Not one, but two non-Power Four programs reached the College Football Playoff in 2025, thanks to ACC champion Duke being left out of the field.
Duke reached the ACC title game despite holding a 7-5 regular season record due to the matchup being decided by multiple tiebreakers, thus leaving out No. 10 Miami, which reached the CFP as an at-large team. Duke’s win opened the door for Sun Belt conference champion James Madison at No. 12, on top of Tulane at No. 11.
College football personalities Paul Finebaum and Jordan Rodgers debated the Group of Six inclusions for the CFP on ESPN’s ‘Get Up’ Monday, Dec. 8.
‘They do not belong,’ Finebaum said. ‘And I’ll save you all the ‘due respect’ nonsensical preamble that we always use. There’s no reason to have schools like that in a playoff when you’re leaving home Notre Dame, BYU and Texas, and Vanderbilt. But this is like Washington politics, they made a deal. The commissioners blocked an initial idea to make this thing a couple years ago… It’s wrong, but it’s politics. It’s the way college athletics works unfortunately.”
Rodgers agreed, noting the watchability isn’t there for these games, either.
“Who wants to watch those games?’ Rodgers added. ‘We already watched one of them. I think this is getting an extra spotlight because JMU is in it, but if it was just Tulane, they already got beat by Ole Miss 45-10. We’ve seen that football game. I love the comparison to the basketball March Madness because I actually feel having these Group of Five, Group of Six teams with a chance to compete for a national championship is good for the fabric of the NCAA, of football, of college football.
‘But that would be the equivalent of saying we’re going to add two 16 teams, but we’re going to take out two No. 3 ranked teams in the March Madness, you can’t do that. You need to expand the playoffs, but they need to change the metrics to which those teams are allowed to get in. It can’t just be top 25. If you’re top 15, top 10 or top 16, if that’s the number of playoffs, then maybe you can have that consideration, but we can’t be doing a Make A Wish program with the College Football Playoffs and just adding teams because we feel like they should deserve it.”
Rodgers also agreed a similar sentiment being shared across college football of conference championship games potentially ending in favor of a CFP expansion.
“Lets actually get the best teams in, which I think is the end of conference championship games,’ he said. ‘I think they’re meaningless now. They were meaningless a couple days ago, and that doesn’t change. Let’s just rank the teams, regardless of conference. Let’s have a different metric for Group of Five, so there’s still an opportunity but not a guarantee and let’s have the best teams play.
‘Because Notre Dame could win a national championship. Texas could win. They already beat two teams who are hosting. And Vandy is a team that nobody wants to play. Those teams don’t have a chance because JMU and Tulane do.”