Curt Cignetti Charges ESPN with SEC Bias After Bizarre College Football Playoff Ranking

Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti is crying foul and claiming bias after the College Football Playoff Selection Committee released its first weekly rankings. On his weekly radio show Wednesday, Cignetti took particular aim at the analysts ESPN uses on its rankings reveal program and the narratives they support. “They’re given instructions on what to say, and they follow the company line,” Cignetti said of the network’s college football analysts. Cignetti continued, “SEC gets a lot of love from ESPN, you know, and all their writers that they don’t technically pay, but march to their drum. So, and that’s why you see all these SEC teams up there, you know, and some good two-loss teams from the Big Ten, not quite as high. But like I said, it’s all going to be it’s all going to be played out on the field.” ESPN holds the SEC’s national television rights and the media rights to the College Football Playoff. The committee was certainly favorable to the SEC in the first installment of the CFP rankings. Voters put ten SEC teams in the top 25, versus only six from the Big 10, where Cignetti’s Hoosiers play. However, the SEC has been the better conference overall this year, so the number of teams in the top 25 is not necessarily the point of contention. The real controversy is how those SEC teams are ranked. For example, eyebrows were raised when Alabama, a two-loss SEC team, came in at the unexpectedly high ranking of fifth. In addition, Texas, a two-loss SEC squad that has lost to two unranked teams, came in at the relatively high ranking of seventh. Meanwhile, Ohio State, a Big 10 team who made the trip to USC last weekend to take on the Trojans without their starting quarterback, got bounced out of the playoff entirely after losing to only one unranked opponent. Still, the committee could also be accused of showing favoritism to Indiana. The Hoosiers, ranked fourth by the CFP, have needed overtime to beat two unranked teams and barely escaped the Nebraska Cornhuskers, who are on the verge of firing their head coach. In fact, the Hoosiers just benched their starting quarterback because of offensive ineptitude, and the only player with any national recognition on the entire roster is wide receiver Nick Marsh. CFP Selection Committee Chairman Hunter Yurachek said Notre Dame had no “signature wins” when explaining why the committee put the Irish 11th. Well, neither does Indiana, which is ranked seven spots ahead of the Irish. In any event, Cignetti’s concerns about bias toward the SEC are legitimate, but he may not be the best person to make that argument.