CFP chaos leads to two G5 teams, Miami, and no Notre Dame: three business takeaways

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Assessing the business side of the College Football Playoff chaos

This year's College Football Playoff final selection already looked to be a wild one before conference championship weekend. But what played out there made it even odder. In particular, the victory from Duke (7-5 entering the weekend) over 10-2 Virginia in overtime of the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship late Saturday night paved the way for the final CFP rankings revealed Sunday, which feature two Group of Five teams in Tulane and James Madison, a Miami team that wasn't in action this weekend, an Alabama team that lost the SEC title to Georgia, and no Notre Dame. Here are the results (a * signifies the five highest-ranked conference champions, who earned automatic qualification, but no bye this year):

1. Indiana (13-0)*
2. Ohio State (12-1)
3. Georgia (12-1)*
4. Texas Tech (12-1)*
5. Oregon (11-1)
6. Ole Miss (11-1)
7. Texas A&M (11-1)
8. Oklahoma (10-2)
9. Alabama (10-3)
10. Miami (10-2)
11. Tulane (11-2)*
12. James Madison (12-1)*

And here are three business-focused takeaways from them:

1. The ACC squeaks in

There was a solid chance that the ACC could have been left out of the playoff entirely with a Duke victory over Virginia. The immediate consequence of that would be missing out on at least $4 million in CFP payouts (money paid to the conference, or to an individual school in the case of an independent like Notre Dame, which escalates per round). The larger and more impactful issue would be the blow to their already-threatened conference credibility, though.

Power 4 (or equivalent) conferences have certainly missed out in the past in the BCS and four-team CFP era (perhaps most controversially with TCU and Baylor left out in favor of Ohio State in the inaugural playoff in 2014-15) , but that wasn't expected in a 12-team playoff. Thus, a full miss for the ACC would have thoroughly kickstarted intense debate on the conference's future. Some of that may still happen with Miami (which started this season as such an ACC hope) barely getting in, but it will likely be in a less dramatic fashion.

One ACC element that is already drawing particular discussion is their tiebreaker setup that led to that Duke-Virginia conference title game, though. Duke got in there on the five of seven three-team tiebreakers, conference opponent win percentage. Interestingly, those at no point include CFP rankings; the ACC's sixth tiebreaker is a privately contracted "Team Rating Score" metric from SportSource Analytics, which they switched to from CFP rankings in 2016 because of the delay with the penultimate CFP rankings (generally released Tuesdays) providing only a few days for teams to prepare for the championship game.

There have been several arguments that the conference should go back to including CFP ranking tiebreakers, as the Mountain West and American Athletic Conference do, and there's merit to that from a standpoint of maximizing the conference's chances at a playoff team. (Unlike the G5 conferences, though, P4 conferences don't usually need that, as the inclusion of Miami illustrated this year.) But the issue of short preparation for the title game remains, as does the issue of how fair the CFP ratings are in terms of on-field play.

Using this conference opponent win percentage and then the SSA TRS rating isn't necessarily superior (and TRS carries its own questions by not having its formula public, unlike the closest past equivalent, the rankings used in the BCS setup), but both of those elements are specifically about on-field play rather than human-judged future potential (and/or ratings potential, depending on how much of a conspiracy theorist you are) the way voted rankings are. And it does provide a quicker turnaround that helps teams prepare for the conference title game. Whether that's worth it or not can be debated, but for those of us who enjoy the chaos and the importance of conferences that used to be prevalent in college football (more on those fronts later as well), it's refreshing to see a setup where a team that struggled out-of-conference can still be rewarded for in-conference success, and where their title game win can still mean something, even if it didn't get them into the playoff themselves.

2. Notre Dame left out in the cold, reigniting conference debate

Like Power 5 conference exclusion from the CFP, something else thought to be largely finished with the expansion to 12 teams was talk of if Notre Dame should join a conference. The consideration for the Irish has long been significant enough that they've (often controversially) made the postseason when they're good, even if they've frequently been drubbed there. They lost 42-14 in the 2012 BCS title game as one of two teams selected, lost 30-3 in the 2018 CFP semifinals as one of four teams selected, and lost 31-14 in the 2020 CFP semifinals as one of four teams selected, so that's three hefty exits at the earliest possible opportunity. The exception (and the only one of those not under former head coach Brian Kelly) was last year, where Marcus Freeman led them all the way through the 12-team playoff to the title game (where they fell 34-23 to Ohio State).

But even with that recent success and long history of recognition, 10-2 Notre Dame was excluded here in favor of 10-2 Miami and 10-3 Alabama despite placing higher in both the final AP and coaches' polls (No. 9 versus No. 10 and No. 11 respectively in both). And yes, Miami beat them head-to-head in Week 1, but the CFP committee still had the Hurricanes behind the Irish until the final poll, then flipped them despite neither team being in action. And that's brought the conference debate back up.

Of course, the most likely conference for the Irish to join would be the ACC. They're already a member there in all sports but football, and they play at least five ACC teams a year as part of a since-2014 scheduling arrangement. (They actually played six this year thanks to long-running opponent Stanford now being in the ACC, and a separate 12-year deal with Clemson signed this year will further bolster their ACC opponents.) And the ACC's not at a particularly high ebb right now, as discussed above, and the bigger powers in the SEC and Big Ten don't seem too likely to cut the kind of deal the Irish would want. Still, a huge part of Notre Dame's decision to remain independent was that they could reap CFP rewards when good enough (such as the $20 million in participation money that went to just them last year, not a conference) without being worried about exclusion. They're still probably staying independent, but this year shows they do have to care about that exclusion potential, and that their non-conference status might be hurting them there. (Meanwhile, another in-state school in Indiana is not just in, but is the No. 1 seed.)

3. Two Group of Five teams get their chance to shine

The current 12-team CFP was not constructed to ever give two G5 teams a chance in the same year. Its slots for the top five conference champions are intended to reward the four P4 conferences and then the top-ranked G5 team, and they typically do. But the Duke chaos meant that AAC champion Tulane and Sun Belt champion James Madison both made the field, and that's something to celebrate for those who enjoy underdogs.

It's amusing that U.S. college sports discussion revels in underdogs in the men's and women's March Madness basketball tournaments while simultaneously creating football formats almost designed specifically to bar them. The two-team BCS era and four-team playoff era almost completely shut G5 teams out (the exception was Cincinnati in 2021), and while the 12-team setup makes provision for one G5 team, that's very reluctant. Indeed, the straight-seeding format switched to this year means that the four first-round byes go to the four top-ranked teams, not the top four conference champions; under last year's setup, Tulane would have received a bye. That's a further illustration of the construction of this playoff to favor the most-prominent schools.

But the door was left open a crack this year, and the Green Wave and Dukes kicked it in. They're still heavy underdogs in the first round against Ole Miss and Oregon respectively, and wins certainly can't be expected given the vast discrepancy in G5 and P4 resources. But they've been given a chance to show off what this sport can mean at the G5 level, and even a surprisingly-close showing might help build momentum for a more egalitarian setup. And even the most unlikely upsets do sometimes happen.