BYU’s Sitake and Big 12’s Yormark must speak up for the Cougars

Somebody should put out an urgent call to Kalani Sitake, to Brett Yormark. Those big dogs need to be poked. They need to growl. No, they need to howl. All loud and proud and in a hurry.

It’s up to them to stand up, to twist and shout for their athletes, for their teams, for their schools, for their league, for their fans. The moment is here and they’ve been entirely too quiet, too passive, too unwilling to make a racket for those they’re supposed to represent.

“I told you I wouldn’t campaign about it, but … but I feel good about our resume,” Sitake said on Saturday. “… There’s a lot of teams that deserve to play in it; I think we’re one of them.”

That’s about as emphatic as he’s gotten with it.

BYU won its 11th game on Saturday, beating UCF by the count of 41-21, all against a single loss, a loss at the hands and feet of the fifth-ranked team in the latest college playoff poll, a Big 12 foe that might be better than its ranking. BYU and Texas Tech are headed for the league’s title game. Fitting enough. And no matter what happens in that game, short of a complete embarrassment for the Cougars, both teams deserve to make the CFP. If BYU were to win, it’s in, but if it were to lose, again, that would be the aforementioned 11 victories leaned up against defeat suffered against only one team, a stellar opponent. BYU has had no substandard face-plants.

It’s had close calls, but it’s won. The manner in which it started Saturday’s regular-season finale against UCF might have called the Cougars’ legitimacy into question, at least in the minds of some, the way things are, the way they are sized up, measured and evaluated by “style” and “style points.” BYU looked at the beginning as though it had neglected to wake up for the morning kick. Even with assorted mistakes, missed assignments, missed field goals, the Cougars did stir and they did win.

But there’s chop in the water ahead.

Look at it this way: If you’re a fan of BYU or, for that matter, a fan of the Big 12 Conference, you love your team(s), you want to love college football. You really do. And you do love them, you do love it — the athletes, the action, the competition, the pageantry, the rivalries. You love almost everything about it — outside of one important exception: the way college football handles its postseason and its postseason opportunities.

That part is bogus.

It’s what it’s always been — a popularity contest, a beauty pageant, wrapped in the cover of careful study, its results determined by a committee of judges, people with biases, with agendas, with a stash of metrics funneled through their own filters, their own perceptions of truth, notions that bend one way when it suits them, then bends another when it suits them better.

And it messes over the whole thing.

It’s a little like falling in love — wanting to fall in love — with a partner, and adoring everything about that soulmate — the looks, the personality, the sense of humor, the overall bearing — except for one little detail. He or she is a psycho killer.

That’s kind of a dealbreaker.

The way college football orchestrates its 12-team playoff — and orchestrates is a near-perfect word for it — is jacked up. If the NFL conducted its business the way the college game has been conducted, how many Super Bowl champions never would have hoisted the Vince Lombardi Trophy on account of some group of people’s opinions regarding what they could or couldn’t do?

Opinions have their place, it’s just that that place shouldn’t determine which teams get certain postseason opportunities and which teams don’t.

The current CFP rankings are a good example. Conference champs will get in, but the at-large invitations are a mad scramble. Listening to attempts by committee leadership to describe and rationalize their poll configurations would be comical if they weren’t so consequential.

As it pertains particularly to BYU — hearing justifications for slotting two-loss teams such as Oklahoma and Alabama and Notre Dame and even a one-loss team like Oregon ahead of the Cougars spins an objective observer into a state of confusion. Analytics that work to the advantage of teams from the Big Ten and the SEC and Notre Dame are highlighted, and analytics that work to their disadvantage are blurred over by the infamous eye test. For instance, BYU’s strength of record is ranked higher than teams ahead of it. But then committee chair Hunter Yurachek is heard recently articulating that committee members didn’t like the look of the Cougars in their initial loss to Texas Tech, setting up a likely scenario where the Big 12 would get only one team in the playoff. The numbers game is a joke, able to be manipulated any which way. The aforementioned eye test is even worse.

Teams are moved up and down based on margin of victory and margin of defeat, but when committee heads are asked about such arrangements, they are vague. They might as well just say, “We ranked such-and-such a team here and such-and-such a team there because … well, because we felt like it.

This is where Sitake and Yormark need to bark and bark some more.

Sitake has been asked about that again and again, and he says he prefers to concentrate solely on mentoring his team, not worrying about what is outside his control, letting others handle that business.

But it’s his business, too. His team’s business.

In some ways his past position is worthy of praise, but in others it leaves his team without a spokesperson, without a promoter, without a defender. Other coaches are vocal about their teams’ chances. Sitake should be, as well. It’s something of a mishmash, a mystery as to what sways the committee’s stances. But they are human, influenced by what happens around them.

Yormark is probably pleased with Texas Tech’s positioning, although even that could be higher than it is. How cruelly will the Cougars be treated if they lose and finish at 11-2? A prediction here is, they’ll be dumped on harder than other two-loss teams, teams that already are ahead of them. Is BYU’s only guarantee for a playoff spot to be gained via an auto bid, with a conference title? Is that fair? A playoff expansion to 16 teams is part of the answer, as is easing off the advantages given the P2 leagues.

“Maybe it should expand more. All the smart people will figure it out,” Sitake said.

Good luck with that.

Either way, the top of the Big 12 is strong this season. It might even be easy to claim the league deserves three playoff invites — to Texas Tech, BYU and Utah.

That view is no more, no less legitimate than anyone’s opinion on the committee, except that members of that group have been licensed to manipulate what actually happens according to whatever they see or whatever they want to see. The delineation between those last two things makes all the difference in the world.

The difference between loving the college game in its totality and loathing it for the way it ends.

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