{"id":366943,"date":"2025-12-24T05:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T05:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/366943\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T05:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T05:38:09","slug":"kirk-herbstreit-joey-galloway-blast-ridiculous-automatic-qualifiers-for-g5-teams-in-college-football-playoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/366943\/","title":{"rendered":"Kirk Herbstreit, Joey Galloway blast ‘ridiculous’ automatic qualifiers for G5 teams in College Football Playoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past two weeks, the Group of Five has taken heat from college football fans and media alike after No. 20 Tulane<\/a> and No. 24 James Madison<\/a> made this year\u2019s College Football Playoff only to lose to No. 6 Ole Miss<\/a> and No. 5 Oregon<\/a>, respectively, by a combined 48 points in their first-round matchups last Saturday. At the same time, other prominent Power Four programs like Texas<\/a> and Notre Dame<\/a> were left out of this year\u2019s CFP after making it a year ago.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s led some college football pundits to call for Group of Five programs to be excluded from future Playoffs. Of course, it\u2019s not the fault of the Group of Five \u2014 let alone Tulane and James Madison individually \u2014 that they were included after qualifying as two of the five highest-ranked conference champions following the conclusion of Championship Weekend.<\/p>\n

Instead, ESPN analysts Joey Galloway and Kirk Herbstreit want to see a more egalitarian approach to selecting future College Football Playoff teams. Rather than including specific qualifiers for conference champions or a set number of automatic bids for specific conferences, only the sport\u2019s highest ranked teams make the CFP field, be it 12 or 16 teams. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter who won the ACC. It doesn\u2019t matter who won the Big Ten, who won the SEC. It doesn\u2019t matter who won anything,\u201d Galloway said in Monday\u2019s episode of their Nonstop podcast<\/a>. \u201cWhat we\u2019re going to do, at the end (of the regular season), the top-ranked 16 teams, boom, you\u2019re in (the Playoffs). It eliminates all of the conversations. You\u2019ve added another one next season with the Notre Dame (memorandum of understanding), \u2026 why?\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the Fighting Irish\u2019s Playoff snub on Selection Sunday, Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua revealed a MOU the program signed with the CFP last Spring would guarantee it a Playoff bid<\/a> so long as it\u2019s ranked in the Top 12 of a 12- or 14-team field beginning in 2026. That means, if a similar scenario plays out next season, the 11th-ranked Irish would get the CFP\u2019s final at-large bid over No. 10 Miami even with a head-to-head loss in Week 1. The ACC champion, in this year\u2019s case an unranked Duke, would also be guaranteed a Playoff bid over a second Group of Five champion. <\/p>\n

Kirk Herbstreit blasts Notre Dame having MOU guarantee with CFP: \u2018They shouldn\u2019t need that\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThey shouldn\u2019t need that,\u201d Herbstreit said about Notre Dame\u2019s MOU. \u201cIf they\u2019re good, they\u2019re ranked, they\u2019re good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Galloway then doubled-down, calling out recent proposals by the Big Ten that involve guaranteeing the Power Four leagues a set number of automatic qualifiers in future Playoff formats. The Big Ten\u2019s \u201c4+4+2+2+1+1\u201d proposal would give the Big Ten and SEC four AQ bids apiece, while limiting the ACC and Big 12 to two bids apiece.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything I hear for the future always involves these conversations involves the SEC gets X amount, the Big Ten gets X amount, which is going to be equal to the SEC. Then we divvy up what\u2019s left for these other conferences. \u2026 Let\u2019s eliminate every qualification,\u201d Galloway suggested.<\/p>\n

At this point, Herbstreit shifted gears and offered another option for the Group of Five \u2014 their own Playoffs similar to what takes place in lower divisions. <\/p>\n

\u201cLet them have their own championship 16-team Playoff,\u201d Herbstreit added. \u201cWe celebrate it, we televise it, we hype it. If one of them qualifies to get into the (CFP), then you put them in. The rest of the teams have their own Playoff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, given the millions of dollars at stake with the College Football Playoff \u2014 both James Madison and Tulane received $4 million apiece for simply making this year\u2019s field \u2014 however future formats look, it will remain the end-all, be-all for FBS teams, be they from the Power Four or Group of Five.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past two weeks, the Group of Five has taken heat from college football fans and media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-366943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}