​MADISON, WISCONSIN – NOVEMBER 22: Head coach Bret Bielema of the Illinois Fighting Illini watches as his team faces the Wisconsin Badgers at Camp Randall Stadium on November 22, 2025. A life coach might tell you not to care too much about others’ opinions, that self-worth should come from within and that true confidence is internal. In most situations, that’s sensible advice. But the Miami Hurricanes’ leap over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the rankings to claim the final spot in the 2025 College Football Playoff—without either team playing a game—made me rethink that idea: sometimes what people think does matter a lot. Notre Dame chose to bow out of any bowl game, lamenting their misfortune, while Miami capitalized on the situation, winning three more games, earning about $20 million in appearance compensation, and advancing to the National Championship game.
There are valid arguments about how the committee arrived at its final decision, and plenty of points to consider. Yet there is no single rule, record, or statistic that definitively explains the outcome. The only certainty is that the committee selected Miami over Notre Dame. As an Illini fan, that trend worries me—not because I believe the Hurricanes’ preference has anything to do with Illinois football, but because I doubt that subjective decision-making will work in Illinois’ favor.
The evidence is harder to ignore when looking at the season’s end. Despite a Music City Bowl victory over Tennessee in Nashville, the Illini finished 9-4 but were omitted from the final AP Top 25 poll. While I strive to set aside my orange-and-blue bias, the deeper I dive into those final rankings, the more unfavorable Illinois’ picture appears. There are numerous statistical angles to illustrate this point, but a straightforward metric makes the bias clear: ESPN’s Strength of Record (SOR) evaluates a team’s performance against the difficulty of its schedule, independent of past seasons or preseason forecasts like the Football Power Index (FPI). It simply measures results against a universal baseline. In the Big Ten, four teams finished 2025 at 9-4, and their SOR rankings nationally looked like this: 16. Iowa, 18. Illinois, 19. Michigan, 20. USC. Yet, in the final AP Poll, the standings looked very different.