The College Football Playoff selection committee enters its final two weeks of deliberations with a number of subsequent decisions entrusted to the 13 members.
(1) Who are the last big selections in the field?
(2) Which teams will play the first round match at home?
(3) Which four conference winners will get a first-round bye?
The first two cause a lot of anxiety. But it is the third stress point that perhaps offers the most interesting discussion. The five highest-ranked conference champions receive a bid to the 12-team field, and the top four champions are seeded Nos. 1-4 and advance to the quarterfinals.
Many assumed that the champions of the four power leagues would get the first round every year.
The latest evaluations of the SPRH selection committee paint a different picture. In its rankings released last week, Boise State (10-1) was ahead of all Big 12 teams, paving the way for the Broncos to earn the No. 4 seed and a first-round bye in the Five-over-Power bracket. Four jumps.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said such a decision would be wrong.
“Based on where we sit today, I don’t see any reason for the Big 12 champion not to get a first-round bye,” Yormark told Yahoo Sports. “The winner of our championship should say goodbye. I have a lot of confidence in the selection committee and I’m sure they will see it that way. Just look at the data. The data doesn’t lie. In terms of strength of program, all four of our schools are ranked ahead of Boise State.”
At the center of the debate is a comparison not only of individual teams, but also of two leagues. The argument is fascinating in an era of college football where the power leagues continue to separate themselves from five others: the Mountain West, Sun Belt, Conference USA, American and Mid-American.
Yormark is loaded with Big 12 data. His league has 42 wins over teams with a winning record. The Mountain West has 11 (five of those from Boise and UNLV). Nine Big 12 teams are bowl eligible. The Mountain West has five.
Boise is 81st, 12 spots behind the worst of the Big 12’s top four teams (Iowa State at 69). The two leagues have actually met on the field eight times this season. The Big 12 is 6-2 with an average margin of victory of more than three touchdowns. UNLV holds both wins in the Mountain West (at Houston and Kansas).
Arizona State beat Wyoming by 41 points. BYU beat them by 20. Boise battled Wyoming for a four-point win,” Yormark said. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t say goodbye.”
In an interview with Yahoo Sports on Monday, Boise State coach Spencer Danielson isn’t looking that far ahead — a message he instills in his team.
“We still have two more games to continue that conversation,” he said. We’ve been playing playoff football since the Oregon game. I believe in our schedule. We played well. We played well against Oregon. Are we fit to say goodbye? That’s up to the committee.”
Seven of Boise State’s 10 wins have come by at least two scores, including a 21-point victory over a Washington State team that beat Texas Tech by three touchdowns in Week 2 of the season.
But perhaps Boise State’s strongest arguments are one loss and a best player. The Broncos led No. 1 Oregon for most of the game on Sept. 7, eventually losing on a last-second field goal. Boise State has the nation’s leading rusher, Heisman Trophy candidate Ashton Jeanty, who has rushed for nearly 600 more yards than the next leading rusher.
“There were multiple teams that were ranked that are no longer ranked because they got into these things,” Danielson said. “It’s hard for me to lobby for things with two games left. You control what you can control.” “
Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez declined to comment except to hint at similar numbers for the Broncos, particularly that three-point loss in Eugene.
The CFP selection committee will meet again early this week before its rankings are released Tuesday night on ESPN. The Big 12’s two highest-ranked teams, No. 14 BYU and No. 16 Colorado, lost over the weekend. Boise State, ranked No. 12 last week, survived a scare from Wyoming.
In the updated AP poll released Sunday, Arizona State was the Big 12’s highest-ranked team at No. 14. Boise was ranked 11th.
“What’s going on right now is not fair to the Big 12,” Kansas State coach Chris Klieman told reporters Monday. “Other teams can lose in other leagues and it’s ‘This league is really good!’ We’re losing in this league and it’s ‘This league stinks!’ I don’t understand that. As a conference, we need to come together and figure things out. So that a bunch of teams are 9-2 and we can’t get any [benefits] in the college football playoffs, then we have to cancel one of them [conference] games and then go for eight games.’
The selection committee’s decision regarding the bye in the first round is also important. The fourth-highest ranked conference champion, the No. 4 seed in the group, gets another week off. The team would play one of the winners of the seeding matches no. 5-12 in quarterfinal bowl game.
The fifth-highest ranked conference champion, at least as projected by the rankings project, will likely be seeded 12th. That means playing a first round game in 5th place. The No. 5 seed, for now, projects to be the Big Ten championship beater, likely Oregon or Ohio State, the two highest-ranked teams in the country.
However, the remaining fixtures must be played before any decision is made by the committee.
Boise State hosts Oregon State (5-6) before facing either Colorado State or UNLV in the Mountain West championship game played in Boise.
The Big 12, meanwhile, is far less certain. The 16-team conference, which is considered the most even of all league competitions, is sure to deliver.
Nine teams remain eligible for the conference championship game, with four of them in prime position. BYU (9-2), Iowa State (9-2), Arizona State (9-2) and Colorado (8-3) are tied at 6-2 in the conference. All four are favored to win the regular season finale, which would put Arizona State and Iowa State in the title game.
“I said in July that we had a lot of depth and parity and I thought it would show and it did,” Yormark said. “I said that the month of November would be magical, and it is. It was perfect for watching TV.’
The debate over the final first round of the CFP is an extension of a long-running feud between power leagues and leagues from the lower tier of the Football Bowl Subdivision. The differences between them continue to widen, both as a result of decisions by the leaders of power and by the courts.
The rulings accelerated the concept of schools directly compensating athletes — which is much more challenging for Group of Five programs. Their budgets are typically a fraction of those schools in power conferences that get more lucrative television contracts and generate more internal revenue through donations and ticket sales.
According to ESPN, the top five has had the most difficulty winning games against power leagues this season. The group of five programs — including independents UMass and UConn, as well as Oregon and Washington State — are 8-87 against power teams. The .084 winning percentage is considered the worst in modern history.
The decision to include the fifth conference champion in the field — securing a spot in the Group of Five — is a topic that has drawn heated debate and scrutiny from power league leaders over the years. Craig Thompson, former Mountain West commissioner, was part of the four-man task force that originally created the current 12-team format. He was the only representative from the ranks of the G5.
“It’s not surprising what’s going on with Boise State getting a bye,” Thompson said in a recent interview with Yahoo Sports. “The Group of Five champion, if they have a big year, will be rewarded in the system.”
The five automatic bids and first-round byes were not assigned to specific conferences to avoid scrutiny from congressional lawmakers who have in the past upset the BCS’s old concept of creating a caste system.
Last spring, CFP leaders — the 10 conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director — revisited the format when they agreed to a new six-year extension that begins with the playoffs in 2026. They didn’t agree on the format, instead just agreeing to protect, which guarantees (1) the five highest-ranked champions an automatic berth, (2) a 12- or 14-team field size, and (3) getting Notre Dame. at-large bid if he finishes in the top 12 or 14, depending on the size of the field.
During the discussions, debate raged over whether to retain the G5 access seat. Speaking to Yahoo Sports from her conference football media days in July, Nevarez said the power conference’s leaders “threatened” to cancel the G5 bid in the spring. But “to their credit, it never went off the table.”