I asked On3's Jake Crain whether the College Football Playoff is worse off with the perennial powerhouses, the Ohio State Buckeyes, Georgia Bulldogs, and Alabama Crimson Tide, eliminated before the semifinal round.
In a nutshell? No. Certain brands needing to be in certain spots in the CFP to make more interesting games and more on the bottom line isn't a theory he subscribes to. Crain doesn't need a field cultivated with clicks at the forefront of the conversation. Crain believes there's a perfect mix of blue bloods and new bloods that could exist in harmony in future CFP fields, and the brand value of a program shouldn't affect how the product is presented.
Then, the conversation shifted to what schools' inclusion or exclusion could've been seen as controversial. Naturally, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish's exclusion came up, as did the conversation on who should've made it ahead of them and who shouldn't have.
Missing specific teams isn't the issue. To Crain, it's the non-transparent way the CFP selection committee landed on the teams they did. Though he did reveal two schools he felt were glaringly undeserving that lacked the brand value of the excluded Fighting Irish.
Crain made it clear that he didn't feel this year's field met that "perfect mix" criterion. To correct it moving forward, he offered a solution that would've granted more teams the chance to make the field: a First Four-type mini-tournament for the No. 11-14 seeds.
In that scenario, Notre Dame and the BYU Cougars would've gotten a chance as the first two teams left out. Crain felt the Fighting Irish, BYU, the Vanderbilt Commodores, and the Texas Longhorns were all more deserving than the Tulane Green Wave and James Madison Dukes.
"You know, you want some blue bloods in there. But you love the Cinderella stories too, right? You kind of want to mix. So to me, and I'm not talking as a content creator, because a lot of content creators just want the biggest brands in there. I just want the best teams in there at the end of the day. That's why I do like the tournament style. You know, you lose, you're out. You've got to prove it on the field. The way we select the teams is nuts. You know, that's a story for another day," Crain said.
"So I'm not necessarily an elitist, and I don't want a Cinderella story or new brands in there. But I also don't want it to just be, you know, the big dogs kind of always left out. I think there's kind of a mix there. I'm not trying to use it as a cop out, but it's like porridge. You know, some's a little hot, some's a little cold, but some's just right."
"The problem that we have is the way that we select teams. I'm not saying the Group of 5 should never get in. But to me, that's the problem that we have. I don't know how you can have automatic bids and meritocracy at the same time when you're predetermining outcomes. To me, the goal should be to find what I think are the 14 best teams."
"You have play-in games, 11 vs. 14, 12 vs. 13. The winner of those two becomes the 11-12 seed, and we run out our 12-team tournament. If we had done that this year, you'd have had Notre Dame get in, BYU get in, Vanderbilt get in, and possibly Texas get in as well. The fact that we had two Group of 5 teams make the college football playoff, a 12-team playoff at the highest level, to me is a joke. It's not that the group of five is bad or that they shouldn't be allowed in. They shouldn't have an automatic bid. The four schools shouldn't have an automatic bid."
On3's Jake Crain on conference championship games' effect on CFP rankings
I asked Crain if he felt Alabama was undeserving of making the CFP field over the aforementioned perspective First Four teams this year, as many believe. Like Ohio State, the Tide lost in its conference title game. That was Alabama's third loss in 2025, though, and it was a 28-7 thrashing at the hands of the Georgia Bulldogs.
Crain doesn't believe the Tide unfairly made it. To Crain, playing in a conference championship shouldn't be disincentivized, as it ended up being for the Cougars with their 34-7 blowout loss to the Texas Tech Red Raiders in the Big 12 Championship Game.
Instead, teams that make their conference championship games and don't win would be judged based on their regular season record.
"I want to incentivize playing in the conference championship. I'm a firm believer. So, for example, Alabama and Notre Dame, conference championship game, I don't think Alabama should be punished for losing playing in extra games. I think what you should do is take the loser of that conference championship game and compare their resume in the regular season before that loss to a Notre Dame that's not playing that extra game. So the parts are more equal. And in that view, I do think Alabama should have gotten in over Notre Dame when you looked at all the metrics," Crain said.
"If you took their 10-2, Notre Dame's 10-2, and put them together, I feel like that was the right choice. But again, not to get too long-winded, there's a way to have both. What we need to do is we need to take the strength of schedule. We can debate variables that determine strength of schedule and strength of record. I'm totally open to that."
"But we should take the strength of schedule, plus the strength of record, and divide it by the number of games you play. And the lower number that gets spit out, the better. That incentivizes playing in conference championship games because, again, you don't have to be a renowned mathematician to realize that if you divide something by 12 and then divide it by 13, when you divide it by 13, the number is going to be lower, and that team is assigned that number."
"So that's another way to incentivize it. I just worry that if we sit here and start punishing teams for playing in conference championship games, teams are going to not want to play in conference championship games, and they're going to move to try and take away conference championship games, which I don't want. That's why I think BYU has a huge argument as well, if we're going to be honest. I mean, they got left out because they lost to the, what, number four seed, number three seed Texas Tech, again, in the conference championship game, and finished the year 11-1."
We'll see if this broken system is fixed one day.
More CFP teams seems to be the solution. The exact amount is the unanswered multi-million dollar question.