Mark Madden: Early-season mismatches part of college football's flawed system

College football is stupid.

We got reminded of that this past weekend when powerhouses played pushovers to produce scores like 81-7, 73-0, 73-7, 66-14 and 56-3. Even Pitt got to pummel some sacrificial lamb. (Anybody know where Wofford is located? Without using Google.)

These mismatches are the progeny of college football’s flawed system.

College football is the only big-time sport where teams don’t know exactly what they must do to win the championship. That seems unthinkable, but it’s accepted.

Teams can go undefeated and not make the playoff. That happened to Central Florida twice, in 2017 and ‘18.

If you win your conference, there’s still no guarantee. Two Power Five conference champions missed out on last season’s playoff.

A committee picks who makes the playoff. So lopsided wins against rotten teams in nonconference games trump taking risk by playing games against good opponents that people want to see.

No. 5 LSU lost to No. 8 Florida State, 45-24, on Sunday. Both teams took a chance. Good for them. But LSU’s reward for that was getting its playoff hopes immediately crippled.

The playoff expanding from four teams to 12 in 2024 will eliminate some ambiguity, but not all.

The six highest-ranked conference champs will qualify. But there are 10 conferences. (Nine after the Pac-12 folds.)

The other six teams will be picked by the committee. The human element will remain, along with all the complicity that entails. Brand matters as much as record, maybe more. (Notre Dame still doesn’t have to join a conference.)

So college football is stupid. Who wants to watch blowouts?

Stupid people, that’s who.

College football has ancillary forms of stupid, too:

• Cal, Southern Methodist and Stanford will join the ACC. Not exactly “Atlantic Coast.” The geographic disintegration continues.

• Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy wore a “Free Harbaugh” jersey to protest coach Jim Harbaugh being suspended three games. But Harbaugh’s suspension was imposed by the school. He coached all week. He formulated the game plan. He will miss three games against subpar foes. Harbaugh isn’t exactly being martyred in the classic sense. McCarthy is an attention-seeking dork. (Michigan’s players held up four fingers to signify Harbaugh’s uniform number during his playing days. I just held up one.)

• New Colorado coach Deion Sanders wasted no time making his program a monument to his narcissism. (He also wasted no time putting up a big win, 45-42 over last year’s national runner-up, TCU.) Sanders has been braying non-stop, inventing violations of the respect card. He has two sons on his team, both very good. He’s a Little League dad run amok. He ran off all but 10 of Colorado’s scholarship players from last year. Instead of “C” for captain, Colorado has two players wearing “L” for leader, two wearing “D” for dawg. The “D” should stand for dumb. It’s all about “Coach Prime.” Until Colorado loses.

• Penn State scored a touchdown with six seconds left in its 38-15 rout of West Virginia. Should coach James Franklin have told his team to take a knee? No. If you don’t want your foe to run up the score, play better. Also, Penn State’s last touchdown covered the 21-point spread and took the total over 50. Taking a knee would have been equivalent to a fix. You can’t say that out loud, but you also can’t ignore it. Sports genuflect at gambling’s altar. Sponsorship galore. And Penn State’s second-team offense got that last touchdown. Experience and reward for players who don’t see the field much.