It’s time to stop everything and start again. That’s the one takeaway from the first installment of the College Football Playoff selection committee poll and what a debacle that, and the entire process, turned out to be.
As with most seasons, the Associated Press Top 25 poll has been a disaster, with no consistent ranking philosophy, some conferences enjoying an undeserved boost among voters based on Nick Saban’s coaching in the 2010s and an overreliance on preseason polls that mean nothing and are hopelessly inaccurate.
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But this week’s College Football Playoff poll is so bad that it makes the Associated Press look competent. Or at least somewhere close to competent. There’s just one problem: This poll is what really matters. And it’s worse!
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Alabama tight end Kaleb Edwards (81) celebrates after his touchdown against Texas A&M during the second half of an NCAA college football game, Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (AP Photo/Vasha Hunt)
This is just the start of the problems. The other is to use school athletic directors, who are subject to their own biases, to be the public face of the committee. Then, TV interviews attempt to explain their “thinking” and the resulting rankings, while repeatedly contradicting themselves, making half-hearted illogical comparisons, and talking about ridiculous, made-up “pods.”
But we will come back to that.
By now, many people in sports know the most glaring errors in this week’s poll.
The Alabama Crimson Tide has no business being No. 5 in anything, much less the College Football Playoff poll. UCLA is No. 8 despite being the only undefeated team in the Big Ten or SEC. Why the hell is Kentucky number 6? Ohio State is #12, while the team they just lost to is #20. Indiana is #4 for some reason, and Texas got a complete bye after two horrible losses, including to a legitimately terrible, terrible Oklahoma team. But it’s worse than that.
Apparently what happened here was that the committee members sat around for a few hours, talked about their vacation homes and golf memberships, then threw a few team names into a hat, tossed it in the air, and ranked themselves based on which piece of carpet they landed on. Although that might have been preferable to this abomination.
What should have happened? Well, opinions vary, but a preferable outcome would be a transparent process with clearly communicated metrics and metrics. Instead, we have some vague references to a “conference strength” number. Which has never been defined for anyone. Instead, what we got was Hunter Yurachek talking nonsense about Alabama’s quality wins and losses.
“Yes, they lost to Tennessee. But Tennessee doesn’t have the same level of quality of wins. Yes, they beat Alabama, but you have to go further,” he said while “explaining” the difference in ranking between Tide and Volunteers.
These quality victories? An unranked Mississippi State team, a three-loss South Carolina team, and a wildly overrated Kentucky team. This is where the problem lies. The committee gives credit to “quality gains” based on their rankings. South Carolina is good, they say, because we ranked them. Kentucky is a high-quality victory, they say, because We ranked them sixth. This is circuitous “logic” and it undermines the entire credibility of the process. The committee appears to say that the State of Mississippi that would be good if not for the injuries. But no other conference enjoys the same deference, assumption or seeming dismissal of the Bulldogs’ epic defensive collapse.
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Just look at how Mississippi State has been playing lately:
- Lost 56-23 to Alabama
- Lost 31-0 to LSU
- Lost 23-15 to Oklahoma
- Lost 31-3 to Texas
This is what the committee gives Alabama credit for. Does Kamario Taylor also play defense? Would he have stopped his team from allowing more than 35 points per game? Or are they just making things up as they go along?
Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Kalen DeBoer reacts during the first half against the Tennessee Volunteers at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee on October 17, 2026. (IMAGINE IMAGES via Reuters Connect)
Then there’s the committee’s treatment of Ole Miss and Ohio State.
Ole Miss gets credit for wins over No. 14 LSU and No. 18 Missouri, but little punishment for losing to Texas and the ridiculously ranked three-loss Gators. Still, Ohio State has a win over No. 4 Indiana and No. 19 Iowa, and their two losses are to the same team of No. 7 Texas and No. 20 USC. How does that justify one team at No. 10 and the other at No. 12? Well, Yurachek had some genius to share too.
According to his explanation, the Buckeyes didn’t look like the same team after Julian Sayin’s injury, and they abandoned “explosive plays” against the Trojans in their 30-18 loss. There’s just one problem: The Rebels have been less good at giving up explosive plays than Ohio State.
As an article on X noted, OSU “allowed two plays of 40-plus yards in this game, its first two such plays allowed this season.”
Ole Miss allowed 10 pieces of more than 40 yards this year. Their explosive play rate is also slightly higher than the Buckeyes this year. If this sounds like they’re making it up as they go along, that’s because they are.
But we also have data showing how absurd, absurdly biased and biased these rankings are. Bill Connelly, creator of the SP+ analytics-based ranking system, put together a chart using a mix of metrics ahead of this week’s poll. He created a mix of 80% CV, meaning strength of file and SP+ CV, and 20% team quality, meaning predictive and forward-looking rankings.
For a little context, here is how these rankings, once again more objective, took place:
- Miami
- Georgia
- Utah
- Indiana
- Notre Dame
- Alabama
- Ohio State
- UCLA
- Texas
- LSU
- Waking up forest
- Ole Mademoiselle
- BYU
- Texas Technology
- Kentucky
- Tennessee
- Boise State
- U.S.C.
- Houston
- Iowa
- Northwest
- Missouri
- Arizona
- Florida
- Oregon
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If at first glance it appears that one conference continues to outperform its computer metrics, that’s because there is one conference that is consistently overestimated by the selection committee: the SEC.
Alabama is too high. Kentucky is nine seats too high, the biggest failure of any team. Texas is two places too many. Ole Miss too. Tennessee is three spots too many. Missouri is four spots too many. South Carolina is six places too high. On average, human voters overestimated SEC teams by almost three spots per team. That’s a huge difference. And this is an integral part of the constant functioning of these human systems.
The SEC campaigns, lobbies and makes demands based on its claim to be the toughest conference. Unhappy voters believe it without proof, and suddenly every win and loss becomes “quality” because the conference has 10 ranked teams, many of which are grossly overrated.
Thanks to Greg Sankey, the propaganda worked. And it will fundamentally change the college football season.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey speaks to the press during the SEC Football Kickoff Media Day at the Tampa Marriott in Tampa, Florida on July 20, 2026. (Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images)
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Even Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti has had enough, and his team was ranked No. 4, saying Wednesday: “These people – and there’s a whole bunch of them – they come out of the tent, they’re given instructions on what to say and they toe the company line. I don’t need to go any further.”
A commonly bandied theory about the rankings is that the committee set them that way so they could repeat last year’s mistakes without punishing teams for losing games. Alabama, you may recall, played a meaningless SEC Championship Game in December 2025. That could only help the Crimson Tide, not hurt them, because the SEC. With so many overrated teams in this conference, results apparently don’t matter much. But elsewhere? Oh my boy.
Notre Dame better not lose to Miami because the Fighting Irish will be eliminated if they do, even though Miami is the No. 1 team in the country. Losing only counts when a team doesn’t benefit from overrated wins in the SEC to win it.
This is the ultimate problem. Rewarding strength of schedule is one thing. But at some point, results have to matter. If a team scheduled Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Ole Miss, Texas, Miami, Ohio State and Indiana, then lost every game, should they be in the top 10? What if they won two of those eight games, went undefeated against four easy teams, and finished 6-6. Is this a playoff team?
Within the SEC, the answer quickly tends towards yes. This is why the whole system needs to be scrapped and redesigned. This doesn’t work.
Gn sports
