a bye. Both teams have flexed their muscles at the right time, and neither have what would be considered a “bad” loss. UGA losing to top-10 Alabama was forgivable, as was Tech being without QB1 Behren Morton when it dropped a winnable game to 8-win Arizona State.
Clearly, the selection committee views those 3 teams in a similar light, which is why they’re ranked 3-5 heading into Rivalry Week. If all 3 teams win, one would expect that’ll still be the case before conference championship weekend. For the sake of this argument, let’s assume that on Selection Sunday, Georgia would be idle during conference championship week at 11-1, while Texas Tech would be 12-1 having won its rematch with BYU in the Big 12 Championship and A&M would be 12-1 having lost the SEC Championship to Alabama.
(I picked Alabama because if chalk plays out with an Iron Bowl win, it’ll go to Atlanta to face A&M.)
Here’s how that should look in the top 6 on Selection Sunday if that scenario played out:
- 1. Big Ten Championship winner
- 2. Big Ten Championship loser
- 3. SEC Champion Alabama
- 4. SEC Championship loser Texas A&M
- 5. Texas Tech
- 6. Georgia
Yes, my guess is that Texas Tech would leapfrog Georgia, who would still have the benefit of a home Playoff game as a 6-seed. That might upset Georgia fans, who would argue that beating Georgia Tech would add another quality win to that résumé, which could include potentially 4 teams in the final Playoff Poll (Ole Miss, at Tennessee, Texas and Georgia Tech). Texas Tech would only have 3, but all 3 of those wins (2 vs. BYU, 1 vs. Utah) could be blowouts against teams in the top 12 of the CFP heading into conference championship weekend. There’s precedent for rewarding a conference title winner in those side-by-sides.
But back to A&M. Why would it make sense for Georgia to benefit from A&M earning the right to play for an SEC Championship? Yeah, UGA had a tougher path than A&M in conference play. Was it that much tougher, though? the Dawgs only had 2 true road games after the Week 3 overtime win at Tennessee, and they were both against teams who are 5-6 entering Rivalry Week. Both Georgia and A&M would each have 4 wins vs. Power Conference bowl teams, but all of A&M’s would have come in true road games (at Notre Dame, at Mizzou, at LSU, at Texas).
Entering Rivalry Week, A&M’s average scoring margin in SEC play is +13.4 and Georgia’s is +11. Against Power Conference competition, A&M still has the edge at +11.9 compared to +11, pending this weekend’s results.
(Also, for those wondering about why an SEC Champion Alabama would leapfrog UGA in this scenario, note that the Dawgs would again be subjected to the side-by-side against the Tide, who came into Athens and won. Hence, why the 2-loss Tide would be worthy of a Round 1 bye, much like 2-loss Georgia was when it won the SEC Championship last year.)
How would 12-1 SEC Championship loser A&M fend off 12-1 Big 12 Championship winner Texas Tech, you ask?
Simple. The former would be getting some résumé separation by winning at Texas while Tech wins as a 3-touchdown favorite at 4-7 West Virginia. Even if Texas Tech blows out BYU again in the Big 12 Championship, what’s that showing the selection committee that it doesn’t already know? It’d be an impressive win, but would it make up the ground needed if A&M wins in Austin to create more of a gap between 3-5? It shouldn’t.
These are fun conversations to have for A&M because in every way, they’re unprecedented for the program in the 21st century. The Aggies can lose on Friday night and still have total control of their own path to a national championship as the calendar turns to December.
Of course, nobody in College Station wants to acknowledge that reality. Shoot, it took 1,000 words into this column to acknowledge the possibility that A&M is anything but 12-0 and Atlanta-bound. It’s possible that this entire conversation will be for naught by the end of Black Friday, and A&M will have to accept that it’s likely heading toward a home Playoff game instead of a Round 1 bye.
But if chalk plays out for A&M as a 2.5-point favorite at Texas (via BetMGM), the conversations about Playoff seeding will be hotly debated from coast to coast. Some will continue to poke holes in the Aggies’ regular-season résumé by only acknowledging the conference scheduling breaks they caught while failing to acknowledge that the road résumé will stack up with anybody’s.
Either way, history awaits.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
