The College Football Playoff system is already deeply flawed, and this is apparent before the first 12-team playoff has even been decided.
A sport with 134 teams, all fighting for a shot at the championship trophy, owns its share of challenges. How can you qualify which teams are superior to others when a season consists of 12 games (13 with the conference championship game)? How can we be fair to teams that have battled through a difficult schedule, while still validating underdogs who don't have the luxury of playing a Big 10-level schedule?
The BCS system sought out to find a solution through statistics and numbers with the hope that two teams would distinguish themselves from the pack and create a "true" national championship game. But with so many variables and teams with impressive resumes, nominating only two proved far too limiting.
Two became a four-team playoff, but this time with a committee-selected slate rather than computer-generated decisions. In 2014, 3rd-ranked TCU routed their final opponent in a 55-3 blowout, but fell out of the top 4 when the committee gave the word. Then in 2023, an undefeated ACC Champion Florida State was shafted in favor of a shaky Alabama team.
It was clear that four wasn't enough, and expansion was the obvious next step. 12 was the number, and football was saved! ...Or so we thought.
Though many expected that the future would be owned by the robotic race, with computers ruling our society, fixing our breakfast, and driving our flying taxis, the playoff selection committee works in direct defiance of the inevitable future and ignores every metric and number that may indicate one team is deserving or another team is undeserving.
Case in point: the 2024 Big 12 Conference. By all accounts, the Big 12 is a better football league than the Big 10 overall this year. While the Big 10's top programs, Ohio State, Penn State, and Indiana are all highly ranked and in a positive feedback loop with each other, as every loss is deemed a net positive for both teams, because they were highly ranked, thanks to predestined seats in the top 10 (except for Indiana).
An often propagated knock against the Big 12 is the high levels of parity across the conference in the regular season. Each team holds two or more losses in conference play due to the highly competitve nature of the league, so those losses are being held against those teams.
It's a different story for the SEC, however, as 3-loss Alabama, Ole Miss, and South Carolina are each ranked ahead of all Big 12 teams. Alabama, in particular, is essentially a playoff lock, despite losses to two 6-6 football teams--one of which pounded the Tide to the tune of 24-3.
Have these shortcomings harmed Alabama? Nope. One of football's most historic programs has to be in the running for a championship. Who cares about teams that may be more "deserving"?
What I'm going to say may sound crazy, but can we talk about BYU for a minute? A member of the Big 12, Kalani Sitake and the 10-2 Cougs have been firmly removed from playoff consideration after tying for a share of the Big 12 regular season championship, and dropped from being ranked 6th to 19th after losing two one-possession contests.
But, the most curious note of the Cougars' season is a top-10 win over 9th-ranked SMU, who hasn't lost before or since their meeting with BYU. One of the best wins of any team in the top-25, BYU took down the Mustangs--with Jennings at QB, for those of you who buy into the narrative that he didn't play all game--and lost two games to giant-slayer Kansas an ASU team that should be crowned as the Big 12 Champion on Saturday.
The narrative that SMU didn't play Jennings until AFTER the BYU loss is a blatant lie, and I'm tired of hearing SMU lost because he was "still the backup". pic.twitter.com/Sf86NgeGC9
— Lawless Republic (@LawlessRepublic) November 21, 2024
Those two losses came by an average of 4 points. Alabama, whose worst loss came by 3 scores against a .500 squad is a 3-loss playoff lock. BYU is ranked 18th with a top-15 strength of record, while their Big 12 peers in the championship game are ranked 15th and 16th--matching their strength of record exactly.
Should the Cougars have a spot in the playoff? Maybe not. Are they ranked criminally low? Absolutely. Finding themselves ranked below three 3-loss teams after this season proves that the playoff selection committee doesn't care about results. They don't care about resumes. They care about names and the conference patch on their uniforms.
Just as the preseason rankings are constantly proved to be incorrect, picking a playoff format based on who might win in a hypothetical matchup works against the very spirit of competition. The precedent set by the selection committee is this: results don't matter, our opinion does.
The committee operates free of any checks or balances. Their word is gospel, and no opposition will be heard. The BCS may have been flawed, but our solution has created a monster capable of dictating the shape of college football to fit their vision--one where the SEC and Big 10 operate in a league of their own. A Big 10 Conference that wasn't even as strong as the Big 12 during the regular season, but the numbers by each school has skewed the casual fan's perception of the conference as a whole.
This movement is harmful for the sport, and it may be unrecognizable without a change.
Every team should have a chance to compete for a championship when the year kicks off. Don't let bias and skewed belief kill what should be one of the greatest athletic spectacles in the nation.