Labor Day weekend is one of the best and most exciting sports weekends of the year, as college football gets underway in earnest. In any typical year, you’ll get some noteworthy matchups to kick off the season, and 2025 was no exception.

Perhaps the most exciting game of the season was Miami’s 27-24 win over the Notre Dame Fighting on August 31. The Hurricanes physically controlled the Irish for most of the game and held off a late rally from the Irish with a swarming defensive effort to run out the clock and claim victory.

One might think that Miami would be rewarded for scheduling and beating the Irish to start off the season. Think again. The committee has had a chasm between the Canes and Irish since the first rankings came out, and it remains wide enough such that they say head-to-head results don’t yet matter.

And in doing so, they’re giving Miami and every other team in the country zero incentive to play a marquee opponent early in the season.

The CFP committee’s handling will only serve to discourage notable non-conference matchups going forward

The Hurricanes’ win over the Fighting Irish has been discounted based on how the season has gone along. The committee clearly appears to be impressed with the Irish’s level of play since dropping their first two games against ranked teams (including at home to Texas A&M), and they’ve even gone so far to say that their loss to Miami is more impressive than Miami’s losses to two 7-3 ACC teams (Louisville and SMU). The absurdity of that argument needs no further explanation.

The committee has also expressed concern with how Miami played in the middle of the season, and despite matching records and just one notable win for the Irish (by ten against USC), they placed them a staggering eight spots apart in the initial rankings.

Meanwhile, the committee cites Alabama’s week one 31-17 loss to FSU as a reason they’re behind the Irish in the latest rankings despite four wins for the Crimson Tide over teams included in this week’s rankings, including the best win of the season by anyone – a 24-21 win at Georgia.

As such, with no clear and overriding benefit to winning a big game over the weekend (Miami) while only having the risk of a loss (Alabama) that anchors the resume, why would any team ever agree to play a non-conference game again that they could conceivably lose? It offers little upside, and as such, it’s hard to see why any school would schedule those games in the future.

Indeed, conference scheduling rules are now pushing at least one Power Four out of conference game to go with new nine-game conference schedules, but matchups with the Purdues and Stanfords of the world would just as well check those boxes.

It’s apparently mainly about how you lose and not whether you win – particularly early on – with this committee. And if that standard continues, you could see early season college football slates eventually become a lot less interesting and fun over time. And that’s a losing proposition for everyone who loves the sport.