There’s a reason why almost every sport determines which teams make its post-season based on on-field results, and not based on vibes.
Because the vibes are, once again, terrible in college football.
What’s arguably America’s second-biggest sport has changed its methods over the years for determining a champion – from computer models picking the two best teams for one grand finale, to the current 12-team playoff determined by a panel of industry figures, all the way back to sportswriters literally just saying who they reckon was champion. (As a sportswriter, we prefer that one.)
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The computer model was reasonably successful but people still hated it, so once a playoff was introduced in the 2010s, the human element came back in. And this was usually fine.
Even when they were picking just four teams to make the playoff, they pretty much always got it right. The last team out is always going to feel snubbed but realistically for the first decade of their existence, the playoff selectors did their job properly.
And now, twice in three years, the biggest brand in the sport has been favoured by what almost everyone not wearing crimson red tinted glasses believes is a blunder. Which is ripe for conspiracy.
In the 2023 season, it was the utterly unthinkable decision to kick unbeaten power conference champion Florida State out of the final four for Alabama.
The reasoning? Florida State’s quarterback had broken his leg, and they felt Alabama was therefore a better team going forward, disregarding the actual games that had been played.
The nebulous mix of ‘picking the best teams’ and ‘picking the most deserving teams’ is always where human rankings can be fallible. Alabama probably was a better team at that moment in 2023, but you’re not really supposed to decide who gets a shot at a championship based on woulds and coulds.
Two years later, and the Crimson Tide are back in the spotlight as the beneficiaries of a strange decision.
On Monday morning (AEDT), the final 12-team bracket for the 2025 season was revealed, and the main interest surrounded the last few at-large spots – five were reserved for conference champions and another five were basically set in stone.
Heading into conference championship week, the rankings had Alabama at No.9, Notre Dame at No.10, BYU at No.11 and Miami at No.12.
This was already a little bit strange. Alabama had passed Notre Dame despite a below-par win against rivals Auburn, while the Fighting Irish had demolished a 10th straight opponent, making up for two early-season stumbles by a combined four points.
BYU, an underdog going into its Big 12 conference title game, was now the only thing between Notre Dame and Miami – a team that beat Notre Dame early in the season, but had suffered a few stumbles of its own, debuting in the playoff rankings eight spots behind the Irish before closing in.
Notre Dame, an independent school not part of a conference, and Miami, due to absurd conference tiebreaker rules, did not play in conference title weekend.
BYU did, and lost by a lot. Alabama did too, against a highly-ranked Georgia side it had beaten earlier in the season… and lost by a lot.
And this is where the inconsistencies come in.
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The final rankings saw Alabama hold onto ninth place, but suddenly Miami was 10th, with Notre Dame and BYU below them.
The former two were in the playoff. The latter two were not.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF BRACKET
12*. James Madison (12-1) at 5. Oregon (11-1)
Winner faces 4*. Texas Tech (12-1)
9. Alabama (10-3) at 8. Oklahoma (10-2)
Winner faces 1*. Indiana (13-0)
11*. Tulane (11-2) at 6. Ole Miss (11-1)
Winner faces 3*. Georgia (12-1)
10. Miami (10-2) at 7. Texas A&M (11-1)
Winner faces 2. Ohio State (12-1)
On the bubble: Notre Dame (10-2), BYU (11-2), Texas (9-3), Vanderbilt (10-2)
* = conference champion. The five highest-ranked champions qualify automatically
Notre Dame was, understandably, furious at dropping out of the playoff despite having not played a game that week.
Especially when the team it was previously one spot below, Alabama, had not just lost but lost really badly – looking entirely uncompetitive and posting negative rushing yards in the SEC title game.
The weekly rankings release, where the playoff selection committee chair has to come out publicly and explain decisions which he didn’t make by himself and are often intellectually inconsistent, was the subject of Notre Dame’s ire with athletic director Pete Bevacqua calling them “a farce and total waste of time”.
Those weekly rankings had made it pretty clear Notre Dame was safely in the field… until they weren’t.
The problem, according to the committee, was their loss to Miami. But the committee only cared about the head-to-head result once the teams were ranked directly next to each other.
“Once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everybody had been hungering for,” committee chair Hunter Yurachek said.
“You look at those two teams on paper, and they are almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponents, the results against common opponents.
“But the one metric we had to fall back on, again, was the head to head.”
Of course, the committee had created this scenario for themselves by moving BYU down for its conference title loss.
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The easiest solution would have also been moving Alabama down. They are the only three-loss team in the playoff field, and while the quality of a team’s wins matter, so do the quality of a team’s losses.
Alabama has arguably the worst loss in the entire playoff field – ironically, against a terrible Florida State team earlier this season. They have also looked nothing like a true title contender for weeks, if not months (although now we’re going down the path of making calls based on vibes).
Take everything in a vacuum and there’s some logic to every element. Alabama plays in the toughest conference in the sport, the SEC, and only had the chance to cop a third loss because it was good enough to make the conference title game in the first place. And Miami being over Notre Dame is certainly logical when you consider the head-to-head result.
But you can’t take everything in a vacuum because the weekly rankings, which effectively exist purely for content – ESPN dedicates a weekly TV show to their release and promotes them heavily on digital platforms – said Notre Dame was fine.
And you can’t decide that some conference title game results matter and others don’t.
Both Alabama and BYU lost to top-four teams, badly. Only BYU dropped down the order because of their loss.
The conspiracy-minded out there believe the committee is trying to protect the conference title games, which are already falling out of favour because they are less relevant with an expanded post-season.
While the Big Ten title game between Indiana and Ohio State was a spectacle, and a glorious moment capping off the former’s rise from irrelevance to dominance, it meant very little in a sporting sense.
Ohio State, ranked No.1 coming into the week, lost. They swapped places with Indiana, who were No.2. All the game did was change which side of the playoff bracket they were on.
And in the eyes of the conferences, the only thing worse than an irrelevant title game would be a dangerous title game.
Teams have dropped down the rankings after losing their conference title game before, but before the expansion of the playoff to 12 teams, you generally needed to win a conference title to have any shot at making the title game. It was a risk worth taking.
Alabama went into the SEC title game of the knowledge they were already in a position to make the playoff, while all they could gain with victory was a slight seeding advantage.
If they were to lose and drop out of the playoff because of it, it would be easy for future teams to decide they don’t want to play in the conference title games at all – the risk-reward balance would be out of whack.
One major conference, the Big Ten, has already proposed radical changes to the playoff system – such as an expansion from 12 teams to either 24 or 28, with automatic bids for conferences based on their quality. This would then allow the conference to hold play-in games for those automatic bids in conference title week instead of one title game.
That would be silly and unnecessary in a sporting sense, but it would make more money!
The sport is already heading down this path and, in the view of the conspiracy believers, keeping Alabama in the playoff protects the conference title games. It effectively turns them into a bonus round – you can’t lose anything, but you can boost your resume if you win.
We’re not saying we believe in this conspiracy but it sure suits the sport’s big dogs.
In 2025, the big loser is simply Notre Dame, who reacted rather childishly by declaring if they can’t make the playoff, they won’t play in a traditional exhibition bowl game either. (They are, after all, used to being treated better than almost everyone else by the sport.)
It’s unfortunate they didn’t make the playoff because their form suggested they might’ve genuinely been good enough to make the national title game, or even win it. They are the lowest-ranked team you would say that about this season, which is one of the reasons playoff expansion seems entirely unnecessary.
But this year’s drama almost guarantees future playoff systems will be worse.
Already, as part of this saga, it’s been revealed that from next season if Notre Dame is ranked in the top 12 it will be guaranteed a place in the playoff.
There will also be a tweak to the rules which means the champions of the four biggest conferences – the ACC, Big Ten, SEC and Big 12 – plus the highest-ranked non-power conference champion make the playoff.
The important distinction there is that, currently, the five highest-ranked champions regardless of conference make the playoff. Everyone assumed that meant the four power conferences would always get their champion into the field, but the stupidly large ACC somehow created a system where due to poor tiebreakers and missing head-to-head games, 7-5 Duke both made the conference title game… and won it.
The Blue Devils, much more known for their basketball program than in football, were nowhere near the top 25 rankings – while AAC champion Tulane and Sun Belt champion James Madison had produced excellent seasons which got them just inside the top 25; therefore they both had to be selected.
This is an incredible story and should be celebrated as such. Tulane was originally apart of the SEC, decades ago, but quit. They’ve since built their way back up and, given how terrible the NFL’s Saints and NBA’s Pelicans are, are the pride of New Orleans.
Meanwhile James Madison was a powerhouse at a lower level of the sport before immediately finding success after moving up just four years ago. Already in that time two of their coaches have been poached by power conference teams, most notably Curt Cignetti at No.1-ranked Indiana.
The fact they have a genuine, if not exactly realistic, chance to win the national championship is exactly what college football is about. Just having one opportunity for the smaller conferences provides hope to dozens of schools, thousands of players and hundreds of thousands of fans each season – nobody ever thought those conferences would get two throws at the dart board.
But under those adjusted rules which will come into effect for 2026, Duke would’ve made the playoff over James Madison. In a sporting context that’s pointless, because neither team is going to do any damage in the playoff, and it’s a whole lot less fun too.
Eventually, when the playoff inevitably expands, the rulemakers won’t be doing it to create more opportunities for great stories like James Madison. They’ll be doing it to consolidate power at the top – either just creating more at-large spots for the fourth, fifth and sixth best teams in the top conferences to fill, or in a worst-case scenario directly handing those conferences auto-bids.
And they’ll be doing it for money. Because despite the fact that money is already warping the sport, destroying conferences as everyone tries desperately to latch onto one of the Big Ten or SEC-branded lifeboats where they’ll get more TV dollars, the powers of the sport just want more and more.
The same reason why the Big Ten is considering private equity investment in the conference, which even its own members are very concerned about accepting.
And the same reason why the weekly playoff rankings show, which causes many more problems than it ever could possibly solve, exists.
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