College Football Playoff primer: What to know before first rankings – CBSSports.com
After two months of human polls and media speculation of playoff rankings, college football will now hear from the only people whose voices matter. The College Football Playoff (CFP) committee releases its first weekly rankings Tuesday night.
“I don’t envy them at all,” said Robert Hill, chair of the Football Championship Subdivision committee that picks 24 teams for the FCS playoffs. “It probably will be easy to pick 1 and 2, but you’re going to have enough teams with one loss that you’ve got to get down into the minutiae to determine the best teams, however that’s defined.”
Anyone who tells you they know how this committee will make its picks is guessing. The selection process will be similar to how the NCAA men’s basketball committee picks 68 teams, but there is no precedent for how football will select only four teams.
Here is what we do know:
What criteria are supposed to be considered?
Conference championships, strength of schedule, head-to-head competition (if it occurred) and comparing outcomes of common opponents (without incentivizing margin of victory). The selection committee’s protocol states the criteria “must be aligned with the ideals of the commissioners, Presidents, athletic directors and coaches to honor regular season success while at the same time providing enough flexibility and discretion to select a non-champion or independent under circumstances where that particular non-champion or independent is unequivocally one of the four best teams in the country.”
Translation: Be prepared for loud debate over conference champion vs. strength of schedule. Will the committee try to send a message that scheduling tough nonconference games will be rewarded? Are the four best teams being chosen based on the so-called eye test, the best résumé or a combination of both?
Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio has already said he thinks the Big Ten champion should be in the playoff if it’s a one-loss team. Critics of that approach say teams should be judged individually on their own merits, not simply based on conference affiliation.
Mark Dantonio has already begun stumping for his Spartans. (USATSI)
Do the AP and coaches polls matter?
They’re not supposed to matter. In fact, committee members are specifically instructed to discredit polls where there are rankings before competition has started. That means the AP and coaches polls aren’t supposed to have much influence on the committee. But certainly, committee members could be influenced by them.
Current polls have not incorporated the value of conference championships and strength of schedule like the sport wants, according to the CFP committee protocol. The document states, “Teams that have won head-to-head competition and championships are sometimes ranked behind non-champions and teams that lost in head-to-head competition. Nuanced mathematical formulas ignore some teams who ‘deserve’ to be selected.”
What’s the process for ranking teams?
It’s not like polls, where people rank their top 25 teams and then create an average. Similar to the basketball selection committee, the football process will be a series of voting ballots regarding pools of teams being considered.
Twenty-five teams will be ranked because, well, America is conditioned to a top 25 and the committee will be assigning teams to the other four rotating bowl games associated with the playoff. Unlike in the Bowl Championship Series, the CFP has no limit on the number of teams by conference that may participate in the semifinals or the associated bowls.
Which committee members must recuse themselves?
A committee member who is currently paid by a school cannot participate in any votes involving that particular team. The recused member can only answer factual questions, but can’t be present during any discussion regarding that team’s selection or seeding. The recused members:
Air Force: Mike Gould
Arkansas: Jeff Long
Clemson: Dan Radakovich
Nebraska: Tom Osborne
Southern California: Pat Haden
Stanford: Condoleezza Rice
West Virginia : Oliver Luck
Wisconsin: Barry Alvarez
Archie Manning would have been recused from Ole Miss votes. But last week, Manning announced he’s leaving the committee this year due to upcoming knee surgery that will prevent him from traveling. The committee will be down a person this year at 12 members.
How will we know the committee’s rationale on picks? Unless individual committee members reveal their opinions, we’ll never know how each person votes on secret ballots. Committee chairman Jeff Long, the AD at Arkansas, will discuss the committee’s picks each Tuesday with ESPN.
Hill, the chair of the FCS football committee, questions why the CFP is releasing rankings each week. The FCS ranks teams internally on a weekly basis. By revealing rankings publicly each week, the CFP committee “kind of boxes yourself in as to how you explain your way out of it at the end,” Hill said. “So and so may be playing much better at the end and really should be in, but because you ranked them so far down to start with, you don’t get to move them up.”
Organizers of the CFP say the weekly rankings are to condition the public on the committee’s thinking without blindly revealing the final — and only relevant — rankings on Dec. 7. Plus, ESPN paid an awful lot of money for the playoff and gets an extra evening of programming away from NFL Sundays and Mondays.
Will there be controversy?
Must you ask? Of course. In a way, college football leaders love outrage and have always embraced debate. It means people are talking.
Word of advice: Don’t accept one week — or even one year — of rankings as gospel for the committee’s overriding criteria. Committee members will rotate off, generally after three-year terms, and new opinions could emerge with new members and as the committee’s thinking evolves over time.
The NCAA tournament has 30 years of seeded brackets and Rating Percentage Index data since 1981 for the public to develop well-informed opinions of the basketball committee’s preferences. There is literally no precedent for a four-team college football bracket until now.
The good news is there are now two semifinal games to help decide on the field who reaches the championship game. But sure, the fine line for picking between say teams 3, 4, 5 and 6 for two playoff spots figures to become the most debated selection process in all of sports.
“I really think four teams is not going to be enough for the appetite of the American public,” Hill said. “They’ll be pushed to go to eight. I don’t see it staying at four very long. There’s too much money involved, too much demand from the public and alumni.”
For now, it’s four. Let the outrage officially begin.
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