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Nov 25, 2020
10:03:58am
NCAARulesDude Walk-on
NCAA compliance coordinator's take on CFP rankings
I've posted here a few times. I am an NCAA compliance coordinator in Texas at a D1 school and am a BYU alum. My main job is providing rules education to coaches, student-athletes, staff, boosters, etc. But, I also get some inside looks at how things work at the conference and NCAA level.

My co-worker who is not LDS or affiliated with BYU in any way has been on the Cougs hype train all year. He asked me yesterday at work if I thought BYU would be in the top 6 and as such should they add a game to try to get into the playoffs. I told him that not only would BYU not be in top 6, they wouldn't be in the top 12. He thought I was nuts and cynical and texted me right when CFP committee ranked the Cougs at 14th aghast at the ranking.

Here's my take of why BYU/any other non-P5 will not be in this year's CFP or ANY CFP in the future:

People talk about the NCAA as if it's one organization that everything flows through. This isn't really the case (I've highlighted this before so sorry for redundancy if you remember my posts from months ago). There are 1,000s of member schools divided between Divisions 1-3. In every single other NCAA sport at every level BESIDES FBS football, there is a playoff/tournament to declare a national champion. This include FCS football which is technically Division 1 (the only NCAA sport that has multiple divisions within the same classification is football). There's a reason it's the "College Football National Champion" or formerly the "BCS National Champion": the winner of FBS football national championship doesn't actually win an NCAA-sponsored national championship.

When people talk about the "NCAA being evil and keeping small football schools out," this is kind of a misnomer; the NCAA doesn't make any money off college football TV rights, bowl games, ticket sales, etc. Rather, CONFERENCES do. As such, the power 5 conferences have aligned to form the Bowl Alliance, then the BCS and now the CFP with the not so subtle intent of ensuring that no group of 5 team EVER plays for a college football national championship and gets a share of the revenue. I read today where Stewart Mandel was saying Cincy has a true chance of making the CFP because of their #7 ranking to which I laughed out loud. Cincy could beat probably any ranked team who would be willing to play them (including BYU) by 60 points and the committee would still put a one loss SEC school over them for "the body of work."

Again, the simple reason is this: money. You don't form an alliance between five conferences to keep all the money in house just to bow down to bad PR. There's a reason nobody talks about P5 conferences in men's basketball: there is (technically) an equal shot for every single D1 school to win the national championship in men's basketball and Gonzaga nearly did it recently.

So...why doesn't the P5 simply break off from the NCAA? The answer again is simple: money. The P5 schools are technically called "autonomy" schools in the NCAA manual. The NCAA gave these "autonomy" schools more discretion to make their own rules that other schools don't get to follow (unless they opt in which isn't reasonable to do at our level because again money) in exchange for staying in the NCAA. Because, as I've explained before, the NCAA as a umbrella organization doesn't care about football (which is what P5 schools were wanting to break off for); it cares about basketball because its contract with CBS sports for March Madness is around a billion dollars EACH year (most of which is kicked back to member schools like ours; it's how we afford to keep doors open along with student fees). Also, let's be bluntly honest: ADs across the country put on a good front about caring about "each student-athlete." They don't. They couldn't care less about women's sports especially. They are more than happy to accept NCAA distributions to fund sports they don't care about.

CFP under NO circumstances will let a G5 in and frankly is in no hurry to expand to 8 because then it'd be harder to keep G5 schools out (though that certainly didn't stop the Bowl Alliance from leaving #5 BYU out). It's almost my belief that CFP would find it hard to swallow to allow both BYU and Cincy even in the NY6 games and they won't unless BYU branches itself out to a school willing to play us and as a Cougar I would pass on PAC 12 schools who cancelled contracts and then want to have us on retainer.

If NY6 games include DO Cincy and BYU, I'd be willing to bet they will play each other. Because the worst possible outcome for the CFP and P5 conferences is BYU and Cincy both beat a one/two loss SEC school or an undefeated PAC 12 school which is HIGHLY likely this year.

So, I haven't read any posts; I'm sure they're mostly angry with a few "rational" people using the talking points of the pundits about SOS etc. The reality is that as Herm Edwards said "hello! You play to win the game!" The only true way to decide if BYU/Cincy/Coastal Carolina could go toe-to-toe with the big boys is to do what every other NCAA sport does.
NCAARulesDude
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CougarInTexas
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NCAARulesDude
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Sep 27, 2021
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