Deserve's got nothing to do with it: The Playoff Committee conundrum

Let’s address the elephant in the room: The College Football Playoff, as much as it tries to justify existence via competition, was created for the express purpose of generating more money for ESPN, the SEC, and the B1G.

This is important to address off the top, because every single decision the committee makes, however stupid or nefarious, will ultimately make far more sense when we all realize who the true stakeholders are pulling the strings.

This year’s bracket was thrown into a bit of chaos due to the ACC’s chaos (more on that later) that led to a five loss Duke team winning the conference championship… but not being the ACC team in the tournament.

Miami getting in over the likes of Notre Dame, BYU, Vanderbilt, and any other team is objectively defensible when looking at the two losses sustained (both single scores, one in overtime on the road) and the odd series of tiebreakers that kept the ‘Canes out of the ACC Championship.

It’s also objectively funny because Notre Dame being excluded as the “first team out” led to a temper tantrum any parent could identify a mile away and further revealing the playoff’s true purpose is not about rewarding deserving teams, but paying the biggest names in the sport the biggest paychecks even if they have a less than playoff worthy year.

So if Notre Dame, who know will have a remarkable single school auto-bid exemption moving forward, had to fall on the sword publicly… why? Well, it turns out that like everything else in college football, conferences have the final say and Notre Dame’s independence got tested yet again by a group of kingmakers looking to cash in.

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