College Football Playoff rankings display lack of logic & an abundance of incompetence

Rules, structure, and logic are pillars of society – the world would not be able to function if they were not present. The College Football Playoff is the same exact way.

The field is not set yet, but the CFP Selection Committee has unveiled its first rankings for the 2026 season. The CFP Selection Committee completely disregarded rules, structure, and logic in their first rankings. It reeks of incompetence on the committee’s part, and it’s becoming a recurring pattern. Selecting the 12 teams for the College Football Playoff isn’t an exact science, but it’s not hard to follow logic and rules when ranking teams.

Even if you disagree with the selections, they should be based on sound, consistent reasoning. The Selection Committee did not do that in their first rankings, and this Committee either needs to fix the problem, or cease to exist.

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CFP Selection Committee’s rankings make little sense

There is very little to object to about the Committee’s number one selection from Tuesday – Miami is the AP #1, owns a win over Wake Forest, and is unbeaten. That was an easy selection. No controversy. But after that, it seems as if the Committee just pulled random names out of a hat. #2 Georgia and #3 Utah were fairly straightforward, even if the order could be debated. The drama starts at #4.

For some reason, the Committee selected Indiana at #4. This is the same Indiana team that lost to Ohio State at home, has needed overtime to defeat Michigan and Minnesota, has an injured quarterback, and has no wins over the rest of the top-25. There is simply no basis of ranking teams that should result in this team being ranked #4. Even if the Committee falls back on the “eye test,” this team has struggled offensively and has been unimpressive on the field against inferior competition.

#5 was also a controversial selection, as the CFP selected Alabama for that spot. They were the highest-ranked two-loss team, two spots ahead of #7 Texas. The reason they were ranked there? They own a head-to-head win over #6 Kentucky, and thus must have been put ahead. Yet, #13 Tennessee owns the same exact record as Alabama (with only losses to Texas and South Carolina), and beat Alabama in blowout fashion. Yet the committee, who placed such an emphasis on head-to-head to place Alabama over Kentucky, has Tennessee ranked 8 spots below the Crimson Tide.

Committee applies head-to-head results inconsistently

There’s more – the Committee used head-to-head as a basis to place BYU ahead of Notre Dame, and presumably Ole Miss over LSU. So, it would stand to reason that, if head-to-head is the basis of the rankings, that Ohio State would be ranked ahead of Indiana, correct? Nope. The Buckeyes are 8 spots below the Hoosiers, a team that they beat head-to-head. So we have established that, while the Committee has placed a major emphasis on head-to-head wins, that emphasis is applied inconsistently.

The same exact thing happened last season – head-to-head was used for Miami to leap-frog Notre Dame into the 12-team CFP field at the eleventh hour. But yet, head-to-head wasn’t applied to have Texas vault over Oklahoma or Texas A&M, who were both defeated by double digits by the Longhorns. Where is the consistency?

Head-to-head is a terrible basis of comparison, because it boils down an entire 12-game sample size into 1, a terrible application of statistical principles – larger sample sizes are always more effective. But if you’re going to use head-to-head as your primary evaluator, be consistent about it!

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Lack of analytics raises questions about CFP process

The other factor that really stands out in the CFP’s initial rankings is the lack of regard for analytically-based power ratings. Look at college basketball – the selection committee in college basketball uses the NET and the WAB as official ratings to be considered when building their bracket, and KenPom is an additional tool used to evaluate teams. It has made for a fairer and better selection process all around.

That’s not currently happening in college football. Case in point – look at the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. They rank 11th in the initial CFP rankings, and yet they rank first in both the Sagarin ratings and ESPN’s FPI, two of the most widely respected power-rating sources. And the Committee can’t fall back on the argument of “well, Notre Dame hasn’t beaten a top-25 team,” because neither has Indiana, and they rank 4th! One spot behind Notre Dame sits the 12th-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes, who rank 2nd in FPI and SP+, and also have a head-to-head win over Indiana! The lack of regard for power ratings is apparent, and it makes for a very lopsided and controversial top-25.

The internet loves to come up with conspiracy theories on literally any subject, and these rankings gave plenty of ammo to anyone with an agenda for a certain team or conference in college football. For me, the most likely theory is that the CFP Selection Committee intentionally set out a bad first set of rankings to generate conversation around the subject here in this first week of November. These rankings are so bad that one message is being made abundantly clear – the CFP Selection Committee needs a complete overhaul or complete removal.

The AP poll uses 69 official voters, and that strength in numbers generally creates fair rankings, as opposed to 12 men with individual agendas sitting in a room. Remember – higher sample size is better! The other alternative is to go back to a BCS-style system where computers calculate rankings without agendas or biases, just numbers. We complained about the computers when the BCS pumped out results we didn’t like, but it just may work better for a 12-team playoff than the system that we have!

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