With the college football season coming to an end, the college football playoffs bracket finally came out December 7th. People are up in arms about who made it and who didn’t. The college football playoffs are made by the college playoff selection football committee, which is made up of former players, coaches, and other football experts. They are tasked with selecting which teams are the best and they do this every week until the college football season is over.
Two years ago, the college football world voted to expand the playoffs from 4 to 12 teams. This occurred concurrently with players now being able to make NIL money, which stands for name, image, and likeness. They did this because players were now going to many different colleges, where teams were going to give them the most money. So the talent was getting spread out more and not to the same five to six teams. To put it in perspective, Arch Manning, who is the Texas Longhorn quarterback, is making around 7 million dollars this year to be a college football quarterback, and that is more than some pro-football players and athletes are making.
Nothing the college football committee can do will make everyone happy, but it seems that every year, the committee is getting more and more hate for the teams that make it and the teams they leave out. This year, two teams made it that people are up in arms about– Tulane and James Madison University. Both only got in because of the rule that five conference winners had to make it, and at the time the rules came out, it made sense. The committee and fans wanted to give some of the smaller schools a chance because they do not have the same amount of money to recruit players as these big schools do.
The college football playoffs is supposed to be the 12 best teams playing but right now it does not feel like that. Looking at the two games that are going to happen which is Tulane vs Ole Miss and James Madison vs. Oregon, both Oregon and Ole Miss are favored by around 90%. These were some of the teams that were left out because five conference champions had to be Notre Dame, BYU, Texas, and Vanderbilt. Any of those four teams is so much better than James Madison and Tulane, but they are not in because of the rules that were made, and those games would be much more entertaining to watch.
With last year being the first year of this new playoff system, many people gave the committee grace because it was the first year that they were doing it, but now it gets frustrating seeing a sport that so many people love to watch get ruined by 12 people who decide the fate of many. It makes you wonder if college football is dying or if a new beginning is happening right before our eyes.
