College Football Playoff: Trading Computer Error For Human Error

The championship in college football has changed for the near future! The terrible Bowl Championship Series has been eradicated and a more simple-named championship will take its place. The College Football Playoff begins this football season and will include the top four teams in the country. Those four will battle it out until one team is left standing holding the College Football Trophy? The question now is were the BCS rankings that determined the top two teams really that bad? Did most of the teams ranked third really have a reason to be upset they were not in the championship game?

I was at the 2014 SEC Media Days this year in Hoover, Alabama, and the playoff was discussed to all media members in attendance. There was a lot of talk about the committee members and how they would determine the four teams to play in the playoff and how this was better for the game. The committee intends to choose their four playoff teams using these three parameters: strength of schedule, head-to-head comparison of common opponents, and did you win your conference championship.

You can go to collegefootballplayoff.com and check out all the info for yourself on these committee rankings, but I'll lay it out here. Each committee member will make up a list of 25 teams they think are the best in the country in no particular order. The teams that are listed on three of the members' lists will make the cut and teams will be narrowed down until there are rankings. Basically, the College Football Playoff will be chosen from a list of committee members who range from athletic directors, reporters, former players and coaches, and former Secretary of States. (Tyrone Willingham is on the committee.....why?). These members, who some are still working at colleges who will be fighting for a spot in the playoff, will be asked to choose teams without bias or outside influence.


Which begs the question, were the BCS rankings really that bad?

Last year Auburn and Alabama were clearly the top two teams and deserved a right at the National Championship. Alabama and Michigan State were third and fourth respectively in the rankings last year, which would have been an entertaining playoff.
(1) Florida State would have played (4) Michigan State, and (2) Auburn would have played (3) Alabama (even though they just played one of the better college football games of the year).

Even with all of the computer rankings that went into the BCS, the rankings usually got it right. There have been four occasions where the BCS system failed (2004, 2009-2011), and those years were fails because there were so many undefeated teams the computers were left to make the decisions of who was the best undefeated team from the bunch.

I always thought it would have been a good idea to just use the BCS rankings to form playoff seedings. That would eliminate any bias or outside influence the committee could feel or endure.

We will have to see how these rankings will look when they are first released on October 28th of this year. The Nation will either agree on the list of teams, or start crying over the team ranked fifth, like they do every year when the NCAA basketball tourney expands.


BUT, we can all agree on one thing. RIP Brad Edwards' job

Sincerely yours,
Alty