Who doesn’t love a good underdog story?

“Rocky,” “Rudy” and “Hoosiers” are on my Mount Rushmore of sports movies (I’d probably round it out with “Mighty Ducks” or “The Sandlot”). There’s a reason that the 1980 U.S. men’s hockey team beating Russia in Lake Placid was considered one of the great sports stories of all-time.

Underdogs create different storylines and buzz than the favorites do. Stick the underdogs on the big stage and suddenly they become the team that those without a team choose to root for. Underdogs are great for business.

But I’m starting to wonder if the College Football Playoff selection committee sings a different tune on that. It’s not so much that it wants to keep Group of 5 teams out of the Playoff. I believe the right candidate could follow that path to the final four. It’s more about trend that’s evident through the first 4 years of the Playoff.

So far, every Playoff team began the season ranked in the Top 25. Better yet, the lowest preseason ranking of any of the 16 Playoff teams was when 2015 Oklahoma started at No. 19.

In other words, the odds of a preseason unranked team making the Playoff are, well, not good. At all. If your team begins the season outside of the Top 25, good luck. An unprecedented uphill climb awaits.

It’s an ironic trend considering the selection committee prides itself on re-ranking the teams every week. It’s not supposed to be about “jumping past other teams” when everyone is judged on their body of work, and not what a bunch of media members thought about them in the preseason. I think the selection committee has done an outstanding job for the most part, but it seems a bit hypocritical if that’s even a subliminal barrier to Playoff entry.

That brings us to an obvious question. Have any preseason unranked teams even come close to making the Playoff? It’s funny you/I should ask that.

Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Y’all remember the outrage over TCU getting leapfrogged (sorry, couldn’t resist the PUN) by Ohio State in 2014? Guess which team was unranked in the preseason? TCU.

Y’all remember the fire debate over Penn State winning the B1G Championship and getting left out of the field? Take a guess where Penn State began the season in the polls. Trick question. The Lions were unranked.

There are other examples, too. That 2015 Iowa squad lost its first game in the B1G Championship, which ultimately put it at No. 5 in the final Playoff rankings. The Hawkeyes were also unranked to start the season.

The obvious example for that in 2017 was UCF, which also began the season unranked and was basically stuffed in a basement closet by the selection committee.

Am I saying that all of these teams should have made the field? No. But isn’t it interesting that there seems to be an extremely compelling case every year for a preseason unranked team that just misses out on a Playoff berth? I’m starting to think that’s not a coincidence.

While I do believe that the selection committee picks teams based strictly on résumé, maybe being unranked in the preseason adds to the skepticism. It’s not that it couldn’t have happened — TCU was ranked No. 3 heading into conference title week — but in a coin flip situation, I think it hurts the unranked team. This whole “how good are they?” thing lasts way longer for the TCUs of the world than it does for Ohio States. TCU getting blown out would come as less of a surprise than Ohio State.

The selection committee knows that a blowout is bad for business. When Alabama trucked Michigan State in the 2015 Cotton Bowl semifinal, ESPN reportedly had to pay advertisers back a whopping $20 million because of low ratings. Blowouts are costly for the Playoff. That can’t be debated.

What can be debated is if being a preseason unranked team is a true barrier to entry for the Playoff.

There’s a counterargument to that, and one that might’ve already crossed your mind. We all remember that 2014 Mississippi State team. The Dak Prescott-led Bulldogs were unranked to start the season but came in at No. 1 when the first ever Playoff poll came out. Had they kept that up, they obviously would’ve been a lock for the No. 1 overall seed in the first Playoff.

But how did Hail State put itself in that position? The Bulldogs beat three (!) top-8 teams in the first half of their undefeated start to the 2014 season. The “how good are they question?” fades in a hurry with a résumé that loaded. Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, they faded quickly in November and all but confirmed the skepticism that they overachieved to get that No. 1 ranking.

Someone is going to have to truly overachieve for this trend to disappear. They’re going to have to make it so painfully obvious that they deserve a Playoff spot and that what everyone thought about them in the preseason was way off. We’re still searching for the first team who can do that for a full season.

Maybe that’ll get the ball rolling for the next great sports movie.