Gary Barta doubles down on Cincinnati’s playoff status

The College Football Playoff Selection Committee provided its updated CFP rankings heading into conference championship week. After a big shake up at the top, the top six teams are Georgia, Michigan, Alabama, Cincinnati, Oklahoma State and Notre Dame. While the regular season drama finally ended with rivalry week, new controversies are on the rise.

CFP Selection Committee chairman Gary Barta once again joined ESPN’s Rece Davis for a conversation about the penultimate rankings, taking more time to address the new controversy on everyone’s mind. With Cincinnati 12-0 with a chance to pick up a top 25 win in conference championship week, is there any way the Bearcats miss out with a win?

Gary Barta doubles down on Cincinnati

With the final question of Tuesday’s CFP reveal show, Rece Davis chose to dive back into last week’s Cincinnati argument with Gary Barta. After getting a noncommitted answer about the pods, groups and evaluation process, he against asked whether No. 4 Cincinnati is closer to No. 3 or No. 5 in the rankings.

“I know you’re going to hate my answer because we talked about them compared to Alabama, who ended up one ahead of them. Alabama had some wins against teams that the committee looked at and decided they were ahead of Cincinnati. On the other side of that it was talked about with Oklahoma State. Oklahoma State now has wins against Baylor and against Oklahoma – another rivalry game – the committee was impressed with that. So it’s really hard, there was a lot of discussion about it. It’s hard to a proximity of closeness between No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5.”

Previous comments

Last week, Rece Davis asked Gary Barta directly about the Big 12’s chances, specifically how they compare to Cincinnati. However while dodging the direct question, an interesting back-and-forth emerged.

“I think most people have heard that we don’t really talk about separation – we certainly talk about teams in clusters. Cincinnati, one of the things we’ve talked about all year is that win at Notre Dame, which continues to look better with every passing week. And this past week – the win they had over SMU – SMU came in 8-2 and Ridder just continues to show why he’s one of the best quarterbacks in the country. Their defense is playing strong so Cincinnati at four – the committee felt strongly about. Not really comparing them to the Big 12 directly, we don’t look at conferences as much as we’re looking at team by team.”

Davis pushed further, asking whether Cincinnati belonged in a cluster with Georgia, Ohio State and Alabama or Michigan, Notre Dame and Oklahoma State. Barta offered another fence-straddling response.

“That’s a fair question, a good way to ask it. And the honest answer is when we looked at Cincinnati both up with No. 1 through No. 3 and we also looked at Cincinnati comparing to No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7. So they were compared to both groups and they ended up at No. 4.

Davis, still unsatisfied with the answer, pressed further by asking Barta whether Cincinnati landed at No. 4 easily or whether they just edged out Michigan, Notre Dame and Oklahoma State.

“We’ve had a lot of respect for Cincinnati all year. We certainly have talked about their strength of schedule, but this win against SMU – when we were looking at the way they played offensively and defensively – they came in at No. 4. A lot of discussion – there’s 13 members on the committee – there’s certainly disagreement at times but when the vote came down they were No. 4 and then Michigan at No. 5.”