Kirk Herbstreit says Tulane, James Madison took away Playoff spots from Texas, Notre Dame
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Kirk Herbstreit didn’t beat around the bush during his Nonstop podcast with fellow college football analyst Joey Galloway earlier this week.
With the first round of the 2025 College Football Playoff out of the way, complete with the expected blowout losses by Group of 5 teams Tulane and James Madison to Ole Miss and Oregon, respectively, Herbstreit came out and said it. He believes that Tulane and James Madison, despite the commendable campaigns both had this fall, effectively took away the Playoff spots that programs like Texas and Notre Dame deserved.
Herbstreit just wants the best 12 teams to end up in the Playoff, and he doesn’t believe that happened with the inclusion of Tulane and James Madison.
“A lot of these guys who are freshmen in the smaller conferences, they put on a big year, they enter the portal, they’re gone. So, as much as we love the Boise State stories and the BYU and the TCU and some of the stories over the years, they’ve been great,” Herbstreit said. “I think it’s a different era when you watch Tulane and JMU, who end up taking (Playoff) spots from the Texas’s of the world, the Notre Dames of the world. If the goal, again, is to have the best 12 teams … I want the best games.”
But Herbstreit didn’t just rant about who should’ve been in and who should’ve been out. He actually gave a solution to the problem he sees in the selection process.
“We work all year from late August to the end of the year. My theory is just rank the teams at the end of the year,” Herbstreit said. “If a Group of 5 team qualifies and they’re in that ranking, obviously they qualify. They’re in. If they don’t qualify in whatever the ranking is — right now, it’s 12 teams — then they’re out.
“There should be no AQ for a Group of 5 under the current model. A lot of the better players from this division are leaving, and we just don’t have some of the powerhouse Group of 5 programs anymore in that region, in that level. They’ve joined power conferences.”
But for now, Herbstreit and anyone who criticizes the system knows this is what we have right now in determining the 12 teams who make the Playoff. Herbstreit would just like to see it all fixed and as quickly as possible.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
