A Brief History of Losing A Title Shot

UCF 34, Auburn 27

That was the score of last season’s Peach Bowl, a result that sent shockwaves through the college football world as it seemingly validated the undefeated cinderella season for the UCF Golden Knights.

Or did it?

It didn’t take long for the narrative to shift to the same song & dance we’ve heard every time a national champion hopeful gets bounced from the title picture and then lays an egg in their bowl game. In 2018 it was, “Aww, man Auburn just lost cause they ain’t care.” In 2014 it was, “Oklahoma isn’t as good as Alabama and they just won cause Bama players were checked out for the NFL Draft.” (Somewhere in Norman, retired Sooners coach Bob Stoops is STILL pissed about having to hear that for the last four years).

If you follow college football you are probably painfully aware of this narrative pertaining to teams’ perceived motivation (or lack thereof) in bowl games. So what gives? Do teams that lose a title shot in their last game of the season pack it in and quit on their bowl game? Or is that just some SEC bias narrative pushed by ESPN to belittle UCF and prop up the traditional juggernauts of the world?

After Georgia’s excruciatingly close loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship game I started doing some digging. Before looking anything up my initial stance was something along the lines of “Yeah, that narrative makes logical sense, and I definitely remember some bowl games where the better team just looked flat in a loss.” BUT after digging through some data? Eh, it turns out the “disappointment” narrative is largely worthless. However, after taking a even closer look at the data, maybe there is something there after all…

The 2008 season saw Nick Saban bring Alabama back to the forefront of college football before losing national title hopes in a loss to Florida in the SEC Championship game. They followed up this showing with a 14-point loss to Utah despite being favored by 10 points. The reason for the 24-point swing? Maybe it was a lack of motivation on Alabama’s part, or maybe it was a very good Utah team running a spread offensive scheme that has proven the occasional cryptonite for Nick Saban’s defense. Jump forward to 2013 (“Kick Six” y’all) and Bama’s hearts got ripped out again. The Sugar Bowl matchup this time? A 14-point loss to a pissed 17-point underdog Oklahoma that was tired of hearing ‘bout the SEC. This version of Alabama featured a ton of guys playing in their last (and less meaningful than expected) game before starting professional careers, so it’s not crazy to think said players weren’t all in for this game. Oklahoma fans would tell you it had a lot more to do with OU disrespect and Alabama’s continued struggles to stop good and/or spread offenses.

A lot of people remember the above games. Not as many remember the No.2 USC team in 2006 that lost a 13-9 clunker to crosstown rival UCLA who checked in at 6-5 (ouch). USC responded with a two touchdown win against favored Michigan in the Rose Bowl. The very next year No. 2 West Virginia lost to four-win rival Pitt in the final game of the season. If you want to know how devastating it was, go look up FB Owen Schmitt’s NSFW quotes following the game. Bowl season saw the Mountaineers as a six-point underdog in the Fiesta Bowl against Oklahoma. The result? WVU by 20.

To try and keep an apples to apples comparison as much as possible, I found every team in the BCS and College Football Playoff era that had a clear berth to the title game or playoff at stake and lost in their final game (either regular season or conference championship). From 1998 to 2018 the result was 16 total teams, down to 13 data points with Georgia yet to play Texas and last year’s Wisconsin-Miami Orange Bowl thrown out on account of both teams fitting the criteria. (Sidenote: Wow, that feels like decades ago for those two programs.)

Taking the Vegas betting lines and expected performances from S&P+ (hey, it beats Vegas so why not) and comparing them with the actual outcomes shows that the title shot losers did in fact underperform in their bowl games. Ha, I knew it! *squints closely* Yup, they underperformed by 0.7 points/game against Vegas and 0.5 points/game against S&P+.

Hmm...on second thought, it looks like the title shot losers performed about as expected.

So why the narrative? For starters, ESPN is trying to get that money. And to get that money, they need narratives that create controversy, which leads to interest, and consequently drives revenue. Add to that the fact that big programs with their sights set on national titles don’t like losing to directional Florida teams or any team from the state of Utah and it all makes sense.

However, if you look more closely at the results, there’s another reason this narrative exists. Confining the time range to the last 10 years, 2008-2017, shows that teams have actually underperformed by nearly 11 points compared to Vegas projections and 8 points compared to S&P+.

Recency bias is certainly at play here, but there may also be more. College football coverage has continued to ramp up in the past decade. More money (and pressure to win) has been piled on AD's, coaches, and players; these are prerequisites for the type of emotional and mental collapse alleged in the title shot loser narrative. This is further compounded by the continuing trend of stud players sitting out non-CFP bowl games. The amount of coverage and hype that goes into tracking the playoff continues to increase, and we may see this become a more consistent trend moving forward.

Or maybe Georgia spends a lot of time at the 2019 Sugar Bowl flashing the “horns down" signal…

Stay tuned.