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For 22 seasons through 2013, major college football determined its national championship contenders via the Bowl Coalition, Bowl Alliance, or Bowl Championship Series. Those systems incorporated computer ratings, polls, strength of schedule, and a healthy dose of common sense—what many now nostalgically call the good old days.
In contrast, the current College Football Playoff (CFP) selection committee operates in a way that seems far worse. Not that anyone seems to care. Amnesia has set in regarding the mostly sensible methods of the past, and the culprit is money: the old bowl groups generated millions for the sport, while the CFP is pulling in billions. Billions have a way of making people forget.
Here's a refresher: Fans, reporters, coaches, and especially TV executives once decried the polls and computers that used strength of schedule as the work of the devil. They demanded that the champion be decided on the field, arguing that other methods were too subjective and that a playoff was the definitive answer. Yeah, right.
Consider the puzzling way the CFP selection committee has handled Notre Dame in its two 2026 rankings. The Irish were placed at No. 11 last week and then at No. 5 this week. Since Notre Dame has spent most of this season among the nation's top 10 in both points per game and points allowed per game, those rankings seemed like something out of an old Looney Tunes episode.
Heading into the first CFP ranking, Notre Dame was 7-1 and dominating opponents not named Brigham Young University. Even so, the Irish traveled to BYU's packed and loud stadium in Provo, Utah, where they lost 28-24—but only after a Notre Dame receiver was interfered with in the end zone while trying to make a potential game-winning catch on the final play. Pass interference wasn't called, though it should have been. There was also one second left on the clock, which would have given Notre Dame another shot from BYU's 8-yard line, but the Big 12 referees declared the game over after their no-call. Conference officials later admitted the crew erred by ending the game too soon.
That meant it wasn't a bad loss for Notre Dame, and the Associated Press and coaches poll voters agreed, ranking the Irish sixth and fourth, respectively. The CFP selection committee? Eleventh? That was one spot away from the final tournament berth, and while it was early in the process, it still made the committee look foolish.
They said Notre Dame's schedule was weak beyond the mediocre likes of Wisconsin and North Carolina. Nobody disagreed, but then the Irish handled previous No. 1 Miami 31-24 on Saturday night at Notre Dame Stadium. The CFP selection committee moved the Irish to No. 5? They looked like the Notre Dame team that should be ranked No. 5.
"They were up 24-3 and dominating that game," CFP committee chair Hunter Yurachek said during ESPN's rankings show. "And you look at some teams that were in front of Notre Dame that lost and that let them come up some."
That's not why the CFP selection committee keeps embarrassing itself and its system regarding the Irish. Georgia (8-1) is No. 1 in the CFP rankings, which makes sense. The Bulldogs destroyed previously 10th-ranked Ole Miss 42-7 on the road Saturday night. Few would also argue with Alabama (7-2) at No. 3, given its losses to Georgia and at No. 14 Tennessee and what ESPN's college football power index says is the toughest schedule in the country.
Remember: The CFP selection committee cited strength of schedule as its primary reason for Notre Dame's shockingly low ranking in the first poll. Which is why help is needed at this point. Who knew there would be math?
Ahead of the Irish in the CFP's latest rankings are Utah (9-0) at No. 2 and UCLA (9-0) at No. 4. While ESPN's college football power index has Utah with the 67th strongest schedule in the country and UCLA at 66, it has Notre Dame at 33. Wait, 33? Doesn't that mean the Irish's strength of schedule is twice that of two teams the CFP selection committee has ranked ahead of them? So tell me again how this system is better than the one of computers, polls, strength of schedule, and common sense? Let's follow the money.
The 2013 season ended a four-year deal allowing ESPN to televise a series of four or five bowl games and the BCS title game for $500 million. In case you missed it, CFP officials just inked a deal this week with ESPN to get an additional $1.7 billion over the next five years, on top of the original $7.8 billion they'll receive from a contract with the cable channel that runs through the 2031 season.
All of that led the CFP to expand next season from 12 to 24 teams after starting its inaugural year of 2014 with four. You know this isn't the end. You know the CFP will jump to 32, and then it'll sprint toward the 64-team field that the late Mike Leach first proposed during the summer of 2015 when he coached at Washington State.
Why stop there? Why not include most, if not all, of the 138 teams in the Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision or whatever number of teams will be around in the future? The more the CFP expands, the more the national champion won't be decided on the field, because the more the CFP selection committee will get involved, which will cause more subjectivity.
For instance: Under the new CFP setup of 24 teams, the Power Four conference winners will get automatic entry, and another spot will go to the best team from the Group of Six. That means the other 19 spots (and rising) will be decided by the CFP selection committee, and with all of those teams to choose, what could possibly go wrong in the subjectivity department? See this Notre Dame mess.
Earlier this year for Forbes, I mentioned what I wrote on December 4, 1998, when I was an Atlanta Journal-Constitution sports columnist. I blasted the coming of a playoff system 17 years before it happened. I wrote the NCAA should stick with the Bowl Championship Series. It decided the national champion through the existing bowl system, computers, the two major polls (Associated Press and coaches), and strength of schedule.
I wrote, "If the NCAA's objective is to get as close as it can to selecting the top college football team in the country at its highest level, then it must have a January Jubilee to match its March Madness in basketball." The thing is, that shouldn't be the NCAA's objective. Soon after a January Jubilee, we'd see efforts to get more of the Division I-A's 112 teams involved to create a February Festival. After that, we'd eventually see tackling right up to the first dribble of March Madness.
My bottom-line message in that column? Just leave it alone. Oh, well.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com.
Originally reported by yahoo.