Stephen A. Smith and Mike Greenberg Hijack The Pat McAfee Show to Continue Heated Debate About the College Football Playoff
The debate surrounding the College Football Playoff was so intense Monday that both Stephen A. Smith and Mike Greenberg had to invade The Pat McAfee Show to keep it going.
From Monday to Friday, ESPN’s morning schedule begins with Greenberg’s Get Up at 8 a.m. First Take begins at 10 a.m., and The Pat McAfee Show starts at noon. On Monday’s episode, McAfee and his crew filmed the show live from ESPN’s studios in New York’s Seaport district. Smith, who does First Take at the Seaport, joined them to discuss a variety of topics.
When the conversation shifted to the College Football Playoff and Florida State’s questionable exclusion, Smith explained how he believed the selection committee made the right decision. Suddenly, Greenberg — who finished up his show two hours ago on that same set — came over to passionately disagree.
“Stephen A., the blasphemy you are speaking on this set to these esteemed people,” Greenberg said as he and Smith stood over a seated McAfee.
Then, Greenberg reiterated his idea to bring a similar format to the NFL, where a committee selects the teams that get to complete for a Super Bowl championship as opposed to teams getting in solely because of their records. When the table furiously disagreed with the idea, it played right into his argument.
“There is an objective way they measure these teams in college football,” Greenberg explained. “It is called strength of record. They put all these metrics into a computer and the team whose strength of record was third was Florida State! Number three! What they accomplished was third-best of all the teams in the country.”
“So, unless we’ve decided to turn this into figure skating… I love figure skating. I don’t know anything about figure skating, but here’s what I do know: the only way to determine who is a better figure skater… is by letting someone subjectively say, ‘You did it better than you did it.’ In football, we have criteria that have been established ahead of time. They are the third-best team in the country.”
Smith’s counter was based on the fact that, according to him, “style points matter.”
“Style points matter. They always have in college football,” he responded. “Secondly, this isn’t the first time or the second time or the third time we’ve complained about college football committees and their decisions.”
Smith also questioned why the energy wasn’t directed at Michigan, which earned the no. 1 seed in the CFP despite the sign-stealing scandal that saw coach Jim Harbaugh suspended for three games.
“Why didn’t you bring them up?” Smith asked. “Why are you looking at Alabama?
“And, by the way, who did Alabama beat? They beat a team that hadn’t lost in two-and-a-half years. They won 29 straight. They were the two-time reigning defending national champions, and you knocked them out. Excuse me, those are the reasons that you put somebody in a College Football Playoff, not somebody that’s gonna have a third-string quarterback. I mean, give me a break.”
Watch above via ESPN.
