By Mark Nagi
There is no way around it. The College Football Playoff system must be sent to the Great Beyond.
The selection format, as revealed by the weekly ranking, reveals the number of teams involved, and the hypocritical treatment of conference title games…
Bury it.
Bury the College Football Playoff system with a shovel and then bury the shovel.
This year, the CFB Playoff Committee outdid itself, bending over backwards to ensure that an undeserving Alabama team made the field of 12. But that shouldn’t be a surprise. In 2022, the committee ranked Alabama ahead of Tennessee, despite the Vols being ahead in every significant metric and the head-to-head matchup. In that four-team era, Alabama finished 5th, as they couldn’t justify placing 2-loss Alabama ahead of undefeated Georgia and Michigan, and one-loss TCU and Ohio State.
In 2023, the committee put 1-loss Alabama ahead of undefeated ACC champion Florida State. Never had an undefeated Power conference team missed the playoffs. But the Committee was giving Nick Saban one more shot at another national title.
In 2024, had SMU been blown out in the ACC title game, they would have been bounced, and Alabama would have elevated to the 12th and final playoff position. But SMU lost on a last-second FG, and the committee couldn’t justify knocking them out completely.
But this year is the coup de gras. The CFB playoff committee simply chose to place Alabama in the field… and then figure out how to justify it later.
Over the last half of the season, Alabama struggled to beat 4-8 South Carolina, 7-5 LSU, and 5-7 Auburn. They beat FCS Eastern Illinois, lost to Oklahoma, and then were blown out in the SEC championship game against Georgia. They are not a playoff-caliber team.
In Week 5 of the rankings, the committee moved Alabama up to 9th place, just after they barely beat a lousy Auburn squad. And in Week 6, the final week of the rankings, they stayed in 9th place after that Georgia beatdown.
Alabama needed to be in the top 10 to make the playoffs, so the prevailing thought process was that the committee was shielding them in case the SEC title game didn’t go well. However, now we see that Alabama could have lost by 1,000 points, and the committee wasn’t even going to drop them a single position.
In all the other Power 4 title games, the loser fell a bit. Ohio State, BYU and Virginia each dropped spots.
Except Alabama.
This is the good old boy network on full display. The conference title games should either matter, or they shouldn’t.
There is certainly an argument to be made for eliminating conference title games all-together. In an era of bloated conferences and uneven schedules, there is no reason to continue playing these games except for the money they make for the conferences. And if we’ve learned anything over the years, it is that when it comes to collegiate athletics, there’s never enough money.
The committee has its favorites, and they were going to get Alabama into the field at all costs. They weren’t going to shut out the ACC entirely, so Miami got in. Despite its national brand, the fact that the Fighting Irish was riding a 10-game win streak, and its position in the field according to the rankings in Week 5, Notre Dame was left without a chair when the music stopped.
In their infinite wisdom, the Committee also gives us two first-round rematches (Alabama/Oklahoma and Tulane/Ole Miss). The format also features James Madison at Oregon, which likely will be an unwatchable blowout.
Quarterfinal games are still being played at bowl sites, which takes actual compelling matchups away from college campuses. But hey, the bowls are happy, and the television networks are happy, so you should be happy, fans in Bloomington, Columbus, Athens, and Lubbock!
The powers that be will use the selection controversy to expand the playoff field to 16 or 24, further devaluing the regular season. Remember, these are the same people who want to expand the NCAA basketball tournaments beyond 68 teams… something very few fans want to see happen.
College football might be the best sport in the world, which is truly incredible considering the numerous attempts to undermine it.
