Even if 3-loss Alabama won the would-be ‘CFP’ bracket, they still would not qualify for an actual National Championship; Crimson Tide season not good enough, and ‘CFP’ has no official authority to award an actual NCAA National Title

The would-be “College Football Playoff” (“CFP”) technically does not have the authority to award an NCAA national championship.

To have credibility and see its results coincide with third-party rankings and assessments, it would need to include the best teams and have a bracket-winner who qualified for a national title based upon time-honored basic fundamentals.

They could only hope that, by having most of the best teams pick up a final loss, and having one of the legitimate contenders finish with multiple quality wins, third parties, and popular acclaim, would have no choice but to go along.

Their only hope for credibility would be to develop a kind of custom, habit, and common perception, like the AP and Coaches Poll and other sources of mythical national titles for Div. I-A/FBS.

But, in 2025, “CFP” insiders have teed up a bracket that hypothetically could result in a three-loss bracket winner that, on basic principles, cannot hope to qualify for a national championship.

Self-destructive “CFP” insiders bumped one of the three best teams in the country, ‘Notre Dame.’ In an even more bizarre twist, they did it to make room for three-loss Alabama, as well as the ACC’s two-loss Miami, who lost to unranked opponents in October and November and did not even qualify for the ACC’s somewhat anemic conference title game.

But Alabama does not simply have three losses, which, by itself, would shut them out of national title consideration.

Alabama has a loss to a team that finished with a losing record.

That Alabama opponent comes from a conference, the ACC, that turned out to be so weak that their official conference champion was not even selected for the “CFP.”

Alabama also suffered an ugly blowout loss in the final game of their regular season.

That loss happened to nullify one of their mid-season “quality wins,” showing that Alabama either was far worse a team at the end of the year than at mid-season, or failed severely to improve as much as that opponent.

Yet that was only one of two late-season losses. Indeed, Alabama’s “CFP” selection simply serves up a sleepy rematch of that other late-season conference loss.

Yet those two losses were not the only black marks on what was an ugly late season for Alabama.

They also had an ugly win, a narrow escape against yet another opponent that finished with a losing record.

No amount of PR blitz by the carnival barkers and timeshare salesmen of college football can overcome those hurdles.

If Alabama somehow survived the bracket, and staged an upset to win the bracket, a cable TV commentator, with an obvious conflict of interest, trying to declare them national champion on that basis alone, would sound more like grounds for a federal regulatory inquiry over false and deceptive broadcasting.

When Alabama barely got by a late-season opponent with a losing record, instead of dropping them in the rankings the “CFP” committee instead nudged Alabama ahead of an elite ‘Notre Dame’ team.

The Irish were playing like one of the three best teams in the country, and were riding a 10-game winning streak, an 11-game winning streak on the field.

The (replacement) committee spokesman was unable to offer any rational explanation for such a move in the “CFP rankings.” Instead he lapsed into some vague, social-media-like giddiness praising some play-calling in Alabama’s narrow escape over a weak opponent.

Incredibly, one of the CFP networks tried to replay the culmination of that narrow escape in their “playoff” game, as if it meant something, rather than exposing Alabama as unsuitable for an actual playoff.

Alabama then got blown out by a team they themselves had upset earlier in the year.

Yet they did not drop in the rankings.

They should have dropped for a third loss, they should have dropped for a blowout loss, and they have dropped for showing that they were no longer nearly on the same level of a team they had upset earlier in the year.

There was some PR lip service about not punishing for a conference playoff game. Yet no such rule actually exists, and the vague concept really applies mainly to cases where a team loses twice to the same opponent, to condense the loss into a loss to just one team.

By this point, it became clear that the would-be “CFP Rankings” were becoming a mirage, that they were not really bona fide rankings.  The implication was that they were designed as “window dressing” to bolster political decisions about who the committee wanted to favor for the playoff.

The inference was that the committee wanted to favor certain parties, so they would distort the rankings to satisfy that result, no matter how irrational or dishonest the distortion might be.

In other words, the rankings were not rankings.  They were just tail-wagging-the-dog window dressing to provide added PR cover for how somebody wanted to arrange things.

Talk has emerged about a supposed new requirement for next year, about ‘Notre Dame’ being “guaranteed” a bid if they are in the top-12.

That guarantee sounds foolish, given that the Irish already qualified this year, and the rankings were simply distorted to rob them of it.  What is to say that the same would not happen next year, simply with a slight shifting of the numbers.

If they had been guaranteed a bid with a top-12 “ranking” this year, what is to say that the same people would not have simply suddenly discovered some false argument that BYU, Vanderbilt, and three-loss Texas deserved to bump out the Irish.

Even if Alabama somehow rediscovered itself, and picked up a few decent wins in a post-season cable TV mini-tournament, including one or two quality wins, that simply would not give them an overall season result qualifying for a national championship.

Since the “CFP” has no authority to name a national champion, their only hope would have been to tee up the best teams, to force the AP, Coaches Poll, and other sources that name mythical national champions by popular acclaim, to go along with the bracket results.

Yet they failed to do that.

Additionally bumping ‘Notre Dame’ for Miami (Fla.) did the “CFP” no favors.

A head-to-head comparison of ‘Notre Dame’ and Miami could only result in the Irish being favored.

Like Northern Illinois in 2024, Miami (Fla.) did upset ‘Notre Dame’ early in the season. In the case of the Hurricanes, they did it at home, by a few points, in late August.

Like Northern Illinois, they then picked up losses to unranked opponents.

After being awarded for that upset win with a high ranking, the Hurricanes blew their chance by losing to an unranked opponent in October, causing them to sink in the rankings, then losing to another unranked opponent a few weeks later in November, causing them to sink further.

Their upset over ‘Notre Dame’ was not “ignored,” contrary to false and deceptive public pronouncements by mischievous commentators.

It was noted, and they were given a high ranking.  They then blew that ranking by losing to two unranked opponents in October and November.

A playoff spot was Miami’s to lose, and they did lose it. Only by distortion and partial amnesia could they end up “ranked” ahead of ‘Notre Dame’ at the end.

TV commentators wondering out loud why Miami was lower in the rankings, before creeping up again, are essentially either incompetent, amnesiacs, dishonest, or somehow all three.

Why were they ranked lower? Because they lost to two unranked opponents in October and November.

The biggest favor ‘Notre Dame’ did the “CFP” was deciding to sit out the bowl season, to avoid the prospect of a split national title, or perhaps even no title whatsoever for the CFP winner.

Had the Irish shown up with a full team and “hung” 70 points on BYU in the Pop Tarts Bowl, they would have had a rightful claim to the national title, or a share of a national title, unless IU managed to go undefeated.

The Irish finished 10-2, with a 10-game winning streak.  Yet, on the field, they finished 11-1, on an 11-game winning streak.

When they beat SEC opponent Texas A&M on the field, the Aggies scored a would-be “winning” touchdown by cheating, on fourth down with 13 seconds to go.  When an Irish pass rusher broke into the backfield, free and clear, barreling down on the Aggie quarterback, a Texas A&M offensive lineman literally tackled him from behind.

An SEC official most responsible for that part of the play was literally looking the other way, for no rational or explainable reason whatsoever.

In any event, if a fully loaded Irish team finished 11-2 (12-1 on the field), with an 11-game winning streak (a 12-game winning streak on the field), and capped it off with, for example, a 70-10 win over a top-12 opponent, the only team that could have claimed a sole national title ahead of the Irish would have been an undefeated Indiana.

But if a three-loss Alabama had somehow won the bracket, while ‘Notre Dame’ won its own bowl, the CFP certainly would have deserved to be shut out of the national title entirely.

They would have faced the reality of the Pop Tarts Bowl deciding the sole national title, while the CFP winner deserved no title at all.

Even with the Irish sitting out bowl season, the CFP faces the same reality.  Alabama simply cannot qualify for a national championship, even if they pull off a few upsets and run the bracket in what is an unofficial post-season cable TV tournament that has deliberately excluded one of the top national title contenders in college football.

What is particularly self-destructive of the “CFP” and its committee is that they would bungle their way into calling attention to all of the above, instead of just trying to bluff their way into habitual acceptance.

Perhaps the “CFP” and ESPN are simply getting in “over their heads” and lapsing into some kind of confused sense of grandiosity that has caused them to lose track of the real situation.

What was also bizarre was a recent claim that ESPN was getting in the habit of trying to tell conferences what to do, imposing a deadline for making decisions about a future “CFP” format.

(Steve Welsh – SCW 12.19.25)