The first round of the 2025 college football playoffs is now behind us. In the blink of an eye, the regular season has flown by. In just a couple of weeks, fans will have to wait for the next season of college football eagerly. 

With each offseason, a change in the landscape of college football is bound to occur. One that many fans and sports pundits alike are calling for is to remove the automatic bid for the Group of Five conferences. This refers to football programs from the Sun Belt, American, Mountain West, Mid-Atlantic and Pac-12.  

However, I disagree with this sentiment. Though the quality of talent is not always the same, teams from these conferences deserve to be represented.  

When the playoffs expanded to 12 teams, it included an automatic bid for at least one team from one of the listed conferences. It’s up to the committee to decide which singular team from one of these conferences is the best of the bunch to compete in the postseason festivities.  

Given the way the rankings and conference championship games shook out, we saw James Madison selected to play Oregon and Tulane against Ole Miss. This caused quite a stir in discussions among fans and analysts. Many felt confident they knew the results of these matchups.  

While they were right to an extent, as both teams got defeated in dominant fashion, I did not see the outcome of last weekend as enough evidence to exclude these teams from future playoffs.  

If we exclude these teams in future iterations of the playoffs, what is even the point of keeping them at the Football Bowl Subdivision level?  

Excluding these teams could destroy those programs. With the rise of name, image and likeness, these teams have found new ways to compete with high-quality programs from the Southeastern Conference or the Big Ten.  

Not allowing them to have an opportunity to compete in the playoffs could have massive ramifications on recruiting. What division one level athlete would ever want to play for a program that won’t ever get a chance to compete in the playoffs?  

Even if it’s a program that puts up 10 or more wins each year or has a history of producing NFL talent, their options would be to go down to the Football Championship Subdivision or still commit to bigger programs like Alabama, Ohio State or Georgia and get buried on the depth chart and still never get a chance to earn a shot at the NFL.  

How do we resolve this issue to make everyone happy?  

Well, a solution that leaves everyone happy simply does not exist. However, expanding the playoffs one more time to 16 or 24 teams might even the playing field just a little more. Bigger programs that didn’t make their conference championship and feel slighted for being left out – because they did not do what they needed to do – can still have a chance, while Group of Five teams also get the same chance.  

The level of success a program can have is a key selling point to a lot of high school football players weighing their options. Allowing the group of five to be represented in the playoff, even in a small capacity, is important for the world of college football to thrive.  

The issue is not the group of five, it’s the current format of the college football playoff. We need to take a step back, re-evaluate what is working and what is not. The landscape of college football is always changing. Perhaps this time period reflects the trial and error it takes to find a balance in a highly competitive sport.  

Excluding a group as a resolution is not an effective one. Fans and pundits would just find another excuse as to why the playoffs are not working. The guys who "get paid the big bucks" need to take a different angle on the issue than what the mainstream discussion has.