A Notre Dame Fan's 5 Biggest CFP Committee Complaints

The CFP selection system is broken

College football fans and media rarely agree on anything. That being said, I think everyone who follows the sport closely could agree that the way the CFP committee operates is incredibly frustrating. The arbitrary nature of the committee's deliberations, in which its operating philosophy and what is being valued changes week to week, team to team, is universally infuriating.

With this in mind, I present to you the top 5 CFP committee complaints Irish fans have in 2025. This list is not in order of importance; all five items should be viewed similarly, as each played a key role in creating the path that led to a 10-2 Notre Dame team with the third-best title odds to be left out of the field.

THE 12-TEAM CFP BRACKET IS SET‼️

Did your team make the cut? 🤔@CFBPlayoff pic.twitter.com/tkdTkChBrg
— ESPN (@espn) December 7, 2025

Lack of consistency from CFP Committee

It feels from the outside, that the CFP committee knows what it wants to do and then reverse engineers a path to get there. That isn't how this is supposed to work. What else could explain the total lack of consistency in philosophy from the committee?

Some weeks head-to-head matters, some weeks it doesn't, sometimes who you beat matters, sometimes who you lose to matters, sometimes strength of schedule matters, other times it doesn't. Sometimes the margin of victory matters, sometimes it's ignored completely.

You get my drift. This group gets to use any reasoning it wants at any time, regardless of how contradictory it may be, with impunity. This inconsistency is infuriating.

Head-to-head result confusion

If the CFP committee decided in the first CFP rankings to honor Miami's head-to-head win over Notre Dame with an identical record, I could understand the decision. Instead, the committee repeatedly stated that Notre Dame was playing better than Miami by a wide margin.

In November, the Irish won each game by a total score margin of 205-52, allowing no reason for this to change.

But alas, when push came to shove, and with neither Notre Dame or Miami playing a game, Miami jumped Notre Dame based on the head-to-head result.

The notion that head-to-head only became a "big thing" once the two teams were stacked next to one another is a child's explanation, but also the committee's. If the group valued Miami's win so much, it shouldn't have played games with the concept. Just own it and put it forward. I would respect that.

Conference title games matter, but also don't

The CFP committee's general operating theory is that it doesn't like to punish teams that earn their way into conference title games and lose. Fair enough. I can understand that concept, especially when other conference teams that don't make title games are resting comfortably in the CFP bracket.

With this in mind, I don't understand how BYU loses badly and drops in the rankings with two losses, but when Alabama does the same thing for its third loss, it doesn't drop a single spot. Again, this kind of philosophical inconsistency is unacceptable when deciding something this important.

TV networks and conference collusion

There are times when being Independent helps Notre Dame. The are others when it hurts it. This is one of those times. Notre Dame is powerful. But not as powerful as TV networks and conferences when combined. That's what the Irish ended up against.

The ACC has a contract to make money with and through Notre Dame Football, and openly lobbied against it for a month. And am I to think that major TV networks that have contracts with conferences don't have a vested interest in what teams make the playoffs? How naive do you think I am?

There is no quick fix for this issue other than Notre Dame not losing twice and forcing the committee's hand with a bid. Again, this is one of the times when being outnumbered by powerful groups, all conference aligned, was just too much to overcome. Notre Dame chooses independence, and sometimes, rightly or wrongly, there is a high price to pay to be different.

Wasting the 11-12 Spots with non-competitive teams

Is the CFP committee trying to find the 12 best teams in America, or just hand out cookies to everyone who tried? In a field this crowded with power four schedule teams like Notre Dame, Alabama, Texas, BYU, Miami, Vanderbilt, who all had pretty strong seasons and were in this hunt, we are allotting 2/12 spots to James Madison and Tulane.

I mean no offense to these teams, who had strong seasons, but there are objectively "better" teams than them that have missed the field. While I mean no offense to these teams, I can't say the same about the ACC overall.

Miami not making the conference title game, and five-loss Duke winning it, added pressure to the committee to prop up Miami to ensure an ACC team makes the field.

I don't care if the committee chair says it wasn't a factor - it had to matter in some way.

Miami ended up getting rewarded by missing the conference title game, and knocked Notre Dame out as an added bonus.

The only immediate takeaway I have from this entire debacle is that I bet the CFP field quickly moves to 16 spots. As for the Irish specifically, they need to take care of their own business from now on so that they aren't beholden to praying for late-season upsets and that a group of random people in a rented hotel office suite see things their way.

This is a brutal and unexpectedly fast start to the offseason.

Let's hope Notre Dame uses this frustration as fuel to improve and leave the complaining to sports writers and podcasters yelling in their basements, such as your truly!