USA Today on Houston Getting a Fair Shot at Playoffs

This is a really interesting article based on USA Today anonymously interviewing 15 ADs about whether Houston would get a fair shot at the playoffs if we go 13-0.

So 8 of the 15 don’t like Houston’s chances if we’re up against a one-loss P5 team. Doesn’t sound promising.

However, I think this will be the key passage as I’m sure the committee doesn’t want to have another Orin Hatch situation:

Another athletics director noted that the committee understands it would do damage to the sport if a team with top-four credentials was blatantly left out due to Power Five basis and that there will be significant media pressure to include Houston if several other conference champions have a loss. The key, that athletics director noted, might be whether Houston got a 13th “data point” against a one-loss team in the AAC title game and looked good winning it to leave a positive impression on the committee.

What’s the Orrin Hatch situation? I don’t recall what happened there.

Orrin Hatch is a Senator from Utah and fairly high up in the GOP food chain (even higher up now as the President Pro Tempore). He,along with the Utah state government, threatened the BCS, FOX, and the NCAA with the Sherman Act if an undefeated Utah was left out of the BCS in 2009. Utah, of course, was allowed into the BCS party that year and Hatch dropped the threats. It’s thought that hammer eventually got Utah into the Pac 12.

We won’t be an exact analogy since the political pressure is coming from a state, not from DC. The most that could be done would be the state filing federal lawsuits against the CFP, the NCAA, and Disney.

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Gotcha. Thanks. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing some political muscle work in our favor for once.

That is indeed what happened and Utah is now a very competitive PAC12 team.

This will become a moot point now if UH beats an unbeaten Louisville team. Let’s hope Louisville comes to TDECU undefeated and of course UH takes care of business by finishing undefeated.

Don’t be so sure. Again, we are facing the cartel.

They are scared to death of us. It’s not even October yet.

Heard a little from Barry Alvarez this morning on Sirius. When asked about us, he didn’t want to talk about our specific situation despite knowing Herman. When asked about Ohio St, he rambled on. He’ll be one of those guys pushing hard for 2 Big 10 teams to replace the Big 12 team missing out. He’s all about P5 status and pushes the committee to his way of thinking. Keep that in mind.