The new addition of the 12 team College football playoff is expanding from what used to be four teams. There have been some mishaps with this new system and the college football rankings. At the start of the 2025 College football season, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish came in with high hopes. Just coming off a national championship loss a couple of months ago, they were expecting to have a better start than they had; with a 0-2 record at the beginning of the season.

They crawled their way back up the rankings. Finishing the season 10-2 and ranked 10th in the college football playoffs. But in the rankings, a nightmare scenario for Notre Dame happened. With Duke winning against 17th ranked Virginia, that gave James Madison an automatic bid. Due to how the new rankings are set up, they take the five best conference champs: Georgia (SEC), Indiana (BIG 10), Texas Tech (BIG 12), then one group of five bids to the playoffs. But with the BYU loss, it bounced Notre Dame out, and people are fuming.

The People’s Thoughts

In a recent interview with Notre Dame fan Brady Aernie ’26, he says, ” why give playoff sports to Tulane and JMU if there’s not even a Power 5 team? Especially leaving out a Notre Dame team with ‘natty hopes’?” Aernie goes on to say, “It should include the top 12 teams in America. Bids shouldn’t be given to a group of five teams. “Aernie’s opinion on remedying the issue is “(a) group of 5 teams should not get in regardless of conference record.”

On the other hand, in an interview with self-proclaimed “not a Notre Dame fan” and Plainwell High School Vice Principal, Brian Huberty, answered, “Notre Dame got unfairly taken out of the playoffs.” Huberty’s solution – “We should move to a 16-team playoff format with no season for bowl games.” His thoughts on Alabama getting in were, “There should not be a three-loss Alabama team in the playoffs, because a two-loss Notre Dame team is not the same as a three-loss Alabama team. Also, Notre Dame does not play in a conference, and there is an SEC bias.”

My Thoughts

As we can see with college football fans, there is an outcry for something to change. Whether it be an expansion or something else, because in no way should there be two groups of five teams getting in over better teams in the running. But for a group of five, this is a really big thing, especially for recruiting and being able to bring in higher-tier recruits.