The College Football Playoff is bigger than ever, better than ever, and exposed to more criticism than ever. But the selection committee tasked with selecting and seeding 12 teams to play for the national championship understood the assignment and nailed it Sunday.
Given the parameters of the job, the committee selected the right teams. The primary stress point was choosing the SMU Mustangs as the last at-large team in the field over the almighty Alabama Crimson Tide. This was not an easy decision, but it was the right decision. And thus faith in a besieged system is alive.
The committee could not, in good conscience, trap-door SMU out of the bracket due to a last-second loss in a conference championship game that serves as double jeopardy. It could not drop the Mustangs below a team it had been ranked three spots ahead of on Tuesday—a team sitting at home watching others play for titles this weekend.
The committee’s credibility would have been shot. That group would never be trusted again to go behind closed doors and make the right call over the ratings-and-brand call.
That’s what this boiled down to. Alabama has been the king of college football for 15 years, and royalty for much of the last 65 years. It plays in the most powerful and successful league, the Southeastern Conference. But SMU at 11–2 deserved to be in ahead of the 9–3 Tide.
The Mustangs beat the 9–3 Duke Blue Devils on the road, beat the 8–4 Louisville Cardinals on the road and dropped a 66-point bomb on a TCU Horned Frogs team that finished 8–4. True, they have nothing to compare to Alabama beating the eventual SEC champion Georgia Bulldogs. They also have nothing to compare to the Tide’s terrible losses.
SMU lost two games by a total of six points to teams that went a combined 20–5 (a winning percentage of .800). Alabama lost three games by a total of 32 points to teams that went a combined 22–14 (a winning percentage of .611). SMU did not lose with Kevin Jennings as its starting quarterback until Saturday night in the ACC championship game, 34–31, to the Clemson Tigers. Alabama was embarrassed by the 6–6 Oklahoma Sooners by three touchdowns as recently as Nov. 23.
The SEC’s bellowing about strength of schedule has some merit, but it would have more if the league—now bloated to 16 teams—played more than eight games against one another. Add a ninth and it will take away one criticism of the league. (The ACC should add a ninth game as well. The Big Ten and Big 12 already play nine.)
None other than former Alabama coach Nick Saban, now an ESPN analyst, essentially told those who were left out to suck it up, buttercup.
“No coach should have any complaints about his circumstances, being in or out of the playoffs,” Saban said.
However, does this adverse outcome for the SEC—which gets only three teams in the field, poor kids—motivate commissioner Greg Sankey and his strongman cohort, Big Ten commish Tony Petitti, to alter the playoff format for 2027? Don’t be surprised if they do. They have control over that decision, and they could decide that some conferences deserve multiple automatic bids—more than others. They also could expand the field with the presumption that it would mean more if their teams get in.
There already has been an incredible level of lobbying, posturing and in-fighting among college administrators at the conference and campus levels. Facts were deployed, but always selectively and subjectively. Pressure was applied as best it could be. The increase in opportunity to compete for a national championship came with an increase in arguing, too.
That’s to be expected. The bigger the tent, the more noise there is underneath it—and just outside it.
But for one 12-team playoff, at least, a league other than the SEC got the benefit of the doubt. It’s much better to have this fight over the 12th and 13th teams than the fourth and fifth the way it used to be, by the way.
That’s just one of the advantages of this new playoff. There are many, as we look at the road map into a great-but-grueling month to come:
On-campus playoff games are coming Dec. 20 and 21. The No. 10 seed Indiana Hoosiers visit the No. 7 Notre Dame Fighting Irish at 8 p.m. ET on Dec. 20. A tripleheader on Dec. 21: No. 11 SMU at the No. 6 Penn State Nittany Lions at noon ET, No. 12 Clemson at No. 5 Texas Longhorns at 4 p.m. ET and No. 9 Tennessee Volunteers at the No. 8 Ohio State Buckeyes at 8 p.m. ET. There will be juicy intersectional matchups played in winter weather, with home-field advantage mattering as much as it ever has in college football. Quarterfinals in bowl sites are coming at the traditional time of year, Dec. 31 and Jan. 1. That’s when the top four seeds will engage against those who advanced out of the first round, with higher seeds likely being underdogs in a couple of those matchups. The No. 1 Oregon Ducks will play the Tennessee-Ohio State winner in the Rose Bowl; No. 2 Georgia will play the Indiana-Notre Dame winner in the Sugar Bowl; the No. 3 Boise State Broncos will play the SMU-Penn State winner in the Fiesta Bowl; and the No. 4 Arizona State Sun Devils will play the Clemson-Texas winner in the Peach Bowl.Semifinals at bowl sites on Jan. 9 and 10, with showdowns in the Orange and Cotton Bowls.A championship game way off in the distance, Jan. 20 in Atlanta. The longest postseason in the sport’s history will not end until two rounds of the NFL playoffs have been completed. The national champion will have played at least 16 games, maybe 17. (Revenue-sharing is coming to athletes in 2025, and not a moment too soon, given the workload.)
By the time it’s over, a hidebound sport will have undergone a jarring makeover. The new postseason format brought more contenders into the mix, tripling the number of fan bases who were swept up in playoff fever, and it will reinvigorate the postseason.
Many of the teams predicted to be here are, indeed, here. Pretty much every preseason bracket had Georgia, Texas, Ohio State, Oregon, Notre Dame and Penn State. But there also are several unusual suspects to increase the freshness of the format.
Fancy seeing you here, Indiana, rising from the eternal slag heap of the sport. Welcome back, 1980s bad boy SMU. Hello, Arizona State, picked to finish last and ending up first in the Big 12. And look at you, Boise State—a 21st century striver that has not just crashed the dance but earned a first-round bye from a non-power conference.
There is something for nearly everyone, except houndstooth. There are enough bluebloods, with their 100,000-seat stadiums. There are enough new bloods, challenging the established order. There are teams from every time zone and 10 different states. (But nobody from one of the game’s bedrock states, Florida, to the dismay of the Miami Hurricanes.)
The ride to this point was wild. Shortly after noon ET on Aug. 24, a football was kicked into the sky in Dublin, Ireland, and this expedition into a better college football began. It took no time at all for surprises to be sprung—the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets upset the Florida State Seminoles in that first game of the 2024 season. It was a sign of what was to come, both in Tallahassee and across the nation.
By season’s end, Pac-12 diaspora won both the Big Ten and Big 12 championships. A former American Athletic Conference team played for the Atlantic Coast Conference title. A Big 12 runaway played for the SEC title. A former independent dominated the AAC.
And it was utterly appropriate that the last playoff piece did not fall into place until the last play of the last game before Selection Sunday. At 11:48 p.m. ET Saturday in Charlotte, a freshman Clemson kicker blasted a field goal from 56 yards—five yards farther than his longest as a collegian—and it just cleared the crossbar as the scoreboard clock registered all zeroes.
Clemson was in the field, having stolen a bid. That bid, as it turned out, was Alabama’s, not SMU’s, the team the Tigers defeated 34–31. Twelve-and-a-half hours later, the bracket was revealed and the sport’s credibility was upheld. Let the best playoff we’ve ever seen begin.
