In the end, the College Football Playoff selection committee of 2025 gave us controversy, inane explanations rife with contradictions, and a first round that will be 50 percent watchable at best — sorry, but James Madison at Oregon and Tulane at Ole Miss look like terrible games.
Two of those three things are hard to avoid. We’ll have controversy every year. Unsavory matchups are going to happen. And though it was Notre Dame that got the short straw in Sunday’s final rankings, outrage would have greeted Miami or Alabama being left out as well. Vanderbilt, Texas and BYU also have legitimate beef.
There’s a case for several different fields of 12 other than the one the committee gave us. But the field is not indefensible. It’s the process that got us here, the confusion and ridicule created along the way, that’s indefensible.
The committee must do better in 2026. We demand it. Because we have no other option.
Everybody gets that, right? Other than the coaches whose teams got left out and are saying that we absolutely must take this out of the hands of a committee, because they have to say something, everyone who follows and cares about college football must know humans are the only way.
Which means human improvement is the only way. Actual transparency is the clear fix.
Imagine computers deciding this. I realize we can probably construct an AI “Wizard of Oz” who resembles Knute Rockne or Keith Jackson to do it all and explain the field each week in a folksy way, but it’s still just numbers and there is no perfect formula.
Imagine conference standings deciding the field or even putting teams in position to play their way into the field. Duke coach Manny Diaz said on the “Andy and Ari On3” podcast last week that the “only one way to fix this” is to “take this away from committees, and we’ve got to get this on the field.”
That sounds great. Until you consider that Diaz’s five-loss team’s appearance in the ACC title game against Virginia — an overtime win that was not enough to get the Blue Devils in — was only possible because of tiebreakers in the oversized, double-coast Atlantic Coast Conference. Conference expansion has created totally different schedules among teams in the same league, which actually demands that we have humans sort things out.
The final 12-team College Football Playoff bracket of the season is here.
Did the committee get it right? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/jf5lIr05o3
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) December 7, 2025
So even if we get to an expanded field or a “play-in” weekend as Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti has been pushing, it can’t be with the automatic bids he’s been pushing. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, his league has three teams in this field and there isn’t a fourth with any kind of case. Some years, the Big Ten will have more than that, of course.
But no one engaging in semi-rational thought could believe that wildly disparate conference schedules and the conference standings that result should shape the Playoff in any way. Anyone calling what we have now a “disaster” would quickly find a better fit for that word.
Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Texas and BYU are the teams the humans making these decisions would pit against each other if more opportunity existed.
This is how it must be. Let’s go back two years. In my rather unpopular opinion, the committee got it right in leaving Florida State out of the field after we all saw how diminished the Seminoles were without quarterback Jordan Travis. For everyone screaming that Florida State “earned its way” into the field — well, yeah, the team with Travis did.
It’s like boarding a flight, watching the pilot take ill and leave the cockpit, and still demanding the flight take off because you paid for the ticket and, hey, the wings still work! But regardless of what you think about that specific situation, are we not better off if future such situations can be hashed out by people rather than dictated by numbers or standings? Yes we are.
And while the committee would benefit from an end to the weekly rankings and explanations, that’s not the answer. ESPN wouldn’t let it be the answer, anyway.
The answer is more access. More explanation. More transparency. More accountability. There’s absolutely no reason the committee shouldn’t share all the numbers they are using. There’s no reason we shouldn’t hear them in their actual deliberations.
The ACC’s experiment with drawing the curtain back on instant replay decisions is an example of why this would work. Yes, these are much, much longer conversations. But C-SPAN exists, doesn’t it? Take ESPN News and turn it into CFP-SPAN each fall.
My wife and I are longtime “Big Brother” watchers — I’ll regrettably admit for the sake of this column — and sometimes we’d find ourselves checking out the 24-hour live feed. Which is even more regrettable to admit. It was almost always completely boring and uneventful, but every once in a while? A profanity-laced argument would make it all worthwhile.
And don’t worry, if you don’t have time to watch these people talk defensive stop rate amid bites of lobster salad sandwiches, someone will watch it all for you and make sure you hear about the important stuff.
Most of the conspiracy talk around these choices each year is brain-dead — you would think the “all about brand and ratings!” stuff would have died with SMU over Alabama last year, but conspiracy theorists rarely let facts change their feelings. Still, if the CFP people care about quieting such complaints, all they have to do is let everyone in on the actual discussions and free everyone from the nonsensical explanations.
Oh, and do away completely with active administrators on the committee to do away with obvious conflicts of interest. It should be made up of retired coaches and retired college football media members only. People are going to be deciding the field in the future, but you have to have the right ones.
See, this is actually a pretty easy fix. Which is good, because there’s so much else to address. Congratulations to the top four seeds: Indiana, Ohio State, Georgia and Texas Tech. For your amazing seasons, you get a bye in the first round and then … won’t be able to enjoy some of the most amazing scenes imaginable in your home stadiums, because the quarterfinals will be played at bowl sites.