When the penultimate College Football Playoff rankings are released Tuesday night, only one thing is for certain: People are going to be angry.
Since its inception in 2014, the CFP was meant to bring order and stability after the nebulous Bowl Championship System relied on a stew of polls and computer rankings to determine a national championship game. The playoff was supposed to bring a more traditional championship structure to college football, beginning with the four-team bracket in 2014 before it switched to the current 12-team format last season.
Except … even with the expanded field, the decisions of the rotating 13-member committee have created a new set of problems — most notably, schools every year complaining vociferously about their exclusion.
This season is shaping up to be no different. With only the conference championship games left, Tuesday’s rankings should reveal where the playoff is headed before the 12-team field is set on Sunday. Here are the biggest issues headed into the second-to-last rankings.
Miami vs. Notre Dame
The rivalry affectionately (and, uh, problematically) referred to as “Catholics vs. Convicts” has been as hot off the field as on it this season. In Week 1, the Hurricanes beat the Fighting Irish 27-24 on a late field goal. Miami had built a 21-7 lead before a furious comeback by Notre Dame.
The problem for the Hurricanes? Since the first ranking was released on Nov. 4, Miami has been ranked behind Notre Dame every week. And it hasn’t been close. The Hurricanes went from unranked to 15th to 12th to 11th before Tuesday. Meanwhile, after having started 10th, the Fighting Irish have been cruising at ninth the last three weeks.
That has happened even though the teams sport the same record (10-2) and Miami owns a head-to-head win. What has hurt the Hurricanes are their losses to SMU and Louisville, two schools the committee seems not to hold in high regard. To many, it seems as though Notre Dame is getting more credit for losing to Miami than the Hurricanes are getting for beating the Fighting Irish. (Notre Dame’s other loss was a one-point defeat to then-No. 3 Texas A&M in Week 2. The Fighting Irish have won 10 in a row.)
After a win over Pittsburgh to end the regular season, Miami coach Mario Cristobal made it clear what he believes should separate his team from Notre Dame.
“You know what’s the best part about football?” Cristobal said. “You get to settle it on the field, where head-to-head is always the No. 1 criteria for anything regarding athletics and football.”
We’ll see whether the committee feels the same way!
Don’t forget those pesky auto-bids
The 12-team bracket was designed to fix hurt feelings by creating an automatic bid system for the five highest-ranked conference champions. That was clearly created to protect the Power Five schools, especially teams in the Big 12, the Pac-12 and the ACC, who were constantly concerned about SEC and Big Ten bias.
Of course, the automatic bids have set off a new round of chaos.
The first problem was when the Power Five became the Power Four after the Pac-12 almost entirely disbanded at the end of the 2024 season. The result is four unwieldy conferences with unbalanced schedules that make teams incredibly difficult to compare with one another.
Meanwhile, the ACC’s byzantine conference tiebreaker system is playing a massive role this season. Duke is 7-5 but will play in the conference championship game over Miami, the highest-ranked ACC team in the CFP field. If the Blue Devils defeat Virginia in the ACC title game, there’s a good chance the ACC is left out of the CFP field entirely. The committee is required to take the five highest-ranked conference champs … which means the Sun Belt Conference’s James Madison (11-1) could ultimately squeak in over the Hurricanes.
Ole Miss is definitely in, though, right?
It would be shocking if the committee added insult to injury and kept the Rebels out of the playoff after the departure of head coach Lane Kiffin, who left the school high and dry to take the same job at LSU.
Ole Miss is 11-1 and enters Tuesday seventh in the CFP rankings. But the committee has set a precedent that a team like the Rebels could be dropped from the field.
In 2023, Florida State was excluded from the four-team playoff even though it completed a 13-0 season and won the ACC. The main reason given was a season-ending injury to quarterback Jordan Travis, which he suffered during the ACC title game, with the committee saying that made the Seminoles “a different team.”
The committee opted to put Alabama in over Florida State, a decision that drew widespread criticism. It would be shocking to see the same thing happen to Ole Miss, but if several coaches leave with Kiffin, is that all that different from why Florida State was left out a couple of years ago?
Mississippi coach Lane Kiffin looks on against Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss., on Friday.Justin Ford / Getty Images
At least the conference championship games still matter?
In another world, this Saturday’s Big Ten championship game between No. 1 Ohio State and No. 2 Indiana would be incredibly dramatic. In the BCS era, it would be a pseudo-semifinal. In the four-team era, it could knock one of the schools out of the playoff field.
The stakes are much lower this year, though, as both schools are all but assured of playoff spots regardless of the outcome.
The Big 12 (No. 11 BYU vs. No. 5 Texas Tech) and the SEC (No. 4 Georgia vs. No. 10 Alabama) could certainly prove to be consequential. But they carry different weights in the expanded field.
The field, by the way, is expected to expand even more beginning next season. Expect the complaints to grow along with it.
