This originally appeared in the Christmas edition of  The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter with the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis. Sign up here and be the first to know everything you need to know about the sports media world.

No sport thrives on complaints quite like college football.

Depending on who’s complaining, the sport is unfair, imbalanced, devalued, ruined, not what it used to be, or not what it should be. Sometimes, a single complaint covers that entire gamut.

Each season and postseason has its own themes and narratives regarding complaints. The 2025 college football season, the second in which the College Football Playoff has been expanded to 12 teams, has given us the gift of hating Cinderellas.

And that was before Tulane and James Madison, two Group of Five schools that qualified for the CFP thanks in part to the ACC’s stupidity and Notre Dame’s Notre Dame-ness, laid eggs in their respective first-round games.

The way that college football’s pundits reacted to their inclusion in the CFP, you’d have thought Tulane and JMU murdered their families. As an extension, they all took turns proclaiming the first round of the 2025 playoff a complete dud and blaming the G5 schools for that outcome.

The ratings bore out that the first round failed to capture the hearts and minds of America, solidifying the growing call to ban G5s from the CFP altogether.

Setting aside the fact that a Group of 5 Playoff would be a terrible idea that solves nothing, there’s a simple notion being lost in all the hand-wringing: The problem isn’t who plays in the first round of the expanded CFP. The problem is that it exists at all.

The goalposts have been moved so many times in recent years that it can be hard to remember, but it truly wasn’t that long ago when everyone understood that no team outside of the Top 5, maybe even the Top 4, “deserved” to play for the national title. We use quotations there because we admit it’s a silly notion, but it was very well understood all the same.

For most college football seasons, as far back as anyone can remember, the only teams in the national title discussion come December were either undefeated or had one loss to a highly ranked opponent. Everyone else, enjoy your Citrus Bowls and Holiday Bowls.

College football was by no means perfect at the time. We’d argue over the inability to crown a true national champion almost every season. But there was a clear distinction between very good teams and elite teams.

Now, we spend all month arguing over which three-loss team deserves to be considered for the right to play for a national title. We’re made to feel like an egregious error has been made because a two-loss Notre Dame, which started the season 0-2, got left out.

The 2025 Notre Dame squad didn’t deserve to play for a national title any more or less than Tulane or JMU, despite how hard college football pundits have worked to devalue wins since the CFP started.

The point is actually that none of them “deserve” to play for the national title. Honestly, the only teams that probably did were Indiana, Ohio State, Georgia, Texas Tech, and maybe Oregon, Ole Miss, and Texas A&M. Everyone else would have been happy with their Cotton Bowl or Gator Bowl bid back in the day.

But, of course, the CFP doesn’t exist to be fair or to reward regular-season success. It exists to create big TV ratings, and the ongoing expansion is all about that. That’s especially obvious when you look at the way college football’s talking heads complain about Tulane and JMU.

They’re not mad that G5 schools don’t deserve to play; they’re mad that those games didn’t pop big TV numbers. Heck, even the guys calling Tulane’s game openly pined for Notre Dame to be there instead.

Eliminating G5 schools doesn’t eliminate blowouts. There have been blowouts almost every year the CFP has existed. Last year, Oregon lost by more points than it beat JMU by this year. Next year, one of the best college football programs in America will probably lose a CFP game by 20 or 30 points. No one will bat an eyelash.

Those arguments are just convenient excuses to cover up the truth that the CFP is already simply too big. It’s also too big to fail, so it’s only going to keep expanding. And as it does, it will also keep contracting the pool of eligibility. Banning G5 schools is just the beginning. Pac-12, Mountain West, and ACC schools, you’re on notice.

Eventually, you’ll know which 16 or 24 teams are in the CFP before the season even begins because that’s actually the goal. Remember that ill-fated European Super League idea a few years back, which included only a select group of elite clubs and removed concerns of being left out or relegated? That idea was soundly rejected due to its lack of fairness and sportsmanship. Oddly, that’s what the Joel Klatts, Josh Pates, Paul Finebaums, and Kirk Herbstreits want college football to be.

The goal isn’t to create the best system to determine a champion; it’s to determine the best system to generate TV ratings.

And any other reason that someone gives is either a goalpost shift, a rhetorical trick, a lie, or all three.

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