Please send your application to join the next College Football Playoff selection committee to Grapevine, Texas. Good help needed.
As final ballots are being submitted for the Heisman Trophy, as Notre Dame’s grievances intensify, and as we all brace for first-round blowouts, here are three lingering thoughts, following conference championship weekend and CFP selection:
CFP committee charade leaves bad taste
When the first CFP rankings came out on Nov. 4, Notre Dame checked in at No. 10, and Miami was No. 18.
Those initial rankings came directly on the heels of Miami’s loss to SMU and likely suffered from recency bias. Still, they came off obnoxiously ignorant of the reality that Miami and Notre Dame possessed identical records, and Miami owned a win against the Irish.
In Notre Dame’s four games since those initial rankings, the Irish outscored opponents that ranged in quality from bad to average by a combined score of 205-52.
Their prize? The Irish dropped to No. 11 in the final rankings.
In Miami’s four games since the initial rankings, the Hurricanes outscored opponents that ranged in quality from bad to average by a combined score of 151-41.
Along the way, Miami catapulted from No. 18 to No. 10.
See the issue? It’s not that Miami finished one spot ahead of Notre Dame in the final rankings and seized the final at-large playoff bid. Miami getting the spot is appropriate, but the process came off as a sham.
One month ago, the committee allegedly considered Notre Dame a markedly better team than Miami. All that’s happened since then is that each team blew out their remaining opponents.
The committee sank Notre Dame in the rankings and kept moving up Miami as teams ahead of it lost.
Admitting Miami and not Notre Dame is a just decision, but the process of reaching that decision became an unnecessary stunt that damaged the committee’s credibility.
That’s not all. The committee ranked Alabama at No. 10 on Nov. 25.
In Alabama’s two data points since that ranking, it held on for a white-knuckle road win against sub-.500 Auburn, and it got trampled by Georgia in the SEC Championship.
The committee absorbed those two data points and moved the Tide up from No. 10 to No. 9.
I asked CFP committee chairman Hunter Yurachek to explain this.
How, based on those two additional data points, would the committee justify moving Alabama up one spot to No. 9 in the final two rankings?
Yurachek explained the committee considered the Tide’s performance and victory in the Iron Bowl “a feather in their cap.”
If the CFP expects anyone to buy this charade, it needs better actors.
Pick the 12 best teams? That idea has merit
The playoff’s current construction does not attempt to compile the 12 teams that could best contend for a national championship. If it did, Notre Dame would still be playing instead of complaining and Texas would not be headed to the Citrus Bowl.
Playoff rules insist five conference champions be invited. So, the bracket includes Tulane and James Madison, a pair of teams that would be double-digit underdogs against either the Irish or Longhorns.
The CFP continues to be a vastly inferior product to the regular season. Part of the reason is the playoff does not attempt to gather all of the nation’s best teams and pit them against one another.
A first round that featured Texas-Oregon, Notre Dame-Mississippi, Alabama-Texas A&M and Miami-Oklahoma would strengthen the bracket and improve the product.
With the playoff constructed as it is, college football’s season crescendos in November. These first-round games, in particular, amount to a tremendous whimper.
I’m against playoff ideas that would cheapen November, but I’m up for ideas that improve December.
The brigade shouting, ‘Pick the 12 best teams” might have it right. That would still leave room for a Group of Five team like 2024 Boise State, which earned its way into a 12-team playoff under any framework. But, it would prevent a situation where red-hot Notre Dame sits, while Tulane gets a rematch with Ole Miss, a team it lost to by 35 points in September.
Bowl bonanza!
Anyone care about bowl games anymore? Not Bahamians, apparently.
As I always say, bowl game programming provides an outlet to avoid otherwise watching a Hallmark Christmas movie, when trapped in a room with your odd uncle during the holidays.
Five bowl games that’ll gain my gaze, as I tune to football instead of Lacey Chabert’s latest holiday love story:
- Brigham Young vs. Georgia Tech (Pop-Tarts), Dec. 27
- Virginia vs. Missouri (Gator), Dec. 27
- Tennessee vs. Illinois (Music City), Dec. 30
- Iowa vs. Vanderbilt (ReliaQuest), Dec. 31
- Michigan vs. Texas (Citrus), Dec. 31
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
