CFP Anger Index: An absurd farce over Notre Dame, Miami

Twelve years into the College Football Playoff, the committee may have been tasked with its toughest decision yet.

On one hand, there’s Alabama, the bluest of blue bloods, a team that played the sixth-toughest schedule in the country, with seven wins over FPI top-40 opponents, and whose final loss — the one that put the Tide squarely on the bubble — came in the SEC championship game, while others like Miami and Notre Dame sat at home.

On the other hand, there’s Notre Dame, the most storied program in the sport’s history with a legion of fans from coast to coast. The Irish are playing exceptional football, winning 10 straight all by double digits, and their lone losses, way back in August and early September, came to two other top-tier teams by a combined four points.

Then on the metaphorical third hand is Miami, a team that began the season with fireworks, sagged in the middle, then responded to its No. 18 placement in the first set of rankings by reeling off four straight wins by an average of 27 points per game. Oh, and Miami holds a head-to-head win over Notre Dame, albeit one that came in the first week of the season and that the committee may or may not consider from week to week.

ultimate verdict of Sunday’s final ranking showcased the disaster vividly.

Step away from the whole process, and the decision to rank Miami ahead of Notre Dame makes perfect sense. They have the same record. Miami won head-to-head. Most rational folks, aligned with neither side, would acknowledge the committee came to a sensible conclusion.

But look at the process and try to follow the committee’s rationale, and it’s like climbing the stairs in an M.C. Escher painting.

In the first ranking, Notre Dame was eight spots ahead of Miami. Both won out, both by big margins, and each week along the way, Notre Dame remained ahead of Miami. Last week, Alabama — fresh off a near disaster in the Iron Bowl — leapfrogged Notre Dame despite the Irish dominating Stanford 49-20. That was a head-scratcher, unless, of course, you believed the minor conspiracy that the committee was setting up a direct comparison between Miami and Notre Dame by having them ranked one right after the other.

And, what do you know, that’s what we got. After BYU lost its conference championship, the Cougars dropped in the rankings — something that didn’t happen to Alabama for a similar blowout defeat, it should be noted — and Notre Dame and Miami were separated by nothing other than the committee’s whims.

So while both sat home on their couches on championship weekend, Miami somehow did enough to push its way into the playoff instead of Notre Dame.

Is it a reasonable conclusion? Yes!

Is it a ridiculous process that got us here? A thousand yeses!

Let’s consider how the committee evaluates teams for a moment. Which variables matter most? We’ve gone from Florida State’s battle against game control in 2014 to Notre Dame’s résumé boasting two quality losses in 2025.

Does head-to-head matter? For five weeks it might not, but in the last week it clearly did.

The committee is supposed to evaluate a school’s entire body of work, but does that mean a September loss can’t be overshadowed by clear and obvious growth throughout a season?

Do conference championships matter? Winning them is supposed to be a factor — though, ask 2023 Florida State about that — so shouldn’t a loss matter, too? A year ago, committee chair Warde Manuel said it might — including docking SMU two spots after a three-point loss to Clemson in the ACC conference championship game, even if it didn’t knock the Mustangs out of the playoff. But Alabama’s 21-point loss Saturday meant nothing.

Ranked wins are great, but of course the committee decides who earns the distinction of being ranked. The eye test is the best argument for one team, the data for another, and no one can be sure which metric matters more, because again, it depends. For a committee composed primarily of former coaches and active ADs, the human element — perceptions, expectations, projections, biases and misunderstandings — loom like a cloud over every mention of strength of record or game control.

Or boil it down to the most basic debate: Are we trying to find the best teams or the most deserving? And how do we even define those two things? From week to week, the answer is a shrug emoji and a Mad Libs of metrics and records pieced together like those magnetic words people put on their refrigerator.

All of this leads to arguments, which is likely a feature of the system, not a bug. Debate is part of the DNA of sports. But ironically, no one seems to contradict the committee more than the committee itself. The case for Team A so often sounds like the mirror image of the case against Team B. Alabama jumped Notre Dame in last week’s rankings after an ugly win over Auburn, but Miami’s dominant victory on the road against a ranked Pitt team made no difference. When Texas A&M needed a Houdini act to beat South Carolina, that wasn’t a knock on the Aggies, the committee chair said, but when Alabama narrowly escaped those same Gamecocks, it was a flaw in the Tide’s résumé. Ranked wins are great — but only if the team was ranked at the time, or maybe if it ends up ranked in the future. Also, the committee does the ranking so, whew.

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And when those explanations get parsed by fans in the aftermath of perplexing decisions — Alabama’s «impressive» seven-point win over 5-7 Auburn allowing the Tide to leapfrog Notre Dame after a 29-point Irish win over 4-8 Stanford, for example — the outcome isn’t just disagreements and debate. It’s conspiratorial thinking. It’s a hollowing out of trust in the process. It’s a belief that the deck is stacked ahead of time. And that’s a disservice to the sport, the teams involved, and the committee itself. Good folks work hard and care about their role, but because their process is so immensely flawed, the presumption of nefarious motives isn’t just fodder for the message boards, but increasingly, mainstream thinking.

Imagine for a moment this wasn’t about college football. Imagine instead this was clinical trials for a new drug or a prized astrophysicist trying to explain an anomaly deep in outer space or, heck, assembling a bookshelf you bought from IKEA. Any such endeavor requires not just a result that seems to work, but a process that can be repeated, again and again, by a completely different set of people, before anyone gives it enough credence that a majority of people — even ones who don’t understand the process at all — believe in the work that was done and trust the results provided.

We don’t have to understand Einstein’s theory of relativity to believe in its basic principles. Relativity remains a theory, not a fact, but it is commonly accepted around the world by brilliant scientists and guys watching «Interstellar» at 3 a.m. on cable alike, because we can all appreciate a stringent process, rigorous testing, and an ability to withstand criticism from dissenting voices.

If we can do that for quantum physics, then surely we can do that for a college football playoff, right?

Instead, we’ll continue to argue. That’s OK. The arguments are part of the fun. But at the foundation of those arguments are real people — players, coaches, administrators, support staffs and even the fans. While no result will make everyone happy, the least this sport owes them is a process they can understand.

Jeremiyah Love, in the biggest games of the year.

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Diego Pavia in the playoff.

Truth is, if the goal of the playoff is to seed it with the best teams — the teams capable of beating other elite teams and making a run for a championship — then Texas had as good a case as anyone, with head-to-head wins over Oklahoma, Vandy and Texas A&M.

Heck, compare these two résumés:

Team A: Three losses, the worst loss to FPI No. 53 by eight and three wins vs. FPI top-15 teams

Team B: Three losses, the worst loss to FPI No. 74 by 14 and two wins vs. FPI top-15 teams

Team A also has a 17-point win over a team that beat Team B.

So, who would you take?

Don’t ask Sankey. His answer is both. But Team A is Texas and Team B is Alabama, and the Longhorns have looked markedly better over the past month of the season than the flailing Tide.

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Virginia Cavaliers (10-3, No. 19 and dropped two spots — more than any other conference championship game loser, despite playing the closest conference championship game), Tennessee Volunteers, LSU Tigers, Illinois Fighting Illini and Missouri Tigers (all 8-4, all unranked, and all with a better strength of record than the Arizona Wildcats or the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets), Lane Kiffin (astonished the committee didn’t value his departure more).