College Football Playoffs, A Sham

December 19, 2025- Friday

The college football 2025-26 playoffs begin today with Alabama Crimson Tide playing the University of Oklahoma Sooners in Norman, Oklahoma. This should be a really good college football game between history laden teams. 

The college football playoffs are a sham.

At the end of the playoffs we still will not know if the best team actually won the playoffs or not. That is because the University of Notre Dame was omitted from the playoffs. 

The two losses on the Fighting Irish ledger, one to Miami and one to Texas A&M by a combined total of 4 points, forced the Fighting Irish to the sidelines for the because they lost by 3 points to Miami in the first game of the season. 

For the last five weeks of the regular season, Notre Dame stayed ahead of Miami in the college football playoff rankings because Miami lost to lesser teams, SMU and Louisville. 

In the last week, the Atlantic Coast Conference realized the playoffs were going to happen without an ACC team, so they lobbied the playoff committee long and hard because Miami had beaten Notre Dame in week one. Miami is a very good football team but should have never lost to SMU and Louisville. This should have been enough to keep Miami and the weakened ACC out of the playoffs. However, politics won out and Miami was moved ahead of Notre Dame in the final college playoff selections even though neither team played during the conference championship weekend.

So, the team with two losses to Top Twelve teams was left out of the playoffs while a team with two losses to unranked teams gets in the playoffs. Also, the playoff in their infinite wisdom decided an Alabama team with three losses was more deserving to be in the playoffs than a two loss Notre Dame. This is an Alabama team that lost to unranked Michigan, unranked Florida State and number 2 ranked Georgia. That last Georgia game was a 21-point blowout loss.

Again, the college playoff selection committee decided it was not fair to punish Alabama because of their blowout loss to Georgia in the SEC Championship game. They did think it was fair to drop Brigham Young University after a blowout loss to Texas Tech in their Championship Game, however. Can you say, "Hypocrites". 

ESPN, owning the television contracts to many of the bowls and especially the Pop Tarts Bowl was ecstatic about Notre Dame being left out of the playoffs because this in essence gave ESPN another big bowl game to television with all the many Notre Dame fans television sets. ESPN would have BYU, number thirteen, playing number 12 Notre Dame in the Pop Tarts Bowl. 

Notre Dame said, "No thanks." They refused to play in the Pop Tarts Bowl and put more money into the ESPN coffers when they colluded with the college playoff committee to exclude Notre Dame from the playoffs. A couple of other schools decided it was not in the best interest of their programs to compete in an exhibition bowl game. This left the bowls looking for teams with losing records to fill the bowl game vacancies and five more schools with losing records also refused. 

Notre Dame more than deserved to be in the playoffs. Instead, they will get to see Tulane and James Madison gets blown out by more worthy teams. Notre Dame did the right thing to protest this sham process by opting out of the Pop Tarts Bowl. 

One of the many cool things about college football are the traditions that surround so many of the schools. One of those traditions is the independent nature of Notre Dame football. No, they don't play in a conference and therefore, do not have a conference championship game to play. Miami did not play for their conference championship either but somehow moved ahead of Notre Dame. 

Many schools and conferences are envious of Notre Dame because their schools do not have the ability to be independent themselves. If they did, they would. So, some of those envious schools are now wanting to blackball Notre Dame and not schedule any games against them to force Notre Dame into a conference. Why? So that conference can lay claim to the Notre Dame television contract money. 

You see, this is all about the conference wanting more and more money. The billions they are making now with their semi-pro league is not enough. "We want more! We want more!" 

This playoff champion will always have an asterisk next to their entry in the record book because we will never know if they truly are the best team or not. One of the best teams left out in the cold because of jealousy and greed.