Leading up to the first round of the College Football Playoff was people upset that Tulane and James Madison earning spots while schools like Notre Dame and Texas (among others) did not. Tulane and James Madison fed into the narrative by both getting blown out in their playoff games, and even had ESPN/TNT broadcasters complain on air that Notre Dame should've been in instead.
Cry harder.
Let me go down my laundry list of what people need to shut up about all of this:
1. GROUP OF FIVE TEAMS DESERVE A PLACE. Let me just start off here. You cannot have this 12-team system without giving a G6 team a spot in it. The power conferences needed the G6 to sign off on this or there would be no 12-team playoff. That's part of the deal to make this happen. Please understand this. This isn't the NFL where a commissioner and a rules committee makes the rules. These are brokered deals between conference commissioners, and six of those commissioners are from non-power leagues.
Also understand that G6 leagues are a part of the FBS. They bring key scheduling opportunities for the P4. If you don't want them part of the playoff, then stop scheduling them and move on to a P4 only schedule. In the NFL, the NFC South champion will have a place in the playoffs despite that division being less powerful than the NFC North or NFC West.
2. NEXT YEAR'S RULES HAVE ALREADY CHANGED TO FIX SOME OF THIS. Next season, there are two major changes to how we pick the 12 playoff teams. One is that all four P4 champions will be guaranteed a playoff spot, meaning that only one G6 champ get the same guarantee. If that was implimented this season, ACC champion Duke would have be in while James Madison would have been out.
Next, Notre Dame is guaranteed a playoff spot if they are ranked in the top 12 in the final rankings. That means Notre Dame would have been in and Miami would have been out. Could you imagine the outrage if Notre Dame got in ahead of Miami despite the Hurricanes being ranked higher than the Irish and who had already beaten them on the field? Again, that doesn't totally fix your problem and may create a new one.
So the playoff would have looked like this:
1-Indiana vs 8-Oklahoma/9-Alabama
2-Ohio State vs 7-Texas A&M/10-Notre Dame
3-Georgia vs 6-Ole Miss/11-Tulane
4-Texas Tech vs 5-Oregon/12-Duke
So this new rule would have given us two of the same games (including one that was a blowout) and gives up Oregon-Duke which would be a blowout too. We'd also get Notre Dame instead of Miami, despite Miami beating A&M in the game we actually saw. So, is it really fixed? And is this fair to Miami?
3. BLOWOUTS AREN'T NEW TO THE PLAYOFF. So you hate blowouts? Well, having more P4 schools don't guarantee we get better games. Here are some previous blowouts in CFP games:
2014: Oregon 59-Florida State 20
2014: Ohio State 42-Oregon 20
2015: Alabama 38-Michigan State 0
2016: Clemson 31-Ohio State 0
2018: Clemson 30-Notre Dame 3
2018: Clemson 44-Alabama 16
2019: LSU 63-Oklahoma 28
2020: Ohio State 49-Clemson 28
2020: Alabama 52-Ohio State 24
2021: Alabama 27-Cincinnati 6
2021: Georgia 34-Michigan 11
2022: Georgia 65-TCU 7
2023: Michigan 34-Washington 13
2024: Penn State 38-SMU 10
2024: Ohio State 42-Tennessee 17
All of those games were decided by 21 or more points. A few of those were national championship games. And look at those names on the losing side! Florida State. Notre Dame. Ohio State. Alabama. Oklahoma. Clemson. Michigan. These are traditional powers getting slaughtered.
4. EXPANSION MOVES THE PROBLEM. So now people are bitching about expansion. Having 16 teams doesn't make this go away -- it just moves the needle. Just go check out the NCAA Tournament. There are 68 teams in every year and people still whine about "the bubble" and who got in over who got out. Seth Greenberg has made an entire career about his Virginia Tech getting "snubbed".
This year, Notre Dame got "snubbed" so the cries are really loud. If it was ... say ... Utah, would it be as loud of a problem?
Well, that's what would have happened if this was a 16-team playoff. We would have 11-Notre Dame, 12-BYU, 13-Texas and 14-Vanderbilt included in the playoff. The "snubs" and cries would now come from 15-Utah and 16-USC. So the Utes would be the ones crying about getting excluded while two G6 teams get in. Would you care as much? Probably not. You've probable haven't watched one Utah game all season nor miss them being in. Maybe you dismiss this as "well, Utah isn't good enough to actually win the whole thing like Notre Dame can" ... but then why bother expanding the playoff to teams who can't win it? I mean, do you think Vanderbilt can actually win the national championship? So adding four teams just to appease Notre Dame in 2025 is your solution?
Which brings me to ...
5. WHY DO YOU THINK NOTRE DAME GOT SNUBBED? Let's look at Notre Dame's resume. Sure, they are 10-2. Yes, they've won 10 straight games. And, okay, they are ranked No. 11. Yet they didn't earn a spot ... so they aren't in.
Notre Dame lost to Miami on the field. So Miami was ranked higher. Notre Dame's best win a home win over No. 16 USC. They beat no other team ranked in the final rankings. None.
In fact, Notre Dame's wins aren't that impressive. Among the games they played against P4 schools, they beat the last place team in the SEC (Arkansas), the last place team in the Big Ten (Purdue) and the two last place teams in the ACC (Syracuse, Boston College). So they feasted on the worst P4 had to offer and beat just one ranked team. The only P4 teams that Notre Dame beat who had a winning record was USC, NC State and Pitt. That is who you are whining about being snubbed? That's why you want to blow up this whole thing? Again, if Utah walked in here with that argument, you wouldn't care one bit.
6. FIXING TIEBREAKERS WOULD HELP MORE. A little bit why we got here was the ACC's tie-breaking procedures gave us Virginia-Duke for their conference championship game instead of Virginia-Miami. With the ACC at 17 football members, a lot of their head-to-head tiebreakers didn't work so it rolled down to an arbitrary tiebreaker of what their ACC opponents combined records were.
That's a poor way to truly determine who the best teams in the league are, and that showed here. This isn't just an ACC decision -- all P4 leagues have similar tie-breaker procedures. In fact, the SEC had it's fourth highest ranked team play in their championship game, but because Alabama's name holds weight and a playoff-worthy ranking, no one really cared. Yet Ole Miss and Texas A&M were deemed better teams according to the CFP committee.
If the P4 leagues -- and especially the ACC -- amend their tiebreakers to have highest ranked CFP teams before any combined record nonsense, then we get a bit of a fix. We would have had Virginia-Miami and the winner of that game would have earned an automatic bid under the 2025 rules. If it was Miami, then they would have taken JMU's auto-bid and Notre Dame would have been in. If it was Virginia, they would have taken JMU's auto-bid and Miami likely drops below Notre Dame in the rankings and the Irish get it.
This honestly is a development that makes sense and likely to happen. The ACC would surely look at doing this just to not have 8-5 Duke as their conference champion, and even the SEC would have benefitted from this. There was some sweating about where Alabama would be ranked after they were blown out by Georgia in the SEC title game. But if Ole Miss (the highest ranked team among the tied bunch) lost that same game, there would be little worry that they'd fall five or more spots and out of the rankings.
Expect all of the P4 leagues to make this change.
7. UNDERSTAND THIS HAPPENS IN ALL SPORTS. One of the important things to learn about life ... and sports ... is that it isn't always fair. College football is by far the most flawed of them all and has been for decades. I'm absolutely sure our list of national champions would look different had we had a playoff instead of the bowl system, the Alliance, or BCS. I mean, Ohio State was an 8-seed last year and won the first 12-team playoff, so you can't tell me that our list of champs wouldn't be vastly different had we had this format for 100 years.
We already know that the best team doesn't win all of the time. We certainly know that in college basketball. We also have Super Bowl champions that get hot at the right time and make a run.
As of right now, the Detroit Lions will likely miss the NFL playoffs while the Carolina Panthers could get in. We've had teams who missed the playoffs have better records than ones who did. The NBA has lessened the importance of divisions so we rarely get any issues. MLB has expanded the wildcard teams to fix this. None of them ... including the NCAA tournament ... uses rankings to determine who is in their playoff and what the bracket looks like. Only college football does this.
College football is a great sport, but it has a ton of problems that it isn't really willing to figure out. Until they do ... and make massive changes ... we won't get to a place where we have a great system. So enjoy what we have.
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