The College Football Playoff has become a predictable joke.
One of the attractions of the NCAA basketball tournament is having some Cinderella teams among a field of 68 with every Division 1 school eligible to qualify for the Big Dance.
And, in 2018, everyone except Virginia alumni and fans loved it when 16th seed Maryland Baltimore County shocked the top-seeded Cavaliers in the first round.
UMBC lost in the second round but went home with the best win in school history and one for the ages, the first Cinderella 16 seed to ever defeat a No. 1.
When Sweet Sixteen teams advance to the NCAA regionals, all the quarterfinalists are usually capable of reaching the Final Four and maybe win the whole dadgum thing.
In college football, Group of 5 conference champions can make the College Football Playoff (CFP) if they are ranked higher than any Power 4 teams that win their own conference championship games.
Duke and Virginia are perfect examples of what happened in 2025. The Blue Devils won the second spot in the ACC championship game on a conference tiebreaker that is so complicated and controversial it will likely be changed in the future.
Virginia finished first in the ACC and advanced to the championship game in Charlotte. The Wahoos, No. 18 in the CFP rankings, lost to 7-5 Duke, and neither wound up rated high enough to make the playoff.
Group of 5s James Madison and Tulane got into the playoff because they won their conference championship games and finished higher in the CFP rankings than Power 4 champs, like Duke, or Power 4 candidates for at-large entries.
CFP No. 5 seed Oregon easily defeated JMU, and 6th seeded Ole Miss did the same to Tulane, both in blowouts. They might have been happier playing in bowl games against equal opponents.
In the NCAA basketball tournament, Cinderellas are heavy underdogs because they are not supposed to be among the 68 best teams in the country. In the College Football Playoff, they were going with the 12 highest-ranked teams until politics or something else happened to unfairly deny two spots to far better teams.
And this has gotten worse due to revenue share and the transfer portal, where the best players from Group of 5 programs move up to Power 4 schools for more money and exposure to the NFL.
You only see players from Power 4s move down to Group 5s because they were not stars or even starters. So the talent gap widens between the two levels. In other words, the rich get richer and Group of 5 get worse.
The two other first-round games in the CFP were No. 9 Alabama at No. 8 Oklahoma and No. 10 Miami at No. 7 Texas A&M. They were both close games won by the road teams.
That’s the way it all should be and why it is now a joke.
Featured image via Associated Press/James Pugh
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
