The discourse about the Group of Five inclusion in the College Football Playoff has taken a concerning turn in just the second year of an expanded 12-team format with seven at-large bids up for garbs.
It’s one thing to debate the merits of the Group of Five champions’ inclusion in the College Football Playoff with both the Tulane Green Wave and the James Madison Dukes making the 12-team field. It’s another to compare programs to a charity that grants wishes to children with life-threatening illnesses, but that’s exactly what ESPN personality Jordan Rodgers did on “Get Up” alongside Paul Finebaum on Monday.
The two were discussing the fact that not only one, but two non-Power Four champions snagged auto bids with ACC champ Duke being left out in favor of the No. 12 Dukes behind the No. 11 Green Wave. For Tulane’s case, not only would they have still made the field, but on the off chance that the committee wanted all Power Four champions, they would have still been ranked ahead of them.
Finebaum began by lamenting that Notre Dame, BYU, Texas, and Vanderbilt were all left out of the CFP in favor of Tulane and JMU. Well, for one, only two of those teams would be in, and one declines to play by the current rules that exist in the format. But those rules aren’t acceptable when they don’t work in the P4's favor, and that was made clear in some damaging comments by two top personalities in college football.
“You need to expand the playoffs, but they need to change the metrics to which those teams are allowed to get it,” Rodgers said. “It can’t just be top 25. If you’re top 15, top 10 or top 16, if that’s the number of playoffs, then maybe you can have that consideration, but we can’t be doing a Make A Wish program with the College Football Playoffs and just adding teams because we feel like they should deserve it.”
The CFP committee set these rules, and it isn’t because people feel like they deserve it. The Green Wave and Dukes earned two of the guaranteed spots for conference champions in an expanded format that’s only two years into its existence. All of those aforementioned teams would have been left out of the four-team format that previously existed.
So would Oregon, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Alabama, Miami, and yes, Tulane and JMU. But their reasoning is that Notre Dame and Texas could win a national championship, despite Texas never having a chance at No. 13. It’s just a gross discussion to have about conference champions that make up 2 of the 12 spots in the field. Perhaps Texas and Notre Dame should have won more games to get an at-large bid. There were seven available.