By the time the first quarter ended, Tulane football found itself in a sizeable hole. Mississippi scored two quick touchdowns in the first eight minutes of the first round College Football Playoff game on Saturday, Dec. 20.
That hole continued to grow throughout the game, as No. 6 Ole Miss put up nearly 500 total yards of offense and 41 points in a 41-10 win over No. 11 Tulane at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium to advance to the Sugar Bowl against No. 3 Georgia on New Year’s Day.
Shortly after Trinidad Chambliss put the Rebels up 41-3 at the 10:45 mark of the fourth quarter with his second rushing score of the game, ESPN broadcasters Joe Tessitore and Jesse Palmer discussed at length the current College Football Playoff system and format and whether the first-round game in Oxford would have been different if Notre Dame made the 12-team field.
‘I’m all about inclusivity and I’m fine with one Group of Five team making it into the 12-team fold and that team deserved to be Tulane. They won the best Group of Five conference, (and) they beat Duke, the eventual ACC champion. But as a fan, I want to see the other 11 teams have a legitimate chance at winning a national championship,’ Palmer said on the TNT broadcast.
The issue that Tessitore and Palmer appeared to be having is that James Madison also got into the 12-team bracket as a second Group of Five representative — a first in the 12-team CFP era. The Dukes, the ultimate underdog of this year’s CFP field, are facing No. 5 Oregon.
What the broadcasters forgot to mention is how James Madison got into the CFP: unranked Duke beat No. 17 Virginia in the ACC championship game. If the Cavaliers had beaten the Blue Devils, James Madison would have been left out, as Virginia would have been ranked as the higher conference champion between the two.
Tessitore mentioned the hypothetical thought of Notre Dame’s inclusion in the CFP bracket several times during the rant. The Fighting Irish, of course, were left out of the field after the CFP selection committee used the head-to-head tiebreaker between Notre Dame and Miami, which upset No. 7 Texas A&M earlier on Saturday, after not using it in their previous rankings reveals. Miami moved ahead of BYU and Notre Dame in the final CFP rankings after the Cougars lost in the Big 12 championship game.
‘This has been a completely non-competitive game,’ Tessitore said in reference to Ole Miss-Tulane. ‘If this were Notre Dame, what kind of game would we have had?’
Added Palmer: ‘Imagine how big this environment already is for this one and what that would have looked like if Notre Dame had that opportunity. We got a rematch of what we already saw (earlier this season). The scoreboard in this one is not much different than what we saw earlier in September.
‘I think this is something that the committee needs to continue working out as they press forward.’
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