Jim:
Did TCU get ed over?
Yep. Baylor also got ed over, and I will let you Big 12 loyalists out there debate over which one got ed the hardest (I love the phrase "body of work" used on CFB arguments, like TCU just composed a series of operettas). Frankly, I'm surprised that U-Texas didn't make a few threatening phone calls to just grab the fourth playoff spot for themselves. "Put us in there or we'll bolt to the AAC NYEEEEEHAWWWWW!11!!1!!!11!!!"
But this is the beauty of having a college football playoff. I think that there are people who wanted this playoff to exist under the impression that it would be FAIRER, and that fewer teams would get ed over. But that's not how college football works. The industry of college football is built ENTIRELY on people ing other people over. Conferences over other conferences. Coaches over schools. Committees over players. Players over the pizza guy when he asks for a tip. Everyone gets ed over, and the playoff only AMPLIFIES all of the ing-over going on.
This is all by design. Before this playoff existed, BCS advocates cited the controversy generated by the system as one of its selling points: The idea is that ing people over helps draw more attention to the sport, and that's somehow GOOD. So the playoff has been set up with that in mind. Of course they only have four teams. And of course there's a super-secret 12-person committee that decides this over a tasteful lunch spread. And of course they switched in one of the most storied programs in the nation at the last moment and ed over two Johnny-Come-Latelies in the process. If that wasn't done deliberately, then the system was deliberately set up to ALLOW something like this to happen. In college football, you get bonus points for being a brand name, and you get d for being some random-ass joint like TCU. That corruption is baked into the system no matter what kind of postseason format they dream up.
And now that there's a playoff (which, for the record, I like), they can get away with even more egregious horse , because a month from now, no one will really care about TCU or Baylor getting locked out. A team like Bama will win it all, and it will be convincing, and all that braying from the Big 12 will cease to be endearing. That's how it works. I just hope that, five years from now, they create a football NIT to really drive home the insignificance of being a bubble team.