Marshall wins on the field and wonders off it

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Every Tuesday night in the middle of an otherwise perfect football season, Marshall's players, coaches and administrators brace themselves for the letdown. Still, whether they watch the College Football Playoff selection committee's contrived weekly ranking show or merely hear about it through Twitter, it doesn't make it any easier to see what they've done this season ignored by the only people who really matter.

"My wife gets so ticked off, it takes her Thursday to calm down," athletics director Mike Hamrick said.

This week, though, the inevitable Marshall snub may be a little easier to take. The Thundering Herd reached 11-0 at Legion Field on Saturday, stuffing UAB on fourth-and-1 from the 10-yard line inside the final minute to preserve a 23-18 win. If 10 consecutive blowouts against a string of overmatched opponents didn't impress the selection committee enough to put Marshall in their top-25, it seems unlikely a hold-on-for-dear-life victory against 5-6 UAB is going to move the needle much.

And it leaves Marshall with a question for which there is no great answer because there is no precedent: Is beating everyone on its schedule, no matter who is on that schedule, enough to get a coveted spot in one of the "New Year's Six" bowl games?

"There's a lot of people out there who think we're a really good football team," Marshall coach Doc Holliday said. "We try not to concern ourselves right now with what the College Football Playoff committee thinks of us, but all we can control is if we keep winning. If we do that, I think we'll be fine."

But for schools in the so-called "Group of Five" conferences — the American Athletic, the Mountain West, the Mid-American, the Sun Belt and Conference USA, where Marshall plays — the committee's decision on Marshall means everything.

Each season in this playoff system, the highest-ranked champion among that group will play in a significant bowl game — a decision that carries huge financial implications for those leagues and program-defining prestige for the team that gets the bid.

According to the Sagarin Ratings, Marshall has played the 141st most difficult schedule in the country. There are only 128 Football Bowl Subdivision teams.

There is certainly nothing Marshall can do about the fact Conference USA is weak this year. But if the committee decides Marshall is the most-deserving champion even though it scheduled Miami (Ohio), Rhode Island, Ohio and Akron out of conference, does it not undercut the notion that strength of schedule was supposed to be rewarded in this new system? Though Marshall had beaten its opponents by an average of 30.8 points before Saturday, the only team with a winning record among that group is 7-4 Rice.

So if that's the route to a major bowl game, why would Mountain West leader Boise State ever challenge itself by scheduling Ole Miss and BYU? What's the point of probable AAC champion Memphis playing UCLA and Ole Miss on the road?

It's a question numerous athletics directors at Group of Five programs are asking themselves as this season plays out.

"But at the end of the day, if we go 13-0, how can you keep a 13-0 team out of an access bowl?" Hamrick said. "When I scheduled Miami of Ohio, they were coming off a 10-win season. We had Louisville on the schedule. When they went to the ACC, (athletics director) Tom Jurich called me and said, 'Mike, I've got to play Notre Dame,' so we moved the game to 2016. Don't blame that on these kids."

All of which means Marshall is graded on a different curve than perhaps any team in the country. There is very little context for anything the Thundering Herd does, good or bad, leaving the committee to guess just how good this team is and how it would stack up on the field against teams like Boise State, Colorado State, Memphis or Northern Illinois.

Is there really any way to answer that when Marshall is simply better — way better — than the C-USA dreck it faces week after week?

"This is all about winning, guys," Holliday said. "I've coached football for a long time and I've never heard of a good loss. It's all about winning and losing. To me, winning is the most important thing."

For pure entertainment purposes, it was nice to see Marshall challenged a bit on Saturday. UAB actually led 18-17 and had the ball backed up to its own goal line with 8:20 left. Then, Marshall's defense swarmed quarterback Cody Clements, stripped the ball from him in the end zone and fell on it for a touchdown. Then, Marshall survived a tiring, physical, 17-play UAB drive that seemed destined for the end zone until it sniffed out Jordan Howard out of the Wildcat formation with 56 seconds left.

"This is the game we've been waiting on to define our team, to really see where we're at," Marshall's star quarterback Rakeem Cato said. "We had a lot of blowout games this year, and we really needed a game like this. When adversity sunk in, we overcame it."

But did they need it in the eyes of the selection committee?

That's where Hamrick is a bit frustrated these days. Because no Group of Five team has been in the committee's past three top 25 rankings, it's impossible to tell how they are judging Marshall. And because it now seems there's nothing Marshall can do to get in the committee's top 25, we may not know until Dec. 7.

"I know all those guys, and they're working hard, just show us a little transparency," Hamrick said. "Just tell us where we're at. Are we not a part of it?"

It's a fair point. It might be worth the CFP addressing next year how it wants to handle the Group of Five issue during the season. But that doesn't mean Marshall would necessarily like the answer any better, especially after a game like Saturday.

"It's obvious we didn't play as well as we have all year, but we found a way to win," Holliday said. "It's hard to go through a regular season and not have to grind one out. I've never had that. At Florida (as an assistant), we won a national championship and we had to block a field goal against a not-very-good South Carolina team to get into the national championship. We're 11-0 and happy to be there."

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