CFP committee failed its mission, rewarding brands over merit

It was supposed to be more fun, even more fair.
But the College Football Playoff committee is swimming in peanut butter and big-time voices nationally are calling foul, one even using the word corruption.
How does corruption come into play?
The CFP committee work is broadcast on ESPN, a broadcast entity interested in who plays in postseason bowl games and is being accused by some of favoring brands over merit.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark is especially concerned. He understood the CFP would use strength of record and strength of schedule as a priority in rankings. So, when the expanded Big 12 scheduled the 2024 season, it included nine in-league games and challenged Big 12 teams to seek and play tough opponents outside the league.
After the past two rankings, it now appears who you played and where you played the games doesn’t matter. The priority is to just win as many games as possible and look good — for TV.
“Strength of schedule was reiterated more than once as a key metric,” Yormark was quoted in The New York Times Wednesday. “I haven’t seen that come into play as much as it should be.”
In Yormark’s crosshairs is the fact the Mountain West’s Boise State is ranked No. 10, and if the Broncos beat UNLV in Friday’s conference title game, it will earn a first-round bye instead of the Big 12’s champion — either ASU or Iowa State.
The expanded playoff rules dictate the five highest-ranked league champs get automatic bids and the four highest-ranked of that group earn a bye. As it stands, if No. 15 ASU beats Iowa State, it will likely be matched up against Penn State but won’t earn a bye as a champion of a P4 league.
“In no way should a Group of Five champion be ranked above our champion,” Yormark said.
Stewart Mandel of The Athletic clearly points out the committee’s failure to use merit metrics in rankings.
“There have been signs throughout the last five weeks’ rankings that this year’s committee is placing less emphasis on strength of schedule than in seasons past. Either that, or we’re just noticing it for the first time now that 12 teams qualify instead of four,” wrote Mandell.
“No. 2 Texas (11-1, 7-1 SEC), with zero top-25 wins, has been consistently ranked above Georgia (10-2, 6-2 SEC), which has three of them, including at Texas. No. 3 Penn State (11-1, 8-1 Big Ten) has one top-25 win and is three spots above Ohio State (10-2, 7-2), which has two top-10 wins, including at Penn State. Heck, go all the way to the bottom of the rankings and you’ll find No. 20 UNLV (10-2, 6-1 MWC), with zero top-25 wins, two spots ahead of Syracuse (9-3, 5-3 ACC), which has two top-25 wins — including at UNLV.
“In all three cases, the higher-ranked team has the lower strength of schedule evaluation on the major published ratings (Sagarin, FPI, etc.), but are still ordered by number of losses. Much like how No. 10 Boise State, 11-1, has the 89th-ranked schedule on Jeff Sagarin’s ratings but is five spots above 10-2 Arizona State (38th) and Iowa State (42nd).”
Tim Brando, a legendary college sports media voice used the corruption word this week.
Brando has no issue with three-loss Alabama in the playoffs, but it smacks of brand worship.
“What’s fundamentally wrong is the never-ending BRAND bias that moves this line of thinking. It’s nothing more than “group think” brought forth by the propaganda that inundates a complicit media when it comes to a corruption-filled committee that’s never transparent nor accountable for any decision they make,” Brando posted on X.
“If @SMUFB (SMU) loses the @theACC championship to Clemson on a field that’s 2 hours from their home (they’ve played there a lot) and is locked out of the CFP (and in my opinion they will) then once again CFB fans have been failed by this Committee.
“If the idea here is to force no fewer than 4 @bigten and 4 @SEC teams into the Playoff every year then let’s blow this baby up right now. The two power conferences are those two and all others need not apply. Call it what it is! An Invitational BIG10/SEC Challenge and let the others pair up and have the two winners of those Playoffs meet in a CFB version of the Super Bowl. This painful political process that continues to leave us feeling dirty needs to end. The Committee’s got no boundaries and will always dump on those not named SEC or BIG10. Enough!”
Jon Wilner, longtime Pac-12 columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, said the Big 12 and Yormark must look at this CFP mud pie and use it to fix the league’s scheduling model.
Big 12 tiebreakers, while believed to be sufficient to work, ended up doing the opposite, wrote Wilner.
“The Big 12 contender with the best strength-of-schedule and the best strength-of-record and the best victory over a Power Four opponent and the best overall resume in the conference isn’t even playing for the Big 12 championship,” wrote Wilner.
“Brigham Young is sitting home this weekend, boxed out of the title game after losing a four-team tiebreaker with ASU and Iowa State. (Colorado was the fourth tied team.)
“In addition to their superiority in the analytics used by the committee, the Cougars have the single best win in the Big 12 — and one of the best wins by any team in any conference all season: They beat No. 8 SMU on the road.”
Wilner suggests that Yormark look at the number of conference games, now nine, and consider reducing league games to eight. He suggests better placement of conference games within the competitive calendar and a “flex scheduling component” where two weeks in November are left open to create the best matchups for CFP access.
No question when a very good Kansas team that had narrowly lost six games in the last minutes of games go hot and knocked off BYU, Colorado and Iowa State, it blew up the league in the eyes of the CFP committee and it started devaluing those teams.
“And that second-tier existence has carried into these fateful final days,” said Wilner.
“Two of its two-loss teams, Brigham Young and Colorado, are behind four teams with three losses: Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi and, remarkably, Clemson, which has a No. 26 strength-of-record — 14 spots below the Cougars’ position.”
CFP committee?
On Sunday it’ll roll out its final rankings.
Fact or fiction?
As Joseph Goodman in Al.com put it, “First, before we attack the integrity of the College Football Playoff committee, let’s acknowledge the reality of its existence. The College Football Playoff wasn’t created in the name of fairness. The College Football Playoff is a business, and the point of any business is to make money.”
Someone once sort of said, “Coin is the root of all profit.”