The College Football Playoff committee released its first top-25 of the season, and as always that kick-off ranking feels like midnight Black Friday: drama, elbowing and inevitable outrage. The committee has hinted it will lean more on a new "record strength" metric to inject some math into subjective judgment, but ten weeks into a chaotic season there are still so many loose threads that fans and teams alike are holding their breath — and their pitchforks.
A few high-level facts that complicate the early list: only eight teams have beaten more than one of the committee’s current top-25, and several ranked teams are a combined 0-12 against others in that same group. The ACC’s highest team sits outside the top dozen, and no Group of 5 programs made the cut. So while the top-12 playoff chase is the headline, the committee’s early list is already shaping a narrative that will inflame plenty of schools.
Here are the programs already justified — or at least resonating — in their anger.
1) BYU (8-0, No. 7) BYU’s gripe: last season’s committee left the Cougars behind several teams with inferior resumes, and the start of 2024 hasn’t felt like redemption. Compare two anonymous resumes an
