There will be fans of Alabama, South Carolina, Ole Miss, and even Miami, beating their chests and pounding their keyboards and shouting to everyone who will listen that Indiana losing to Notre Dame - and never seriously being competitive - was proof positive that their school deserved inclusion into the College Football Playoff instead.
But that's foolishness. It did prove something, but not that.
It proved that expanding the playoff was a mistake to begin with and further cemented that there will never be 12 worthy teams in the playoff. It proved that playing the regular season games and conference championships was all for nothing, really.
Because Indiana still got to go to the playoff even though they never really beat anyone. They had a weak SOS and played one Top-25 team all season long and got blown out.
But it's not just Indiana. Texas, Penn State, and SMU played in de-facto playoff games and lost, but still gained inclusion because the thing about a 12-team playoff is that it has to have 12 teams.
Texas got a gift from Greg Sankey in an easy transition to SEC life with the weakest schedule in the conference. The Longhorns get to compete for a national championship despite losing two games to the same team. Texas lost to Georgia at home and at a neutral site, but we have to pretend that if the two matched up for a third time in what would have to be the national championship, the Longhorns are a deserving champion for going 1-2 against the Bulldogs.
Penn State had its opportunity to prove it deserved a chance to play for a title in a neutral site matchup with Oregon with the Big Ten on the line. The Nittany Lions lost.
SMU skated by on a weak ACC slate and then lost to three-loss Clemson in the ACC Championship.
The last time we saw Ohio State, they were losing to 7-5 Michigan at home to knock themselves out of the Big Ten race, but somehow not the national title race.
Tennesse lost two games - one to a 6-6 Arkansas and the other by two touchdowns to Georgia.
Clemson won the ACC but tripped up three times in the regular season. The Tigers got routed by Georgia in the season opener and lost home games to both Louisville and South Carolina.
Arizona State won the Big 12, but they lost to Texas Tech and 5-win Cincinnati. The new system told us that's good enough for a bye.
Boise State played a weak schedule, but they were extremely competitive in a road loss to No. 1 Oregon early in the season. I can live with them being in the playoff, though most thumb their noses at teams from non-Power-4 leagues.
In reality, four teams was often too many. We could have expanded to six teams and kept some semblance of respectability. There have been years when five or six teams deserved a shot with last season being a prime example.
There will never be a year when there are 12 worthy teams. Instead of arguing about elite teams for the fourth and final spot or even the seventh and final spot, we're stuck arguing over flawed teams that don't deserve to be in the discussion for a championship anyway.
Even though Indiana's performance in South Bend was proof positive of that, it won't change a thing. The expanded playoff produces more money, and money is all that has ever mattered. That's why the playoff will expand again and we'll be stuck arguing the worthiness of teams ranked 15th-20th and why they might deserve inclusion.
The media will continue caping for it and pretending that this playoff is something special when in reality everyone knows it isn't and most of these games are unlikely to be competitive.
This current system is in no way a better way of determing a champion than the BCS was.
But keep pretending, smiling, and waving like everything is okay. When the novelty wears off in a few years and TV ratings drop and fans can't afford to spend money on tickets to games anymore because all of their extra money is tied up in NIL collectives, maybe we'll wake up and recognize that college football has a big problem.