Wow.
Ballsy move. The network folks and bowl sponsors (outside of the playoff bowls) will not be happy. The Committee really needs to pick a standard and stick with it. This year-by-year “how do we fit Alabama in” bullshit is getting old.
This is going to be the norm with the current NIL and transfer portal rules.
At least three Big 12 teams are also declining. They know that they likely wouldn’t have enough players to field a team.
Sure, but they steadfastly do not compete in the ACC, at least not for football (AIUI, all of their other varsity sports now compete in the ACC).
I have a suspicion that a fair number of the committee members aren’t fans of Notre Dame choosing to continue to do their own thing, especially in an era in which the Big Four conferences have consolidated their power in the FBS, and in the playoff structure.
Notre Dame undoubtedly makes more with their network TV deal than the other big teams do, with their shares of their conferences’ deals, but when ND is sitting at 2 losses, and effectively on the bubble, it wouldn’t surprise me if this was an intentional poke at them and their independence.
Big Two conferences
And yet, the deal is that next year, they would have been guaranteed a spot (as would Duke). This year is an aberration and the Committee shit the bed. I really hope Texas A&M destroys Alabama just to put the exclamation point on it. Their ESPN masters commanded that teams from their own conferences dominate and the Committee delivered. College football is rapidly becoming as corrupt as FIFA.
Give the SEC and Big Ten a couple more years to make that official. 
IMO, big-time college football has been very corrupt for decades. The difference is that, in the last decade, between the institution of the playoffs, the transfer portal, NIL deals, and the consolidation of the big conferences, it’s reached a new level.
Fuck Notre Dame. Make up your own reasons or justification but Fuck Notre Dame.
On the other hand, I’m very much looking forward to the design of the “NCAA Peace Prize” trophy to be awarded to Trump at halftime of the National Championship game. 
To @Gatopescado : The Committee literally talked out of both sides of its mouth today. Alabama lost to fucking FSU (and I’m a die-hard 'Nole fan) back at the beginning of the season. But a game played in early September was the deciding factor for Notre Dame? The NCAA is now the Big1$ and the $EC. That’s it. Everyone else is meaningless. You cannot tell me that the Alabama that played yesterday deserves a spot. Hell, Paul Finebaum said exactly that today and he BLEEDS SEC. Why is Alabama always the team with the most losses in the playoff?
Two of them (Kansas State and Iowa State) have just lost their head coaches. That was their excuse, anyway. Conference has fined them each $500k, since now that bowl money won’t be feeding into the conference coffers.
I haven’t heard of a third Big 12 team declining. Who is it?
Baylor and Kansas (5-7 teams but asked anyway because there aren’t enough 6-6 teams to fill all of the slots).
OK, thanks.
FWIW, Alabama (9-3) was not in the playoffs last year.
Everything about D1 college football is corrupt. The schools. The boosters. The staff. The so-called students. The officials. Definitely all of the media. And most definitely the selection committee.
The only thing that would make it somewhat less so would be to actually make it conference championship or nothing for a playoff, with every single D1 conference getting exactly one slot. And no, Notre Dame, no slot for you unless you join a conference already.
I think Munch touched on a big current problem above: conference scheduling. The schools don’t play enough league games and far too often the individual schedules are far too unbalanced (the Texas A&M example).
The eight game conference schedule has been, imho, designed to let schools schedule enough non-conference cupcakes so as to get the minimum number of wins required for bowl eligibility. But if schools no longer care about going to bowls, why not play two more conference games instead?
Edit: yes, fuck Notre Dame regardless
I don’t know about totally corrupt, as in “FIFA style, baby” corruption.
I think American college football is just hampered by the fact they can’t play daily or every other day and just have a Final Four or Frozen Four style tournament that includes 50+ teams. We’d still squabble over the final teams to make it, but not over the top ones.
What is nice about having a big tournament is that the last slots can be filled by less good teams that made a good showing and are just happy to be included…not leaving out good teams because of limitations.
I like football…for the most part. But I do strongly prefer sports that play more often.
I’m glad to see that the playoffs system has killed the end of season debates.
As Yogi Berra would say, its Deja Vu all over again. This board would have these arguments every year. When we had two teams only in the BCS, posters would argue for 4 teams and the teams that #3 and #4 were snubbed. . when there was 4 teams, the #5 team was snubbed and they wanted 8. Now we are at 12 and #13 was snubbed.
No matter how many teams (x) that are in the playoff teams the (x+1)th and (x+2)th teams are going to think that they got snubbed/
Dammit, I know that Wisconsin was only 4-8, but they were looking better at the end of the season, and they deserved a spot!!
/s, if it wasn’t abundantly clear
This is the way. I want to see the champion of champions. Something simple like the champions of the eight largest conferences play in a single elimination tournament. No opinion polls, just: did the team win their conference or not?
I’d be for that in a modified form. The big one is that the conferences called the Group of 5 should have their own championship. Of all the sports teams in all the leagues the world over, the Group of 5 are almost certainly 1st place in the “those teams have no chance at all even though the season hasn’t started yet” competition. Split things up. Once they’re split, then have playoffs that include the conference champions as well as second and third place teams in each conference.* Have tiebreakers like the NFL does to determine 3rd place (head to head, point differential, whatever as long as it’s an objective measure). This should lead to the conferences becoming more even, since talented players would gravitate towards, say a BYU or Houston or Boise State that have a good shot at coming in 2nd or 3rd in the Pac 12 or Big 12 rather than ending up on a perennial 4th or 5th place SEC or Big 10 team.
Yes, that makes 15 teams. Maybe have the 16th be the 4th place team that rotates between conferences. SEC and Conference USA in years ending in 0 or 5, Big 10 and Mountain West in years ending in 1 or 6, etc.