As it stands, BYU football is 11-1 and playing for a conference title to cap off their best regular season since 2005. However, in a cruel and unusual twist of fate, the 2025 season almost evokes feelings of the lukewarm variety. The Cougars are a special team this year. They went 8-1 in conference play, they beat their arch rival at home in a nationally featured game, and their ranking in the CFP poll peaked at #7 after an 8-0 start.
The rest of the season saw them win three more games against one loss to a team that’s currently ranked #5 in the poll. A 3-1 finish down the stretch shouldn’t be the end of the world. If we’re looking at quality losses, even if “quality” manifests itself in the opponent rather than in the nature of the loss itself, that shouldn’t subtract BYU from a 12-team field altogether.
An 11-win power five (now four) program has been considered playoff worthy in the two past systems: the BCS and the four-team playoff. Although the team in question might not be shoe-ins to play for a national title, they’d be at the very least awarded the same speculation as Notre Dame and Texas.
Notre Dame is being given the benefit of the doubt for being an independent, while BYU could be punished for losing in a conference championship game. It has to make BYU wonder: why even join the Big 12? Is participating in a second-tier conference that’s destined for only one bid even worth the revenue sharing? It makes one wonder if they’re better off holding out until the inevitable dawn of 30-team super conferences and joining the Big Ten.
Had BYU remained independent, they could schedule a Miami, a Texas A&M or a USC—and even with a loss, still be rewarded for doing it “the hard way.” If BYU and Notre Dame switched resumes, would BYU then be the ones getting in?
The system is heavily skewed in favor of Notre Dame, who schedules anyone they please and are given a seat at the table so long as they compete. The reality is that the new 12-team playoff, intended to create opportunity, still prioritizes the Big Ten and SEC. They give the ACC, Big 12, and a G5 champion a spot at the table as a paltry award for playing football this year, while the SEC and Big Ten each get to send a quarter of their conference.
The notion that a two-loss Notre Dame team will be awarded a playoff bid is a testament to how fundamentally broken the current system is. BYU has more quality wins and more quality losses (I hate that phrase) than the Fighting Irish, yet the committee still favors the Irish brand.
The situation becomes even more perplexing when looking at Notre Dame’s losses. One was to Miami, which holds the same record as Notre Dame and currently sits behind them in the rankings despite the head-to-head win. If the committee is going to ignore head-to-head results, why even play the games? Would an 11-1 Utah team get in over BYU had they beaten Texas Tech?
The current system renders the regular season all but meaningless and robs college football of its sanctity. Since the minds of those who decide teams' fate are already made up, they should just host an annual tournament featuring Ohio State, Notre Dame, Texas, and Alabama, and let everybody else play in a football version of the NIT.
Ironically, the core mission of the 12-team model—to include every program truly worthy of competing for the national title — was undermined by its own rules. The organizers' critical misstep was crafting qualifiers that mandated the top four conference champions and automatically included the highest-ranked Group of Five (G5) school.
I understand the sentiment of rewarding teams for winning their conference while giving the second-tier programs a chance, just like everybody else, but at the end of the day, this model ensures you're simply not getting the best 12 teams. If a program from the American Athletic Conference (AAC) goes 12-0 or 11-1, they absolutely deserve a seat at the table, as that level of sustained excellence demands inclusion. However, the system's reliance on specific conference champions, regardless of overall strength, has led to baffling results.
What's transpired is we're seeing teams like JMU and Virginia getting in over BYU and Miami, programs that objectively faced tougher schedules and finished higher in metrics but were penalized for not winning their league or for belonging to the 'wrong' conference tier. This structural flaw compromises the stated goal of creating the most competitive tournament possible, replacing true meritocracy with a pre-defined political agenda. If BYU played JMU this weekend, what would Vegas set that line at? BYU -8.5?
In a perfect world, the system would simply be to send the 12 best teams. Unfortunately, picking the 12 best teams, as opposed to the best two (like in the BCS), is inherently subjective and could quickly become just as contentious as the current conference-based process. A team's pedigree is often a moving target: programs gain momentum, make personnel changes, and sustain season-altering injuries throughout the year, making pure ranking difficult. This problem is not theoretical; a 13-0 Florida State team was famously left out of the playoff just two years ago based on the very rationale of subjective evaluation I've just laid out.
The way I see it, the 12 best teams based on resume would list as follows:
- Ohio State
- Indiana
- Georgia
- Texas Tech
- Oregon
- Ole Miss
- BYU
- Oklahoma
- Alabama
- Miami
- Notre Dame
- Texas
A system I believe would negate the issues I just laid out would contain just three qualifiers.
The first: automatically include the four power for conference champions; playing for and winning a conference championship should be something. The second, the best G5 champion automatically gets in, every team in the country should have something to play for. And the third: no independents allowed, you have to play in a conference to qualify for the postseason, just like everybody else.
The final seven teams can be selected by the committee based on resume, a team’s record and head to head matchups should mean something.
If this system were implemented this season, the playoff would like something like this assuming the Vegas favorite wins each conference championship game.
- Ohio State
- Georgia
- Texas Tech
- JMU/Tulane/UNT
- Virginia
- Indiana
- Ole Miss
- BYU
- Oklahoma
- Alabama
- Oregon
- Miami
First four out: Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Utah, USC
Texas is awarded the edge over Vandy because of the head to head win in addition to scheduling Ohio State out of conference while remaining competitive in that game.
The selection of the 10-12 seeds will always be dicey but I don’t see how one could argue with these teams comprising the playoff field. Instead, 11-win teams are being punished simply for playing the teams put in front of them.
The 12-team format was supposed to fix this, but the nature in which the committee implemented the conference champion qualifiers is simply punishing the types of teams it was meant to benefit.