Fix for College Football Playoff would remove all bias and inequality instantly

The College Football Playoff is a broken system, and that truth has become undeniable in the closing weeks of the 2025 season. Values assigned to wins, losses, point differentials, strength of schedule, rankings, ratings, and everything in between have taken the competition off the field of play and onto a spreadsheet.

BYU argued that their superior resume and record should have afforded their team entry into the final 12-team format. Notre Dame and Alabama argued that results from early in the season shouldn't carry much weight when compared to late-season results. Miami and Texas argued that wins against highly-ranked teams should wipe clean their slate of unfortunate lower-tier losses.

In essence, the spirit of competition has been drowned out by the screaming chorus of debate. With vague criteria for selection and entry to the College Football Playoff determined exclusively by a room of athletic directors, a postseason format that was supposed to be a celebration of the sport has instead become a platform for inequality, preconceptions, and unchecked power.

With that power, conference championship appearances can be a detriment to the second-place finisher. BYU slipped behind Miami, the ACC's third-place finisher (a team that missed the conference championship game in place of five-loss Duke), who was then granted entry into the top 10. Alabama, and all five of the SEC's representatives, were unmoved.

Clearly, the system is broken. An NCAA bracket dominated by one league is not a platform to elevate college sports; it's a scraped-together diorama of propaganda and insincerity.

The dialogue surrounding the CFP grew toxic, hypocritical, inconsistent, and worst of all, uncertain. Was the selected bracket chosen for the most deserving teams? It's impossible to say, but the metrics say no. Was it given to the best overall teams? Again, that's challenging to confirm, but again the answer is probably no again.

Year after year, the selection committee's decision-making process is riddled with inconsistencies and completely suspect results. Unbeaten Florida State has been denied entry to the 4-team bracket. 3rd-ranked Oklahoma State has been knocked from the top 5 at the final moment after a nearly 50-point win. Miami's head-to-head result against Notre Dame pushed the Hurricanes into the bracket this season, but BYU's head-to-head result against SMU wasn't honored just a year ago.

I'm not claiming corruption, but I am claiming inconsistency via an unjust system. We've seen this play out year after year, and it's beginning to affect the way football teams and fans view the sport.

If a team will be punished for facing a top-ranked foe in the non-conference (a-la Texas losing to Ohio State), why not play weaker competition exclusively, removing any and all top-10 cross-conference matchups in future seasons and removing all excitement and intrigue from the calendar's opening weeks?

If the loser of a conference championship can be dropped in the rankings (such as BYU in this year's Big 12 Championship) in favor of teams that didn't even qualify for their own league's championship game, why not opt out of the game entirely and remove all risk from the equation?

Notre Dame is the first domino to fall, as the 11th-ranked Irish have opted out of a bowl game for their snub this season, declining an invitation to the Pop-Tarts Bowl and a meeting with 12th-ranked BYU.

The current system is rife with human error, and therefore is subject to human criticism. And that system is unique, being the only sport of this magnitude to construct its championship from the flawed judgement of observers, rather than being earned exclusively through competition.

Could you imagine if the NFL or MLB excluded a division champion from the postseason due to that division's apparent weakness? Or an NBA playoff that included the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics every season, regardless of record?

The fix for the College Football Playoff is simple: reward conference champions with a chance for the national championship by eliminating at-large bids entirely.

In this 10-team bracket, every slot is reserved for a conference champion, removing the need for a biased, imperfect selection committee and instead rewarding teams exclusively for winning on the field.

The philosophy behind this change is very logical. Think about it: why should a team claim the right to compete for the national championship when they can't even win their own conference?

If this were the format all along, would teams like Texas and Oklahoma have left the Big 12 to join the SEC? Would the Pac-12 have survived? Could region-based conferences have remained the norm instead of the splintered, glued-together nightmare that today's landscape has become?

A money-first, integrity second mindset has poisoned decision-making criteria in one of the greatest sports on earth, college football. It's nearly unrecognizable next to the college football of just 15 years ago. When did competition become an afterthought? How have we built a system that celebrates brand recognition and revenue generation instead of equal opportunity and a clean slate at the dawn of every season.

NBC Sports' Nicole Auerbach summed up the dilemma incredibly.

"...where do we go from here? College football is a great sport with a bad process to select and seed its postseason participants. And unless something changes with the actual procedural steps and the selection criteria, it’s impossible to trust. It’s a group of people picking teams they like — based onvibes — behind closed doors."

College football has been fractured, but it doesn't have to stay that way. Is my proposal the antidote for the compromised state of the sport? Maybe, maybe not. Does the current system need to be destroyed? Absolutely.