We all know this to be true. Winning on the road, even against weak teams, isn't easy. Bama lost to Vandy and Texas struggled against them on the road. Vandy lost on the road to Georgia State.

When you give a team who's ranked as a better team a home field advantage, the chance of having a close game is going to be small unless the ranking is flat out bad. And these end of the season rankings are as good as they get for college football.

We are NEVER going to have many good first round games in the college football playoff as long as the higher ranking team plays at home. It's designed that way. It rewards the better team by giving them home field and makes it less likely they lose.

While I'm not going to claim the result of any of these games would change if the lower seed played at home, they'd all be closer more interesting games. BUT THAT ISN"T WHAT WE WANT. We want the better team to have the advantage.

This isn't the NFL. The advantage teams get at home is MUCH more significant. We're never going to have a good first round in the playoff as long as the games are home games for the better team.

Look a Alabama. They have a very talented team. But they went 2-3 on the road this year with losses to Vandy, Tennessee and OU. Two of those teams were 6-6. 6-6 OU beat them by 21 on the road.

Road games are hard in college. Road games when the opponent is better than you are VERY hard. And the first round games will always have teams playing on the road against better teams.

Don't expect much.

This post was edited on 12/22/24 at 12:06 pm