With December rolling around it is the end of yet another great college sports season. That of course being the college football season. With the season’s end comes not only the bowl games but also the college football playoffs. This year a lot has been shaken up when it comes to not only the final playoff teams selected but also how we got to this point.
This includes coaching changes, pivotal losses, and the controversial final decisions of the CFB selection committee when it comes to the final playoff teams.
Starting with the crazy amount of coaching changes; there were some major changes for some of the major schools in college football that many people did not see coming. The first major change of the season that kickstarted the coaching carousel was the firing of James Franklin from Penn State. Under Franklin, Penn State was considered a powerhouse not only in the Big Ten conference but also the country with them being ranked number two overall in all of the preseason polls/rankings.
Franklin was fired after Penn State lost three games to Oregon, UCLA, and Northwestern. Three games they were expected to win based on preseason predictions. The craziest thing about the Franklin firing is that a couple months later Franklin was hired to be the head coach at Virginia Tech while still under a contract buyout from Penn State. Penn State has since hired Matt Campbell, the coach of Iowa State meaning that Penn State has had three head coaches under contract during the 2025 season since they had their Offensive Coordinator step in as head coach between Franklin’s firing and Campbell’s hiring.
The biggest coaching change and the craziest story when it comes to the coaching carousel was Lane Kiffin’s relevance from Ole Miss and hiring to LSU. What makes this coaching change so crazy is that Ole Miss was a top ranked team all season even finishing as the six seed in the final CFP playoff rankings meaning they not only made the playoffs but were top ranked. Kiffin was suspected to leave Ole Miss but it was shocking to many he would leave in the middle of such an amazing season yet he did for a team like LSU that did not come close to making the CFB playoffs. Another crazy thing about the LSU Kiffin hiring is that LSU now is actively paying three coaches as they fired their previous coach at the bringing of the season and have not finished paying their coach from five seasons ago.
All this money and coaching changes truly shows how much money college football really does make and how much of that money the schools are able to use every year to shake things up. It is impossible to predict what will happen nowadays with all the money.
Now the topic on everybody’s minds is the final and controversial selections for the CFP playoffs. The three teams that have the most controversy circulating around them are the University of Alabama, the University of Miami, and the University of Notre Dame. Miami and Alabama made the playoffs as the tenth and ninth seed respectively. Notre Dame was left out of the playoffs as the first team out ranked as the 13th seed. The reason this is controversial is because Alabama has three losses while Notre Dame only has two and Miami lost to two unranked opponents while Notre Dame’s two losses came to teams both in the CFB playoffs.
Starting with the case for whether Alabama should be in or should not, Alabama’s third loss came in the SEC championship game against Georgia who is a top three team in the playoffs. Essentially the argument is that you can not punish a 10-3 Alabama team for their third loss when it came in a championship game and since they had beaten Georgia earlier in the season. Notre Dame loyalists however argue that they should be dropped since Alabama should’ve just won the game against Georgia and that their third loss should have been treated harsher than it was. Notre Dame argues that they should be in the playoffs over Alabama for this reason.
Moving onto Miami’s reason to be in or out of the playoffs, Miami actually beat Notre Dame during the first week of the season so when it comes to who is better head to head Miami has the edge, also the ACC championship was very weak this year and the winner was a 8-5 Duke and the committee can not put in a five loss team so the ACC needed a representative and Miami was that representative. However, since Miami did not play in the ACC championship game they should not have made the playoffs because of their two unranked losses that prevented them from winning or even making the ACC championship. The committee ultimately valued that head to head matchup more than the ranked wins versus ranked losses between the two teams.
Regardless of who made the playoffs it will be very interesting to see who ultimately comes out on top of the CFB world this season. As well as how for years to come how coaching changes will affect the season and who we will potentially not make the playoffs when maybe they should be under the 12 team format.
With all this said, the CFB season has been a great one with many twists and turns coming down to the last day of the season and we can only wait and see what these playoffs and seasons to come have to offer.