The second 12-team College Football Playoff bracket is final, and this year is more controversial than the last. In 2024, a couple of shoddy three-loss SEC resumes were left out of the field for SMU, which lost its conference championship on a last-second field goal. It would have been hard to find anybody with a massive problem over that.
This year, however, there are some more legitimate gripes. Notre Dame is out despite a 10-2 record and a 10-game winning streak. Vanderbilt is out despite a 10-2 record in the SEC and no bad losses. BYU is out despite finishing 11-2, reaching the Big 12 title game and only losing to No. 4 Texas Tech. Texas is out despite a very strong three-loss resume that includes wins over Texas A&M and Oklahoma, two playoff teams.
After the way that the selection went down, with Notre Dame getting the rug pulled out from under it after being ranked ahead of Miami all season, it's clear that something has to change.
But how can the system improve? Here are two ways to prevent this situation from happening again.
Get rid of the committee and go back to computer rankings
The selection committees have often been a little wishy-washy, but this year's group takes the cake. After chair Mack Rhoades left and Hunter Yurachek was appointed in his place, each selection show became more and more of a circus, and it came to a head on Sunday when Notre Dame was dropped for seemingly no reason.
This year's committee embarrassed itself weekly, with zero consistency in applying criteria throughout the rankings. The Group of Five teams were consistently under-ranked, while the middle of the SEC continued to sneak into the back of the top 25 despite loss after loss. Utah inexplicably was ranked above Miami and Vanderbilt when the rankings started and then proceeded to fall below those teams despite not losing a game.
Head-to-head took precedence in almost every applicable case — USC-Michigan, Texas-Vanderbilt, Oklahoma-Texas, Oklahoma-Alabama, BYU-Utah — except when it came to Notre Dame and Miami. The Irish were ranked above the Hurricanes every single week despite an identical record and a head-to-head loss and rightfully believed they would be in the field, until they weren't.
Consistency also went out the window on championship weekend when dealing with the losers of the title games. North Texas dropped one spot for losing to Tulane in the American Championship Game. Virginia dropped two spots after losing to Duke in the ACC Championship… but somehow stayed ahead of Tulane, which didn't move at all after winning. BYU was dropped a spot for idle Miami after losing 34-7 to Texas Tech, but Alabama wasn't dropped at all despite losing in a very similar fashion against Georgia, one week after somehow jumping Notre Dame because it squeaked by 5-7 Auburn.
So, what's the solution here?
The solution is to go back to the BCS formula rankings (which, wink wink, the selection committee is clearly using as a template for their weekly rankings anyway). It eliminates all bias that the committee has and actually has usually done a good job ranking the teams. The problem with the BCS wasn't the rankings formula, it was that only two teams got a chance to win the championship.
That leads us into our second solution to the current playoff system.
Eliminate auto-bids for conference championships
12 teams is already too many — my number of choice would be eight — but there shouldn't be two likely blowouts out of four first-round games. Of course, the ACC tripping all over itself all season, both on the field and with its conference tiebreakers, contributed to that, but this wasn't the intent of the Group of Five automatic bid.
The Group of Five auto-bid was a nice thought in theory, serving to eliminate the committee's bias against Group of Five teams with weaker schedules. However, this year, there just simply isn't a Group of Five team worthy of a bid. Tulane has two losses, including one to UTSA, and got smashed by 35 points against Ole Miss. James Madison played essentially nobody except Louisville, which it lost to by two touchdowns.
If we go back to the BCS formula, the bias against the G5 would be eliminated and a quality G5 team worthy of a playoff spot would earn one in the ranking, if there is one. Here are the G5 teams that finished in the top 12 in the simulated BCS rankings this decade, provided by BCSKnowHow.
2020 – No. 6 Cincinnati, No. 11 Coastal Carolina
2021 – No. 4 Cincinnati
2022 – none
2023 – none
2024 – No. 9 Boise State
2025 – none (Tulane is No. 18, James Madison is No. 19)
Cincinnati went 9-0 in 2020, beating three teams which were ranked at the time. The Bearcats lost by a field goal to Georgia in the Peach Bowl. In 2021, Cincinnati went undefeated and beat a top-10 Notre Dame team on the road before making the four-team CFP, the only G5 team to do so. Coastal Carolina went 10-0 in 2020, beating a pair of ranked teams including a top-10 BYU team with Zach Wilson at the helm. Boise State last season lost once in the regular season — by a field goal at Oregon — and had one of the best players in the country in Ashton Jeanty.
These are the kinds of special teams that the G5 bid was created to reward, not 2025 Tulane and James Madison. Eliminating auto-bids and going back to the BCS formula would allow those teams to get a chance if they earn it, but also doesn't eat up playoff spots for smaller schools that, quite frankly, didn't earn their spot.
Here's how the matchups would have shaken out this season in a hypothetical world where both of these changes were in place:
No. 9 Notre Dame at No. 8 Oklahoma (winner vs. No. 1 Indiana)
No. 12 BYU at No. 5 Oregon (winner vs. No. 4 Texas Tech)
No. 11 Miami (FL) at No. 6 Ole Miss (winner vs. No. 3 Georgia)
No. 10 Alabama at No. 7 Texas A&M (winner vs. No. 2 Ohio State)
Of course, the clear gripe for this is the delegitimization of conference championships. But wining your conference means something! It means a lot!
Watch Duke, which would have had no chance to make the CFP in this hypothetical system nor did it in the real one, react after beating Virginia on Saturday night. Watch Indiana, whose ranking would have been completely unaffected if it had lost the Big Ten title game, celebrate its win over Ohio State.
Those games already mean something. For some teams, they mean everything. On top of being able to raise a banner, you can help your case in the ranking. It would be a non-issue in this system.
Last year, it was Alabama crying on Sunday afternoon when the final bracket came out. This year, it's Notre Dame. Next year, it will be someone else.
If the CFP wants to avoid more injustices like the one that took place on Sunday, these two things are an absolute must. Until then, it will be more of the same.
