Army West Point Gets College Football Playoff Support from Tim Pernetti
The College Football Playoff’s final field will be released on Sunday. There’s only a small chance that Army West Point will be in that bracket.
But, in the category of “anything can happen,” American Athletic Conference commissioner Tim Pernetti is doing all he can to ensure that the CFP committee doesn’t forget about the Black Knights, especially if they beat Tulane in the AAC title game on Friday.
The game is set for 8 p.m. eastern on ABC.
The Black Knights (10-1, 8-0 in American) were ranked No. 25 in the last CFP Top 25 and the next rankings will be released on Tuesday night.
It’s likely that Army will be one of only a handful of Group of 5 teams in the rankings. Boise State is likely to be ranked the highest, as the Broncos were ranked No. 11 last week.
Tulane (9-3, 7-1), Army’s opponent on Friday, was ranked No. 17 but is likely to drop as a result of its loss to Memphis last week. UNLV was ranked No. 22 and will play Boise State in the Mountain West title game later this week.
Those two games, naturally, will play a huge role in determine which of them makes the playoff, and at least one of them will. The five highest-ranked conference champions will get automatic bids, and Pernetti was quick to point out that bids are not designated to particular conferences — only the five highest-ranked conference champions.
To Pernetti, Army should be included in the conversation.
“I will say that if Army is our champion at 11-1, ranked in the CFP all year, and would have its only loss to top seven Notre Dame, that they're a legitimate playoff team,” Pernetti said.
Pernetti also took a shot at some of the other potential playoff team’s schedules, specifically how many under-.500 teams they played.
He included Boise State (seven), UNLV (eight), Arizona State (eight), Clemson (six) and Iowa State (six) as potential playoff teams who have lost more of their games to under .500 teams.
The only problem with that argument is that Army only has wins against three teams with records at .500 or better.
If Army is able to beat Tulane on Friday and win the league title, it would likely need Boise State to lose its game to UNLV to have a chance to move up enough to be the fifth-highest ranked league champion. Or, the committed would have to deem Army a higher-ranked conference champion than at least one of the other power conference champions.
It seems unlikely, but Pernetti believes the conference is positioned well overall.
“I'm confident that the body of work will be evaluated and I think we're well positioned in the conversation,” he said.