Why the Penultimate College Football Playoff Rankings Make No Sense

As we’ve progressed through the college football season, the committee’s rankings have made less and less sense from the outside. It’s hard to pin down what metrics are most important to the committee, and this most recent ranking makes the least sense.

One of the biggest frustrations is the lack of consistency year over year. I absolutely believe Ole Miss is a playoff team, but they just lost their head coach, and their punishment for that is hopping over a Texas A&M team that just lost its first game. Florida State was removed from the playoffs in 2023 despite being undefeated because their quarterback was injured. Losing a head coach feels vital to a football team, and nothing happened to them; they were actually moved up a spot in the rankings.

BYU is also another team that makes no sense in their placement. They have improved drastically since the start of the year; they have a 6th-place strength of record, and their only loss is to the number four team in the country. Why is Texas Tech from the same conference ranked 4th, but they’re ranked down at 11th? The committee is now saying that if BYU wins, both teams make the playoffs, but if they lose, they have no chance at making it in. 

I just don’t get why three two-loss teams, especially Notre Dame, are ahead of them in the rankings.

Speaking of Notre Dame, why are they above Miami? We watched these two teams play head-to-head, and Miami won. Outside of Notre Dame destroying Syracuse, when you compare their similar opponents, Miami outperformed Notre Dame three separate times. The timing of losses should not have as significant an impact as it does.

Miami being behind Notre Dame doesn’t make much sense, but what happened last week, where Alabama needed to hop over Notre Dame? The committee thought Alabama was worse last week, but a win over 5-7 Auburn, where the game was tied with under five minutes to go, was enough to move Alabama up a spot. The logic just makes no sense… unless the committee is looking to inflate Alabama’s resume artificially.

The committee moved Alabama up one spot, so that if they lose to Georgia in the conference championship, they can either justify keeping them above a conference-less Notre Dame, or move them down one spot, where they would still be in the playoffs. It’s blatant SEC bias, and we just have to pretend that it’s not happening.

College football needs to move away from the TV-station-per-conference model, as it creates an entirely biased media landscape. Until that happens, we’re stuck dealing with a committee that makes zero sense to any logical viewer.