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Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea calls out College Football Playoff selection process: 'It seems like every week the goalposts move'

Danby: Daniel Hager7 hours agoDanielHagerOn3

Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea joined Wake Up Barstool on Friday morning, where he went absolutely scorched earth on the College Football Playoff committee for dealing his program a bad hand. Along with claiming that the committee ‘moves the goalposts’, he bashed the weekly College Football Playoff Rankings shows and the fact that conference champions from lesser conferences get automatic bids into the CFP.

The Commodores won 10 regular season games for the first time in program history and went undefeated at home for the first time since 1982. Although they claimed four ranked victories throughout the course of the season (No. 11 South Carolina, No. 10 LSU, No. 15 Missouri, and No. 19 Tennessee), none of these teams are present in the latest CFP Rankings. Vanderbilt sits at No. 14 in the second-to-last Rankings, which infuriates Lea.

“It seems like every week the goalposts move and the process changes,” Lea said. “Obviously, what we are living through right now is the evolution of a flawed system. We’re on the wrong side of that, and I’m frustrated by it and I’m going to turn my attention to help change it and progress it as we go into the offseason. But this was kind of my thought and in general, a 10-2 SEC team should be in the Playoff. If you look at what we’ve done, we’re undefeated at home. Our two road losses come at Alabama and at Texas, both games we were still in in the fourth quarter, in different ways. It’s also about a team that has evolved through the year.

“I’d even love to play those games again because we’ve changed and evolved and pivoted this season. It showed up late after that Texas game. We erased a deficit against Auburn and win that game in overtime by a close margin. Then we locked three phases into place and close our home schedule out with dominant performances, including one on the road at rival Tennessee. What game do you want to play here? How did Texas perform against Kentucky vs. how we performed against Kentucky? How did Oklahoma perform against Tennessee vs. how we performed against Tennessee? If you want to discount the teams that we’ve beat because every time we beat them, you move them out of the Top 25, then you’re gonna make it impossible for us to get in.”

Clark Lea claims college football ‘deserves to see Diego Pavia’ on the biggest stage

“Ultimately, this team deserves to be in it,” Lea continued. “This team deserves a chance to win a National Championship. I will tell you, college football deserves to see Diego Pavia and this offense on the biggest stage under the brightest lights. It is a shame that we have a system that’s going to reward automatic bids to conference champions, who have no business, other than the system allowing for it to be in this Playoff. That is not to be disrespectful to anyone, but at the end of the day, how can you look at a 10-2 SEC team and take a 10-2 team from a GO5 league (such as North Texas, Tulane, or James Madison) and say that we’re comparing apples to apples? It doesn’t make any sense.”

After an offseason full of boisterous claims (including being one of the best quarterbacks in college football and that Vanderbilt would be one of the best teams in the country), Pavia absolutely backed up everything he said. The controversial figure has passed for 3,192 yards (program single-season record), 27 touchdowns, and eight interceptions. He also rushed for 826 yards and nine more scores.

Maybe more than anybody in recent college football history, Pavia helped completely change the perception of Vanderbilt Football. After being thought of as an afterthought since James Franklin departed in 2013, the Commodores are now hauling in massive recruits (such as Jared Curtis) as they look to become one of the SEC’s powers in the NIL era.

“There’s nothing I can do about that,” Lea finished with. “I’m frustrated with the committee because they had opportunities to fight for this program, and I believe that if it was blind resume and that if we didn’t have this week-to-week release of the CFP Top 25 and did it all at the end and said ‘let’s get in a room and figure it out’, I think we’d have a way better chance. But the blind resume part of it has got to be factored in. Because of our logo, we’re somehow discounted and held back. When we win a game, somehow the team that was favored in the game drop out of the Top 25. It’s not right. It’ll get fixed, but obviously I’m really frustrated about it.”