In ‘Notre Dame’s’ absence, ESPN’s unofficial ‘College Football Playoff’ gets off to a lackluster start, risks lapsing into irrelevance as credibility eroded
It might be interesting to find out how many Americans realize ESPN’s ad hoc, would-be “college football playoff” (CFP) is not actually official and cannot actually award an NCAA national championship.
Like the AP and Coaches Polls that have long awarded mythical national titles, or like its BCS predecessor, even the expanded version of the ESPN mini-tournament relies on the vague realm of custom and popular habit in its quest for credibility.
Even as the plausibility of this year’s “playoff” has been seriously eroded by the exclusion of one of the three best teams in college football, already the “CFP” first round has taken on the feel of ad hoc exhibition games of dubious significance.
‘Notre Dame’ one of the best teams in college football in the late season, was left out of the “CFP” bracket, with no real explanation offered, or none that can withstand scrutiny. They Irish also are now sitting out the ESPN-dominated bowl season.
Instead of the anticipation that a real playoff might bring, somehow it feels is as if the college football season is already over, replaced by the peddling of warm-weather exhibition games. Arguably the feel is increasingly reminiscent of that long era when final polls were issued at the end of the regular season, discounting the relevance of bowls.
Alabama vs. Oklahoma was a largely pointless rematch of a game that took place just a month ago between two also-rans from the same southern conference.
Somehow the fact that the results of the two-game tandem were split makes it even worse, leaving both teams with three losses, with the absurdity of a three-loss team advancing in the “CFP” bracket.
While presumably flattering to local and regional fans to see their regional game rebranded a “playoff” alleging national relevance, it was clear from the beginning that a three-loss Alabama could never plausibly qualify for a national title even if they rediscovered themselves, staged a few upsets and won a bracket.
Alabama has three losses, including a defeat to an ACC team that now has a losing record. They also have two late-season losses. And that includes getting blown out in their final game before the “CFP.”
No team with that dossier could be considered a legitimate national champion, irregardless of whether they advance through a post-season tournament dressed up by ESPN with Napoleonic PR branding.
Meanwhile, by losing to an unqualified Alabama, Oklahoma simply called into question whether Oklahoma itself would belong in a playoff in the first place.
On Saturday, we see a Miami (Fla.) team that, like Northern Illinois in 2024, upset a rebuilding ‘Notre Dame’ team early in the season. They disqualified themselves from legitimate playoff consideration by picking up multiple losses to unranked opponents in October and November.
The Hurricanes are being hosted by a Texas A&M team that, in the second week of the season, cheated with 13 seconds to go against ‘Notre Dame,’ on a 4th down play, handed an artificial win by SEC officials who went AWOL on the key play.
Then we have a lame duck Mississippi team in yet another “playoff” rematch game, against a Tulane team they already blew out earlier in the year at the same venue. Tulane additionally got blown out by Texas-San Antonio.
Meanwhile, Mississippi is without a head coach, after their regular-season head coach Lane Kiffin was separated from them when he accepted a job at rival LSU. So one has to ask, does having Tulane in the bracket insulate SEC also-ran Mississippi from meaningful competition, to squeeze another SEC team into the quarterfinal, even without a genuine head coach.
James Madison University is hosted by Oregon. Here we have what might be an example of the “CFP” doctoring its own rules, deciding to exclude an ACC champion, 5-loss Duke, in favor of shoehorning the ACC’s highest-ranked team,Miami, into the bracket, even though there is no way Miami should have qualified.
The “CFP” rankings already had a 4-loss Iowa ranked ahead of James Madison. When Duke won the ACC title game, beating a 10-win, then-top-17 opponent, it would have been a simple matter to simply rank them right behind Iowa in the rankings, and ahead of James Madison.
One gathers that, while the “CFP” committee seems willing to “push the envelope” on plausibility with a 3-loss Alabama, perhaps they were worried that if a 5-loss Duke actually started advancing in the bracket, that might expose the playoff’s lack of authenticity even further.
Meanwhile, one might as well call Miami vs. Texas A&M “The Asterisk Game,” since both participants have huge asterisks next to their troubled candidacies for a playoff. Or perhaps it could be called the “Wannabee Bowl” given the dubious nature of both team’s would-be credentials.
Trailing by nearly a touchdown, as the Aggie quarterback dropped back to pass, and was coming under intense pressure from his right, an Irish pass rusher barreled into the backfield slightly off-center. The pass rusher was completely free and clear of blockers, and coming towards the passer, when an Aggie offensive lineman cheating by reaching out and tackling him from behind. The cheating was abetted by AWOL SEC officials who handed the Aggies an artificial “win’ in the record books.
‘Notre Dame’ beat Texas A&M on the field, and is actually 11-1 on the field, while the Aggies actually picked up two losses “on the field.”
As the game gets underway, it is, indeed, characterized by sloppy, mediocre play, more like a spring scrimmage between two programs who decided to hold a joint spring game.
It is a game of errant plays; punts; failed field goals; anemic offensive production and weak rushing averages.
Some commentators deceptively argued in favor of considering results on the field for Miami, and making the regular season count, and they defamed those ranking Miami lower claiming that they did not consider their game against ‘Notre Dame.’
In reality, Miami was awarded a higher ranking to recognize their August upset win, then squandered their opportunity like many other teams in the same position, suffering the same customary fate of dropping in the rankings because of later losses.
In their case, they lost to two unranked opponents in October and November and did not even qualify for their conference title game, in the weakest of what used to be known as “power” conferences.
That might be the real story behind the “CFP” shenanigans involving Miami. Even NCAA web staff tried to deceive the public a few weeks before the end of the regular season, penciling in Miami for a playoff spot and making a false and deceptive reference to them being the highest ranked team in the ACC.
In reality, the latter point has no relevance whatsoever to the stated selection process, and, at that time, they did not qualify under the official CFP “rankings” then in place.
But, rather than see a 5-loss Duke represent the ACC in the playoff, the “CFP” committee decided to de facto change the rules, give the ACC an automatic berth, and give it to the highest ranked ACC team instead of their conference champion.
In a kind of “we do what we feel like because we can” maneuver, the “CFP” committee essentially falsified the rankings, to use them as PR window-addressing to try to make the falsified rankings fit what they wanted to do.
They already had done the same thing with three-loss Alabama. Back when Alabama had just two losses, “CFP” committee shenanigans moved Alabama ahead of ‘Notre Dame’ for no reason whatsoever, after Alabama should have dropped for struggling against a team that finished with a losing record.
Lacking any rational excuse for doing what they felt like, a committee spokesman gushed about Alabama’s gutsy play call when barely escaping the weaker opponent, something more akin to a giddy social media post and equally irrelevant.
When Alabama then got blown out, by a team they had been more even with earlier in the season, picking up Alabama’s third loss, they should have “dropped like a stone.”
Instead, the “CFP” committee apparently doubled down on their plans for the bracket, and further falsified the rankings to fit what they wanted for the bracket, rather than setting rankings rationally and letting the bracket flow from rankings that were authentic.
Unfortunately for ‘Notre Dame,’ they are not only cheek-and-jowl with the “CFP,” but entagled with it, organizationally and financially,as it was with the BCS and earlier bowl arrangements.
Ironically, ‘Notre Dame’ did the “CFP” a huge favor by sitting out the bowl season after being wrongfully excluded from ESPN’s unofficial playoff.
College football could have been embarrassed by the national championship being decided by something called the Pop Tarts Bowl, with the “CFP” results failing to produce a legitimate national title contender.
An 11-2 ND (who actually went 12-1 on the field),on an 11-game winning streak (that would actually have been a 12-game winning streak on the field) could have made a legitimate claim to a national title if they had brought a full team and, for example, hung 60 points on a top-12 opponent in a bowl.
If Indiana had won the bracket and finished undefeated, with a few more quality wins at the end, they clearly could make a definitive claim.
But if a three-loss Alabama won the bracket, they would never have been able to make a national title claim superior to a ‘Notre Dame’ team finishing in the way described.
If a 1-loss team brought home the ESPN “playoff” title, undoubtedly there would have been the argument that they had a few more wins, and one less loss, than an Irish club winning big in something called a Pop Tarts Bowl. Yet, given the totality of circumstances, including the effort to insulate ESPN “CFP” teams from having to play one of the three best teams in college football, one still might have had to give the Irish a share in a split national title embarrassing to the “CFP.”
To deflect criticism of the current fiasco, there has been mention of new “CFP” rules for next year, giving automatic bids to all power conferences, and to ‘Notre Dame’ for a top-12 ranking.
But it looks as if, this year, the “rankings” were rankings in name only, that, in the end, they were readily doctored and falsified as a PR veneer to prop up whatever bracket arrangement the committee was politicking for.
So a would-be “rule” would have little bearing in such a scenario. After all, ‘Notre Dame’ already qualified this year, under current rules, and the committee simply doctored the rankings to get around that.
Had next year’s rule been in place already, it would have been a simple matter to simply doctor things a bit further, to nudge ‘Notre Dame’ down just a bit further.
So, unless the Irish actually go undefeated, next year’s rule could easily be rendered meaningless, with public opinion massaged by a similar campaign of deception by the carnival barkers and snake oil salesmen of college football PR.
In any event, by leaving out the 2025 Fighting Irish, one of the three best teams in college football, the “CFP” risks lapsing into a kind of sleepy posturing heavy on branding and PR and light on football relevance. At the very least, it is denying fans the chance to see the very best of college football.
Even though the move to falsely exclude the Irish might have served the purpose of satisfying some college football politics, and insulated some “favorite sons” from competition, it was self-destructive to the “CFP.” It waters down its quest for credibility and staying power, and risks turning its reputation into “a house of cards” by calling attention to its lack of official status.
What is particularly bizarre amidst the whole scenario are news reports of Disney-majority-owned ESPN acting like it is in a position to “tell people what to do.” As the conferences and ‘Notre Dame’ discuss issues such as expanding to a field of 16, there are strange accounts of ESPN even thinking that it is in a position to impose a deadline for making decisions.
It is an ultimate “tail-wagging-the-dog” scenario, in which a cable channel setting terms, and giving orders, for even an unofficial “playoff.”
Of course, they already have managed to distort something claiming to be a “national” playoff into something that blacks out a huge portion of the nation from coverage, by blacking out most of the “playoff” from national broadcast television, in favor of cable.
It would be interesting to have federal regulators examine the issue of a “tie-in” that uses a dominant market position, and control of a would-be key resource, to pressure and coerce consumers into purchasing a separate service they already have demonstrated that they do not wish to get.
Then there is the question of why ESPN moved an ACC-hosted game at Stanford to late night, likely running past 2 a.m. ET, seriously altering the score compared with the betting spread, at a time when ‘Notre Dame’ point totals also could impact perceptions for playoff bids.
Then there is the question of honesty or distortion with regard to the “playoff” selections themselves, as well as the added issue of whether ‘Notre Dame’ in the “playoff” would have brought tremendous pressure for ESPN to allow the games back onto broadcast television.
Hopefully if federal regulators do carry out their duties to investigate further, given the magnitude and financial implications of the matters involved, all parties involved will cooperate voluntarily, with access to formal and informal records and communications, the granting of investigatory interviews, and the like.