CFP selection committee mulling changes to weekly ESPN rankings show

Five times each college football season, fans turn to ESPN knowing there’s a strong likelihood they leave frustrated. That’s because for five weeks spanning from around Halloween to conference championship weekend, ESPN exclusively unveils the newest College Football Playoff rankings.

That show has been a source of consternation among football fans, and even ESPN’s own college football analysts, for years. And it has only gotten worse. Last December, many will recall a critical flip-flop by the committee between the final ranking show on ESPN before the conference championships and the formal selection of the 12-team playoff field the Sunday after those games were played. Despite neither team competing in a conference title game, Miami mysteriously jumped Notre Dame to secure what was, in practice, the final at-large spot in the CFP.

The decision to slot Miami in ahead of Notre Dame led many to call for the abolishment of the weekly ranking show. If the committee is simply going to flip two teams the final week, even if neither of them played a game, what was the point of announcing the rankings to begin with?

Well, according to a recent report by Ralph D. Russo and Chris Vannini in The Athletic, the College Football Playoff selection committee will consider changes to how the show operates when it meets this week in Dallas. But don’t expect the show to be abandoned entirely. After all, ESPN paid for those five midweek shows as part of its CFP media rights deal, and the Worldwide Leader won’t want to sacrifice those 1.7 million viewers who tuned in each week last season.

The Athletic report notes “a few potential adjustments” that the show could make for next season to (hopefully) alleviate some of the scrutiny it currently faces.

First, the committee will consider beginning to release rankings later in the season. Of course, that would likely necessitate ESPN agreeing to receiving fewer than five rankings shows each year, but it could lessen perceived inconsistencies in the committee’s logic by pushing back the initial baseline rankings that will shape discussion the rest of the season.

Second, the committee may eliminate the rankings release before conference championship weekend to avoid situations like those seen with Miami and Notre Dame in 2025. This would seemingly also require ESPN to accept fewer rankings shows, but could tamp down scrutiny stemming from conference championship games, which already create headaches for the committee. However, some conferences that use CFP rankings as a tiebreaker to determine participants in the championship game would need to change their procedures.

Third, the committee is considering reducing or eliminating interviews with the committee chairman during the rankings show. Each week, ESPN’s Rece Davis would press the CFP selection committee chairman to provide reasons for changes to the rankings. Often, the chair’s words would be used against the committee later in the season, as it appeared their logic had shifted. Eliminating these weekly interviews would provide the committee with a bit of cover from the inevitable inconsistencies in logic they’ll face throughout the season.

These changes might help quell fan frustrations on the margins, but it’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which fans aren’t upset by the weekly rankings show. Be it how the committee ordered the teams that week or what one of ESPN’s talking heads said about the rankings, the mere existence of this show is designed to create debate. If it weren’t for this show serving as a conversation starter, the CFP selection committee would simply release its rankings once, when it officially selects the 12 teams that made the field. Every other release is purely for content.