Being a two-loss team, with none of those losses being outside the Top Ten, both being one-score games, and two ranked wins, should get you into the College Football Playoffs, right? No, apparently not.
This past weekend, the NCAA College Football Playoffs selection committee made a shocking decision to leave Notre Dame out of the playoffs and keep Alabama in.
Notre Dame has always been inside the Top Ten since the College Football Playoff rankings started. The Fighting Irish have not lost a game since Week Two against the current number seven Texas A&M, and their only other loss is to the number ten University of Miami.
Meanwhile, Alabama was left in the playoffs and did not move down any spots after a 28-7 loss to the number three-ranked team, Georgia, in the SEC championship.
Alabama is the first team ever to lose its championship game and not move down in the rankings. Along with that, the Crimson Tide has three losses, one to unranked Florida State, number eight Oklahoma, and number three Georgia.
That unranked loss should be enough to kick Alabama out of the playoffs, but the committee leaves them in because it’s Bama. Alabama has always been given the benefit of the doubt, and the committee has a sort of bias toward it.
The other teams that got into the playoffs over Notre Dame are two-loss U Miami. U Miami beat Notre Dame in week one, and they should be over Notre Dame because of head-to-head. But Notre Dame has always been ranked ahead in the College Football Playoffs rankings, and in a week where neither team had played a game, the University of Miami had jumped in the rankings.
If the committee is going to use head-to-head on the last rankings, why not on the first rankings, and every single one in between?
It seems like the committee is trying to force Notre Dame into a conference by leaving them out of the College Football Playoffs.
Notre Dame is independent. They don’t share TV deals or revenue with any other school. The Irish do have a TV deal with NBC; meanwhile, ESPN has exclusive rights to the media rights of the College Football Playoffs and funds the committee.
