The Hotline mailbag publishes weekly. ..
. Please note: Some questions have been edited for clarity and brevity. On a 1-to-5 scale, where is Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark’s concern level about losing an automatic bid to the College Football Playoff when the Army/Navy game happens? There’s a lot of football still to be played, but both service academies play Notre Dame.
If one or both beat the Irish ...
— @kingcoug56 My hunch is Yormark has, at most, mild concern about the state of play regarding the CFP selection and seeding outlook. But the new system is confusing for fans, so let’s address the format first, then the specifics of the Big 12 situation relative to the Group of Five, which, of course, includes the academies. The 12-team event includes five automatic bids that are assigned to the five highest-ranked conference champions.
The rules don’t distinguish between the Power Four and the Group of Five conferences, but the presumption is the Power Four winners would claim four of the five bids, with one left for the highest-ranked team in the Group of Five. There is one way for the Big 12 to be excluded from the automatic bid process altogether: If the conference champion is ranked behind the winners of the ACC, Big Ten, SEC and two Group of Five leagues. If the Big 12 champ has three losses, Boise State is 12-1 and either Army or Navy is 13-0, then the Big 12 would be at risk of getting shut out.
However, that scenario is extremely unlikely — to the point .
