It was not that long ago that what people loved about college football was that it was the one American sport where the only thing that mattered was winning.
You had 11 (eventually 12) games to prove you were the best team. If you lost just once, you were probably out of the conversation for the national title. If you lost twice, you knew that you were going to have to settle for being happy with your Sugar Bowl or Cotton Bowl berth. If you lost three times, well, there’s always next year.
Those days have long since passed as the college football postseason expanded. Conference championship games upended the status quo. The BCS brought in the computers. And the College Football Playoff has essentially made it so any (Big Ten or SEC) team with two losses or fewer remains in the running.
That desire to offer safe haven for teams with multiple losses got kicked up a notch last year when three-loss Alabama was left out of the CFP while 11-1 Indiana and 11-2 SMU got in despite playing weaker schedules. This was the last straw in many ways, as the sport’s power brokers demanded marquee names for those coveted CFP games. So ESPN’s most prominent college football names went to bat (as they usually do) to demand change. The SEC and Big Ten complained that their mediocre teams were being left out. The CFP listened and changed its formula to value schedule over on-field results.
None of this is to say that who you play isn’t important. There is value in examining the strength of schedule, and sometimes tough decisions must be made between an 11-1 team that played cupcakes and a 10-2 team that played powerhouses.
But the propaganda push that ESPN and other college football media partners are pushing to devalue the efforts of non-blue blood programs in support of propping up the SEC, Big Ten, and other powerhouses is bordering on Trumpian these days.
Even this past Saturday, College GameDay took a brief break from celebrating Lee Corso so that its entire panel could drive home the notion that who you play is more important than if you win games. It’s very amusing when the people who would bemoan participation trophies fight so hard to ensure that teams with multiple losses get into the playoffs over teams that actually won the football games they played.
“We would have more matchups like this if we had a system that rewarded wins as much as losses. The current system that we have right now sort of penalizes you more for a loss than you get rewarded for a great win.”
College GameDay talks Texas-Ohio State, schedules, & the CFP. pic.twitter.com/wf0sSi8exo
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 30, 2025
On Sunday, ESPN updated its Football Power Index (FPI) college football rankings, which aim to provide a “measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward for the rest of the season.” The index has already been criticized for being “rigged” and “fishy” due to its top-heavy composition, which is heavily weighted towards Big Ten and SEC schools.
Before Saturday, Texas was No. 1. They ended up playing OSU well on the road, but they still lost the game. They’re now 0-1.
After their loss, the revised FPI had Texas at… No. 1.
Hey ESPN FPI, I wasn’t serious. It was only a joke!https://t.co/pVlFeMl8Vv pic.twitter.com/8aBdJenSbY
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) August 31, 2025
It’s not just ESPN. Many of college football’s insiders and mainstream media members have also bought into this narrative, suggesting that winning is no longer as important as it once was. In a way, it’s a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg scenario. College football has shown what it values, and media members respond by informing people about which teams are considered the best according to those values, which then makes them appear to also value things like scheduling over wins. Again, it’s not to say there aren’t interesting conversations to be had around this, but the narratives have been skewed too far in one direction. And the people pushing the narrative have forgotten they’re doing so on behalf of the sport’s power brokers, not the sport itself.
On paper, we all understand the push-pull between schedule and results in college football. But you’ll never convince me that the intense narrative push to devalue winning games isn’t extremely bananas and, quite frankly, un-American.
About Sean Keeley
Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Managing Editor for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.