‘College GameDay’ strawman complaints about focus on wins is why college football is so weird

In pretty much any other sport, a conversation around how we shouldn’t put so much value on wins would sound like the rantings of a crazy person.

In college football, downplaying the value of wins has become the mantra of the sport’s power brokers. And ESPN’s college football analysts have been leading that charge for some time now.

On Saturday, the first College GameDay of the 2025 season took roughly 90 minutes to reach a segment in which everyone on the panel argued that we shouldn’t value wins as much as we do.

“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

“There’s this outside noise, I think, with social media,” said Kirk Herbstreit. “Outsized noise when it comes to ‘This team has 10 wins. This team has 11 wins. This team only has nine wins.’ I think people really focus on the wins.”

“I think people really focus on the wins,” as a complaint, is one of the funniest things a person talking about sports can say. Herbstreit has long been an opponent of small schools and non-power conference schools having a chance to compete, so it’s not exactly out of nowhere.

On paper, they should like crazy people. The variances in strengths of schedule can indeed be significant and notable in the sport, but it often feels as though these discrepancies are overhyped in the name of ensuring that schools from specific conferences don’t get left out of the dance.

The funniest part was using Saturday’s Texas-Ohio State game as an example of the kind of thing that we should be doing more of, as if we don’t have games like this every season. Every college football season is chock-full of major matchups between schools like this, despite what college football pundits try to tell you.

Additionally, Texas and Ohio State have never been penalized for playing these types of nonconference games, so it’s unclear what the actual issue is. What is this strawman they’ve created?

They make it sound like the SEC and Big Ten get screwed every year when the truth is that the schools they’re complaining about are the ones at a distinct disadvantage, even before the sport’s most important voices get on ESPN and complain about them.

And this is a message that echoes what many people on the show said before and during last season’s College Football Playoff, which included complaints about how Indiana and SMU made it, but a three-loss Alabama was left out. It is an argument made in service of the No. 12 team, which is hardly worth the substantial airtime the issue is given.

Additionally, the GameDay crew portrayed this as a crisis without a clear answer, even though the CFP had just changed the rules to make it easier for teams with more demanding schedules and more losses to qualify for the playoff over other teams. This is a problem that already has a solution.

While they might not like it, it is always worth noting that ESPN owns the media rights to the CFP and has a multi-billion-dollar interest in ensuring it includes the most attractive games possible. That’s not to say GameDay’s talent is out there towing the company line, but the lines they are offering sure do fit well with ESPN’s bottom line.