Houston coach's strong words about Playoff possibilities

Houston coach Tom Herman understands the narrative for his football team, at least until the Cougars play Oklahoma in their 2016 season opener — not to mention  what will unfold if they beat the Sooners — is about what might be possible. It’s clear he thinks conditions may have changed from a year ago, when he told Paste BN Sports:

“The only thing that we battle is the conference. I tell kids, ‘If you are not competing for a national championship’ — because let’s be real, we’re not gonna do that here in the near future — ‘our job is to compete for relevance and a New Year’s bowl game.”

Barring chaos in the Power Five leagues, the American Athletic Conference champion is unlikely to reach the Playoff. But what if, say, Houston were to beat a preseason top five Oklahoma in the opener and finish unbeaten, beating another two or three Top 25 teams along the way? And what if, say, Oklahoma went on to win the Big 12 and become a one-loss Playoff contender?

Herman begins by saying the American champion will almost certainly be the Group of Five’s automatic entrant into a New Year’s Six bowl game, “and that is a really cool thing to say, to know all you’ve got to do is win your conference and you’re going to … the Rose Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Orange Bowl.”

But then he goes where most coaches won’t.

“Hypothetically,” he says, “in a situation (like Houston going unbeaten, with wins against Oklahoma and Louisville) … if that team does not get invited to the four-team Playoff then the system is broken. Now, how that applies to us, I don’t know. But in that scenario, if that team did not get in, I think we would need to reevaluate the system.”

The scenario remains farfetched. But Houston at least laid the groundwork last season with a school-best 13-1 record, an AAC championship, a victory against Florida State in the Peach Bowl and a No. 8 ranking in the final Amway Coaches Poll. Though Herman says the past shouldn’t matter — and the Playoff selection committee would agree that it doesn’t — in reality, for a Group of Five team, it certainly does. The Cougars built credibility last seeason. If they were to roll unbeaten into mid-October this season, there would be plenty of conversation.

“That’s the story,” Herman says.