College Football’s Obsession With Merit and Hatred of the Underdog

The expanded playoff has brought opportunity to those previously denied as promised, but the sports fans are unimpressed

A stadium clock ticks away as Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard fakes a handoff on a read option play and casually strolls into the endzone untouched. His team goes up 27–3, and with that the dream of the Indiana Hoosiers shocking the world dies. The Hoosiers were the first underdog casualty of the first round of the expanded college football playoff that was followed by three more underdogs losing rather unceremoniously to superior competition.

In the wake of the losses by Indiana, SMU, Clemson, and Tennessee by an average of 19.2 points, many have questioned whether these teams deserved to be in the College Football Playoff (Indiana and SMU in particular) and would it have been more prudent to prioritize perceived better teams like Ole Miss or South Carolina as opposed to the teams that got in.

This conversation underscores the obsession that the college football public has with merit. A desire to see the most talented team win a championship as opposed to seeing the team that can best navigate the tournament. With the results of the first round, the critics were emboldened with “I told you so” energy to prove the point that Indiana and SMU were bad…