ESPN article 

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/47704876/sources-college-football-playoff-remain-12-teams

ND guaranteed spot if they finish in top 12 of ranking 

Auto bids for all four Power 4 conferences

I'm betting the ACC changes their ACC Championship Game qualifications in some form or fashion 

Thanks to the Big 10 for screwing the sweet 16 up.

Cancel Ohio state. Why play that when only winning matters.  Play a small directional school and warm up.   If we play and lose history will repeat itself 

just not a smart decision to play this game.   

13 minutes ago, Gerry Hamilton said:

I'm betting the ACC changes their ACC Championship Game qualifications in some form or fashion 

To this point, it sounds like it’s happening already 

https://frontofficesports.com/acc-plans-tiebreaker-changes-for-2026-after-cfp-near-miss/

4-8 would be preferred. 12 is already too many. 

11 minutes ago, Hornmatic said:

4-8 would be preferred. 12 is already too many. 

12 is fine if they just eliminate the auto bids for the G5 . I could get behind eliminating auto bids altogether, but the G5 shouldn’t be given one period.

30 minutes ago, utx2 said:

Cancel Ohio state. Why play that when only winning matters.  Play a small directional school and warm up.   If we play and lose history will repeat itself 

just not a smart decision to play this game.   

Sark already said they’d honor the Ohio st and Michigan games. I’d bet the ND game will be canceled. Though I’d like to put a beating on them. It’s gonna send ND a message.

12 is fine if it’s the top 12 ranked teams at the end of the year. No auto bids. If there’s 6 sec teams. Fine. Just take the top 12 ranked teams. We want the best competition 

We can be done pretending it’s about the 12 BEST teams. I don’t want to hear that once this year.

Ohio State is 100% a must win game with this news coming out.  If they lose to Ohio State, Texas must go 8-1 in regular season SEC play to make the CFP in the 12-team format and it's unlikely that happens.  Texas is not backing out of that game or the Michigan game in 2027.  They should back out of the Notre Dame home and home, but I bet there is some legal things to work out before that happens.  I'm assuming that is the reason that series has not been cancelled yet.

3 minutes ago, NoDakHornsFan said:

We can be done pretending it’s about the 12 BEST teams. I don’t want to hear that once this year.

+1,000

I'm OK with that. 24 was crazy.

58 minutes ago, Gerry Hamilton said:

ESPN article 

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/47704876/sources-college-football-playoff-remain-12-teams

ND guaranteed spot if they finish in top 12 of ranking 

Auto bids for all four Power 4 conferences

RIDICULOUS that Notre Dame is guaranteed a spot when they pick and choose who they’ll play and refuse to join a conference.

Big 10 only wants 24 teams because they are so weak outside of their top 3-4. It’s the only way they can get more teams in. Pathetic.

3 minutes ago, 4thandFive said:

RIDICULOUS that Notre Dame is guaranteed a spot when they pick and choose who they’ll play and refuse to join a conference.

Can’t blame them for working the system. It damn near guarantees them a CFP spot each year. 

I mean is 5 loss Duke any better than JMU? I get acc may change their conference championship but let’s be done with auto bids.

The leadership of college football has always and will always do the wrong thing until forced to do otherwise. It's kind of remarkable how people come and people go, but they always side with stupid. It took decades to make these changes:

• Crown a champion after bowl games
• Allow TV networks to decide during the season which games to televise (it was previously decided before the season)
• Create a 1-vs-2 natty
• Allow players to be compensated for their labor
• Allow players to transfer without sitting out (how many players never made it to the NFL because they never got their chance?)
• Create a playoff system

Here's all the obvious things the need to fix:

• Eliminate worthless cupcake games (it'd be incredibly easy to compensate smaller schools with the additional TV money better matchups would bring)
• Revert to 2-minute tv timeouts (not even the for-profit NFL does 3 minute commercial breaks)
• Eliminate auto bids (G5 has been completely raided of both schools and players yet we still romanticize the anecdotal exceptions from the distant past)
• Create a relegation system so smaller schools can actually have a chance to build legitimate programs
• Finish the season BEFORE the portal / coaching changes
• Eliminate unlimited transfers
• Set boundaries around NIL and individual donors

Only an act of Congress could save college football. 

Edited January 23Jan 23 by rookemhorns
a word

1 hour ago, utx2 said:

Cancel Ohio state. Why play that when only winning matters.  Play a small directional school and warm up.   If we play and lose history will repeat itself 

just not a smart decision to play this game.   

Never was gonna happen too much damn money to be made playing that game. 

But I would never schedule Notre Dame again. 

Some talking head (I think Klatt?) recently made an excellent point about why the leadership in college football has a very hard time making long term decisions. Basically all the key players are holding temporary positions… ADs, commissioners, coaches… none of them are guaranteed to keep their job for a decade, let alone a few years. Whereas in the NFL it’s the team owners who make the big decisions. They can stay as long as they want, and hence have more at stake in the long term, and care more about the sport as a whole. It’s essentially “renters” in charge in college versus “owners” in the NFL. The renters are motivated to optimize their results in the short time they’re there, so they’ll always prioritize their own selfish needs, and see no reason to sacrifice their own advantages for the betterment of the entire sport. 

24 minutes ago, Lewis817 said:

Never was gonna happen too much damn money to be made playing that game. 

But I would never schedule Notre Dame again. 

Completely agree but then couldn’t you also say more money would be made in the playoffs?

I think if the committee doesnt want ND in there, they'll just put them at 13

This CFP committee, the NCAA, (insert any other body that thinks it has credibility with authority) - all such a joke. 

 

I'm a huge fan of collusion at this point - defined as every team agreeing to drop ND from their respective schedule - their agreement is a joke within this CFP joke 

1 hour ago, Nikolas24 said:

Completely agree but then couldn’t you also say more money would be made in the playoffs?

Absolutely 💯 but we had already played at Michigan and Ohio State I even think it would be crazy to cancel our home games. 

G6 only gets 1 auto bid this year...shouldn't have any but that is progress from 0.