Since the College Football Playoff selection committee released its final rankings, much of the attention has been on which schools didn’t make the 12-team field as opposed to the ones that did.
Most glaringly, Miami jumped Notre Dame on Selection Sunday, despite neither team playing over the weekend and the Irish being ranked ahead of the Hurricanes in each of the previous five weeks.
But that wasn’t all.
BYU (11-2) fell one spot after losing the Big 12 conference championship game in blowout fashion, while playoff-bound Alabama (10-3) did not move in the rankings despite suffering the same fate in the SEC title game.
Texas (9-3) missed the playoff despite boasting three top-10 wins. Two of its losses came against top-five opponents, including Ohio State in the type of non-conference heavyweight bout that fuels early-season viewership.
And Vanderbilt (10-2) was omitted, too, after going 6-2 in SEC play, with the losses coming on the road against Alabama and Texas.
The final two spots went to No. 20 Tulane and No. 24 James Madison because the playoff grants automatic bids to the five highest-ranked conference winners.
That means No. 5 Oregon will host James Madison and No. 6 Ole Miss will host Tulane in lopsided first-round matchups that could be decided by halftime.
All of this has led to widespread hand-wringing about whether, once again, the College Football Playoff is in need of dramatic format changes.
That debate starts with Notre Dame (10-2), which believed it was destined for the playoff after the committee’s post-Week 15 ranking pegged the Irish at No. 10 and in line for the final at-large bid.
Many believed Miami (10-2) had deserved to be ranked higher than Notre Dame all along because the Hurricanes won their head-to-head meeting over the Irish in Week 1.
But that head-to-head game wasn’t a factor until Miami moved ahead of BYU over the weekend, according to selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek, because that allowed the committee to evaluate Miami and Notre Dame side by side.
Following the snub, Notre Dame declined its invitation to participate in a non-playoff bowl game — further exemplifying that the traditional bowl game format is all but dead in the College Football Playoff era.
“Any rankings or show prior to this last one is an absolute joke and a waste of time,” Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua told Yahoo Sports.
“Why put these young student-athletes through these false emotions just to pull the rug out from underneath them having not played a game in two weeks and then a group of people in a room shatter their dreams without explanation?”
Indeed, getting rid of ESPN’s weekly rankings show would eliminate controversies like the one involving Notre Dame and Miami.
It would also eliminate questions about why BYU was punished for losing its conference championship game while Alabama was not, as nobody would have known where the Cougars and Crimson Tide stood to the committee before those losses.
But as it stands now, debates rage on about whether conference championship games should continue to exist, as they add additional risk for participating teams to suffer another loss.
BYU fell from No. 11 to No. 12, while Ohio State fell from No. 1 to No. 2 after losing to Indiana in their Big Ten final.
However, had BYU beaten No. 4 Texas Tech in the Big 12 championship game, the Cougars would have had a stronger case to make the College Football Playoff.
Playoff-bound teams that did not play in conference championship games — including Oregon, Ole Miss, No. 7 Texas A&M and No. 8 Oklahoma — did not move in the standings over the weekend.
Another hot-button debate revolves around whether to institute a minimum ranking for College Football Playoff teams.
Tulane and James Madison got in because they won their Group of 5 (G5) conferences, not because the committee considers them among the 12 best teams in the country.
There are four power conferences, but the disappointing ACC did not produce a team ranked highly enough to receive an automatic bid after Miami failed to qualify for the conference championship game. Five-loss Duke upsetting Virginia in the ACC title game destroyed Virginia’s chances, too.
That’s why there’s pressure on the College Football Playoff to consider rule changes that would prevent teams ranked as lowly as Tulane (11-2 with only one ranked win over then-No. 24 North Texas) and James Madison (12-1 without a ranked victory) from taking spots that could have gone to Notre Dame and others.
And then there’s the question of whether power-conference schools will stop scheduling high-profile non-conference matchups after Texas finished as No. 13 and missed the College Football Playoff.
Texas was the only school with three top-10 wins, but it also would have been the only three-loss team that didn’t appear in a conference championship game to make the playoff. A 29-21 loss at unranked Florida largely doomed the Longhorns.
But had Texas played a small school rather than Ohio State — against whom it lost, 14-7, on the road in Week 1 — the Longhorns likely would have finished 10-2, with victories over No. 3 Texas A&M, No. 6 Oklahoma and No. 9 Vanderbilt making up for that defeat by the Gators.
“It’s the message that, what do we want to send to the head coaches and the athletic directors around the country?” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said after ending the regular season with a 27-17 win over Texas A&M.
“Do you want us not to schedule Ohio State? Because if we’re a 10-2 team right now, this isn’t a discussion. We’re in the playoff. But we were willing to go up there and play that game.”
Before the 2024 season, the College Football Playoff expanded from four teams to 12.
Before the 2025 season, the playoff format changed to grant first-round byes to the four highest-ranked teams, rather than to the four highest-ranked conference champions.
More changes could be coming in 2026.
