College Football Playoff: 5 biggest flaws of the current playoff system

4. Conference championships don’t seem to matter as much

While it makes the most sense that the committee would select solely conference champions to play for the coveted National Championship, that has not been the case.  On two separate occasions, a non-conference champion was admitted into the playoff bracket. As a result, a well-deserving conference champion was given the boot.

Take last year for example, when Alabama was granted a playoff spot despite not being the outright winner of its division, let alone the SEC. However, the Crimson Tide winning the national title turned out to be an unpredictably successful outcome on the committee’s part. The other was Ohio State in 2016, but more on that later.

As it turns out, seven of the eight teams that have advanced to the National Championship game acquired sole possession of first place in their respective championships. The aforementioned Alabama team is the only anomaly of that bunch.

The above statistic points to a developing trend of which teams who win their conferences tend to fare well in the playoff. I’m a proponent that conference champions should be rewarded for their efforts of going through a grueling gauntlet that is a college football season. Subsequently, these teams should have priority when it comes to a playoff spot.