Taking a closer look at the new College Football Playoff

When the 2014 college football season began, everyone had two big questions:

How will this new College Football Playoff system pan out? Will we be sorry to see the BCS gone?

The first question has yet to really be answered, but the second?

I think it’s safe to say just five weeks into this season that we will not be sorry to see the BCS in the rear view mirror.

It’s already clear that this new playoff format has placed even more importance on regular season games than there was before. Coaches already realize that getting to their conference championship game (if they have one…*ahem*…Big 12) will be a big key to having a leg up in the eyes of the selection committee.

The nice thing about this whole playoff deal is the weekly conversation that’s happening across the country and among the media talking heads. Everyone wants to know, who are the Top 4 teams this week?

During the BCS era, the first six weeks or more of the season were spent just talking about rankings, rankings and more rankings. So if we take a closer look a the playoff system and what the selection committee will be considering, what do we find that is different from the BCS.

Most importantly is this – the rankings that have been published since the preseason by Associated Press, USA Today, ESPN and seemingly every other media outlet in the world will have no bearing on the first set of rankings to be released by the selection committee on Oct. 28.

Per the breakdown from the official College Football Playoff website, here is what will be considered by the committee each time they meet and release their rankings:

"Selection Committee members will have a wealth of information including review of video, statistics and their own expertise to guide them in their deliberations. They will emphasize obvious factors like win-loss records, strength of schedule, conference championships won, head-to-head results and results against common opponents. The playoff group has retained SportSource Analytics to provide the data platform for the committee’s use. While the details of the platform have not been finalized, it is anticipated that it will include countless pieces of statistical information for every Football Bowl Subdivision team. It will also include general information such as each team’s opponents’ record and opponents’ opponents’ records. The platform will allow the committee members to compare and contrast every team on every level possible.It should be noted that the committee will not use a single data point such as the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) that is used for NCAA championships."

This means that every FBS team, regardless of conference affiliation or independent status, will get the same consideration for the committee’s rankings.

But is it possible for a group of 13 human beings to completely tune out and give no credence to the published rankings?

Of course not. They all watch TV and read the papers, and will all be aware of who the No. 1 team in the country is at that time, and what the recent movement in the Top 10 might have been, but they are under no obligation to agree with or duplicate those rankings in any way, shape or form.

Then in a fashion similar to the BCS, the committee will release new rankings each week, giving their version of the Top 25. But no computers, no polls, no type of algorithm used at all. Just the eyeball test and deliberation between the committee members.

Here is the calendar for the committee’s ranking releases:

Some of the committee members do have connections, affiliations or even employment with certain schools, and they will all be expected to recuse themselves from any decision or ranking that involves their school. In other words, no worries about Barry Alvarez casting the vote that tilts things Wisconsin’s way, or Pat Haden making sure USC has an extra push.

You can see the entire voting protocol for the committee members here.

Here’s where we start to run into a potential stumbling block for this system.

The stumbling block known as the Power-5 conferences.

Since strength of schedule is going to be one of the talking points for the committee in terms of their rankings, you’ll see less and less Power-5 teams scheduling schools outside of the Power-5 conferences. Right or wrong, the perception is that those are the teams that give the impression of a stronger schedule.

So if a team plays in a so-called “weaker” conference, and none of the Power-5 teams will schedule them, how will they ever get a fair shake with the selection committee?

That is a question that has yet to be answered (although I did attempt it in a new conference alignment plan I cooked up).

But even with some of the obvious questions, there are important points that can be taken away from the new playoff system which make it infinitely better than the BCS or any of its predecessors.

Winning your conference (via championship game or best regular season record) will mean something. Remember the Alabama team that made it to the BCS championship game without even playing in their conference championship? Little chance of that happening now.
No computers, so a loss — even one late in the season — doesn’t necessarily knock you so far down the ladder you can’t recover.
The bowl games that were traditionally meaningful and important still are, in fact, possibly even more. The longtime conference affiliations may be gone, but most of them had already been done away with anyway.
The useless preseason rankings mean nothing. If a team was over-ranked at the beginning of the season and is still lingering around in the rankings because of that, it won’t make a difference to the committee.
There are no automatic qualifiers. Playing in the Power-5 conferences means nothing in the grand scheme. If a Power-5 team isn’t as good as East Carolina, then the Pirates will get the nod.
Voters who either let office assistants fill out their ballots or who throw darts at a board will no longer have an impact on the final standings. The polls are now irrelevant.
Things are settled on the field, not on the motherboard. Four teams enter, one team leaves. Thunderdome hits college football.

While there are certainly going to be some problems, and a little tweaking here and there, this is still the best system we’ve had yet to decide a national champion in college football.

Eventually, when more teams are included, the leaders of the sport will all look back on the BCS, the polls, and every other system that had been used and say, “What in Bear Bryant’s name were we thinking?”

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