For 30 years, I’ve been convinced that college football has the best regular season in sports. Expanding the College Football Playoff from four teams to 12 hasn’t ruined that, as many speculated that it might. But if anything’s ruining the regular season, it’s the CFP selection committee and the clown show ESPN puts on every Tuesday night in the final month of the regular season to unveil its latest rankings. It’s a lame reality TV show that isn’t actually based in reality. The committee is making it up as it goes along. I was so baffled by it that I posted on X, and I’m explaining myself further.
This year’s committee is now chaired by Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek, who replaced Mack Rhoades after he left his role as Baylor’s AD midseason following a university investigation. Yurachek is tasked with explaining how the committee arrived at its top 25. He may not personally agree with the order, but he’s the one left trying to defend it, and this year, it’s been as big a dumpster fire as ever before. The committee contradicts itself almost every time its spokesperson opens his mouth.
The most ridiculous piece of the committee and the show this season (no, it wasn’t his 6-7 joke) is keeping 10-2 Miami ranked behind 10-2 Notre Dame. In this week’s penultimate rankings, Miami is No. 12 and Notre Dame is No. 10. But the Hurricanes defeated the Fighting Irish in Week 1. The teams have four common opponents and both whipped all four by at least three touchdowns. Notre Dame, which beat Syracuse by 63 points compared to Miami’s 28-point victory, racked up the bigger margin of victory over the four games, though Miami won by more against the other three opponents.
It’s mind-numbing to get into “style points” discussions. But this is how the sport now operates.
See, in the first CFP rankings, which came out before Week 11, Notre Dame, coming off a win at Boston College, was No. 10. Miami, coming off an overtime loss at SMU, was No. 18. Both were 6-2.
I imagine many folks on the committee figured the Hurricanes, which were coming off two losses in three weeks, would surely lose again and sputter down the stretch as they did in 2024. Miami’s defense is a lot better than it was last year, but these kinds of facts tend to blur together with the eye test. It’s human nature to some degree. (The Irish also lost early last season against massive underdog Northern Illinois, then responded by ripping off 13 consecutive wins and making it all the way to the national title game.)
But then, in mid-November, when Notre Dame was No. 9 and Miami was No. 13, ESPN host Rece Davis asked Yurachek about how close the two teams were in terms of the CFP’s evaluation. The Arkansas AD said they compared the losses of those two teams.
“Miami has lost to two unranked teams,” Yurachek said. “Notre Dame has lost to two teams in our top 13. We really haven’t compared those two teams. They haven’t been in similar comparative pools.”
The first question to College Football Playoff chair Hunter Yurachek from Rece Davis is about Notre Dame-Miami.
Yurachek: “We really compare the losses of those two teams,” followed by: “We really haven’t compared those two teams. They haven’t been in similar comparative pools… pic.twitter.com/pqHrcyC8Sh
— Matt Fortuna (@Matt_Fortuna) November 19, 2025
WTF?
Miami is literally one of Notre Dame’s losses. It wasn’t Miami’s twin brother, or Miami of Ohio.
If you’re not comparing those two schools, we probably don’t need to have a committee. It’s a big neon sign flashing above the sport, but it feels like these guys have squeezed their eyes shut as they scrounge for “data points.” I’d get the value of that if these two teams were both 10-2 and had similar schedule strengths and didn’t play, but they did.
And it’s far from just the Miami-Notre Dame debate. The committee seems to step on rakes with every question.
Yurachek, speaking for the committee, says Texas A&M wasn’t penalized for a close win after the Aggies rallied from trailing unranked South Carolina 30-3 at halftime in College Station, then says Alabama was dinged by the committee for its close win against South Carolina. Another week, he explained how Oregon was still getting credit for beating a Penn State team that was under .500 at the time, then said Virginia got knocked for defeating a previously ranked Louisville team that has backslid since their game was played.
Two years ago, I thought a different CFP committee screwed Florida State. The Seminoles were 13-0 and won the ACC, but their starting quarterback, Jordan Travis, suffered a season-ending injury and Florida State finished No. 5 in the final year of a four-team field. (FSU fell apart after that and was routed in the Orange Bowl by Georgia.)
ESPN paid a fortune for the CFP rights and wants to milk as much content as it can. That’s why we have this Tuesday night rankings show. The rankings don’t need to be announced at midseason or even in November if all they appear to do is lock the committee into positions it can’t seem to get out of.
The committee just moves the goalposts or invents some other bogus metric instead of starting with a clean slate. For years, we heard of all sorts of baffling things like “game control,” but does that matter to the CFP now? Did it matter back then? Who knows?
On Tuesday night, with Notre Dame at No. 10 and Miami at No. 12, Yurachek said it was “easier” for the committee to use a head-to-head win as a data point if the teams were slotted back-to-back in the rankings, which is not what he said weeks earlier.
Well, maybe BYU will knock off Texas Tech to win the Big 12 title this weekend, opening the door for the committee to leave both Notre Dame and Miami out of the Playoff. That would do the CFP and the people who have to explain it a big favor.
(Bruce Feldman also contributes to Fox Sports’ college football coverage.)
