The College Football Playoff Selection Committee enters its final two weeks of deliberation with a host of resulting decisions imposed on its thirteen members.
(1) Who are the last major selections in the field?
(2) Which teams will have a first round match at home?
(3) Which four conference champions will get a bye in the first round?
The first two cause a lot of anxiety. But it’s the third stress point that presents perhaps the most intriguing debate. The top five ranked conference champions earn a bid into the 12-team field, and the top four champions are seeded at Nos. 1-4 and receive a bye to the quarterfinals.
Many assumed that the champions of the four power leagues would get those first-round byes annually.
The latest rankings from the CFP selection committee paint a different picture. In the rankings released last week, Boise State (10-1) was ahead of all Big 12 teams, paving the way for the Broncos to receive the No. 4 seed and a first-round bye in a Group of Five -over-Power Four jump.
Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark said such a decision would be the wrong one.
“Based on where we are today, I see no reason why the Big 12 champion won’t get a first-round bye,” Yormark told Yahoo Sports. “The winner of our championship should get a bye. I have a lot of confidence in the selection committee and I am sure they will see it that way too. Just look at the data. The data doesn’t lie. From a schedule strength perspective, all four of our schools are at the top of the rankings ahead of Boise State.”
Central to the debate is a comparison not only of the individual teams, but also of the two competitions. The argument is fascinating in an era of college football where the power leagues continue to separate themselves from the five others: the Mountain West, Sun Belt, Conference USA, American and Mid-American.
Yormark is loaded with Big 12 data points. His league has 42 wins over teams with a winning record. The Mountain West has 11 (five of them from Boise and UNLV). Nine Big 12 teams are bowl eligible. The Mountain West has five.
Boise’s strong schedule ranks 81st, 12 spots behind the worst of the Big 12’s top four teams (Iowa State at 69). The two competitions have already faced each other 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 has both Mountain West wins (at Houston and Kansas).
“Arizona State beat Wyoming by 41 points. BYU beat them by 20 points. Boise struggled against Wyoming with a four-point win,” Yormark said. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t say goodbye.”
In an interview Monday with Yahoo Sports, Boise State coach Spencer Danielson isn’t looking that far ahead — a message he makes clear to his team.
“We have two more games to continue this conversation,” he said. “That’s what I’m working on. 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 eligible for a bye? 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 defeated Texas Tech by three touchdowns in Week 2 of the season.
But Boise State’s strongest case may be its lone loss and its best player. The Broncos led No. 1 Oregon for much of their game on September 7, ultimately losing on a last-second field goal. Boise State has the nation’s leading rusher, Heisman Trophy candidate Ashton Jeanty, who has run for nearly 600 more yards than the next best rusher.
“There have been multiple ranked teams that are no longer ranked because they got caught up in this,” Danielson said. “It’s hard for me to lobby about things with two games to go. You decide what you can control.”
Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez declined comment other than gesturing to similar data points for the Broncos, specifically the three-point loss in Eugene.
The CFP selection committee will meet again early this week before the rankings are announced Tuesday night on ESPN. Over the weekend, the Big 12’s two highest-ranked teams, No. 14 BYU and No. 16 Colorado, lost. Boise State, ranked number 12 last week, survived the scare from Wyoming.
In the updated AP Poll released Sunday, Arizona State was the highest-ranked Big 12 team at No. 14. Boise was No. 11.
“What’s going on right now is not fair to the Big 12,” Kansas State coach Chris Klieman told reporters on Monday. “Other teams can lose in other leagues and it’s, ‘That 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 some things out. For some teams it’s 9-2 and we can’t get one [benefits] in the College Football Playoff, then we’ll have to cancel one of these [conference] games and then go to eight games.”
The selection committee’s decision regarding the first round bye is not insignificant. The fourth-highest ranked conference champion, the No. 4 seed, will get an extra week of rest. The team would play one of the winners of the No. 5-12 seed matchups in a bowl-site quarterfinal.
The fifth-highest ranked conference champion, at least according to ranking expectations, will likely be seeded No. 12. That means he’ll have to play the No. 5 seed on the road in the first round. The No. 5 seed for now will be the loser of the Big Ten championship games, likely Oregon or Ohio State, the two top-ranked teams in the country.
However, before there is a decision from the committee, the remaining schedules must be played out.
Boise State hosts Oregon State (5-6) and then meets Colorado State or UNLV in the Mountain West championship game, played in Boise.
The Big 12, meanwhile, is a lot less certain. The 16-team conference is billed as having the most parity of any power league.
Nine teams remain eligible for the conference championship game, including four in the top seed. BYU (9-2), Iowa State (9-2), Arizona State (9-2) and Colorado (8-3) sit atop the conference standings at 6-2. All four are favored to win their regular season finale, a result that would put Arizona State and Iowa State in the title game.
“I said in July that we have great depth and equality and I thought it would work, and it has,” Yormark said. “I said November would be magical and it is. It was made for TV viewing.”
The debate over the CFP’s latest bye is an extension of a long-running battle between the power leagues and those at the lower-funded level of the Football Bowl Subdivision. The rift between the two continues to grow, both through decisions by power leaders and the courts.
The decisions have accelerated the concept of schools compensating athletes directly — a much more difficult endeavor for Group of Five programs. Their budgets are normally a fraction of those schools in power conferences that land more lucrative television contracts and generate more internal revenue through donations and ticket sales.
In fact, according to data from ESPN, the Group of Five is having the most trouble winning games against the power leagues this season. Group of Five programs – which includes independent UMass and UConn, as well as Oregon State and Washington State – are 8-87 against power teams. The winning percentage of .084 is believed to be the worst in modern history.
The decision to include a fifth conference champion in the field – ensuring a spot in the Group of Five – is a topic that has sparked heated debate and scrutiny from power league leaders over the years. Craig Thompson, the former Mountain West commissioner, was part of a four-person working group that originally created the current 12-team format. He was the only representative of the G5 ranks.
“What happens with Boise State potentially getting a bye is not surprising,” Thompson said in a recent interview with Yahoo Sports. “If the champion of the Group of Five has a good year, he will be rewarded in the system.”
The five automatic bids and first-round byes were not earmarked for specific conferences to avoid the scrutiny of lawmakers in Congress, who in the past have shaken the old BCS concept of creating a caste system.
Last spring, CFP leaders — the 10 conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director — reevaluated the format when they agreed to a new six-year extension that begins with the 2026 playoffs. They didn’t settle for a format, but instead have only agreed to safeguards that (1) guarantee an automatic berth to the five highest-ranked champions, (2) the field is 12 or 14 teams, and (3) Notre Dame de guarantee receipt. a big bid if it is in the top 12 or 14, depending on the field size.
During the discussions, debate raged over whether the Group of Five’s entry point should be retained. Speaking to Yahoo Sports during her football media days in July, Nevarez said the power conference’s leaders were “threatening” to withdraw the G5’s bid in the spring. But “to their credit it was never off the table.”
