The CFB Playoff has released their 'procedure' for selecting teams.
1. Each committee member will create a list of the 25 teams he or she believes to be the best in the country, in no particular order. Teams listed by more than three members will remain under consideration.
2. Each member will list the best six teams, in no particular order. The six teams receiving the most votes will comprise the pool for the first seeding ballot.
3. In the first seeding ballot, each member will rank those six teams, one through six, with one being the best. The three teams receiving the fewest points will become the top three seeds. The three teams that were not seeded will be held over for the next seeding ballot.
4. Each member will list the six best remaining teams, in no particular order. The three teams receiving the most votes will be added to the three teams held over to comprise the next seeding ballot.
5. Steps No. 3 and 4 will be repeated until 25 teams have been seeded.
Some other interesting comments:
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.
People, not mathematical formulas, will pick the teams, and we want to make sure the committee members have all the information they want so they can make the best decisions, said Hancock.
As someone who's a big fan of numbers, this really disappoints me. I fear that 'brand name' teams will get the nod over more deserving underdogs.
The committee will rank the top 25 teams in the country and assign teams to the semifinals and to the Cotton, Fiesta and Peach Bowls in years when they are not hosting semifinal games.
Interesting that the committee assigns these match-ups, not the sponsors. I'm curious to see how these teams are selected; most deserving teams, or best traveling teams?
Comments
so will there be discussion? or just ballot after ballot after ballot? i'm not sure how i would feel about no discussion. i see some positive but also some negative to that approach.
I dont fully agree with how theyre going about it, but we all knew there would be growing pains with a new system. Lets just see how it goes with this first go round
I would like to see it broken down throughout the season some way. So the fans have an idea of where they stand. I wonder if this will spawn many new polls that may become relavant if a committee member endorses it.
What an interesting and ultimately exciting time for college football!
The corruption on this voting will make you wish we still had the BCS. We will never make this playoff the way it is. Defensive battles aren't flashy enough. The talking heads on ESPN are going to have far more influence over this than we want to admit.
wow, that's rather paranoid. I think the selection committee will probably be more honest than any other polls, which will help us way more than the BCS ever did (remember, 2/3s of that formula were human components, and the other 1/3 was a bunch of black-box computer programs). At least this one they will be answering questions every week and explaining themselves. That'll give us some accountability. Lets wait and see before panicking.
Completely disagree
This committee is made up from representatives of their own conferences, who are going to be voting based on the perceptions of their own conferences and doing what helps their own conferences. The ACC only has one representative that has ties to the conference, while there will be numerous members like former Big East Commissioner Mike Trangese who will have an agenda to bury the conference out of spite. Who is the rep for the ACC? Yep, Ron Wellman... who we all know from the past has always given Virginia Tech a fair shake when he was our rep on the NCAA Basketball Committee. (for those of you who aren't aware, in the year of our biggest snub, I believe it was 2008... he was interviewed afterwards and asked about our resume, and replied "well, they don't have any big road wins, so it was an easy decision" or something along those lines... Fact of the matter was, we had something like 4 Top 50 road wins that year, and he never bothered to learn it. And this guy was supposed to be the one representing our interests on the committee)
I don't have faith in a human based system. Too many avenues for corruption. With the BCS, people might not have liked it, but it wasn't just arbitrarily picking the Top 2 teams to go to the title game. There was an extensive, transparent formula that everyone knew about before the season even started that was applied to everyone across the board. When you start taking that transparency away, and you start going based on what the masses think instead of what the stats say, you're GOING to screw someone over royally. There is no 'if' about when someone gets the shaft here, its a complete 'when', and you better believe we're going to be ripe for it when its our turn.
They should have kept the BCS rankings and seeded based upon that. This committee is a big step backwards and adds in the inevitable corruption that will occur. I don't like this new committee at all, and now looking to see what the actual process is going to be, I like it even less.
Agree x50000000!
I will say, even the BCS needs to be more transparent. IIRC, one of the math formulas was 'leaked' to the public some years ago, and some statistician found an error. NCAA should welcome scrutiny and criticism to their formula until the get it right.
It wasn't leaked and there wasn't an error in the formula. The Colley Matrix has always been made available and there is a paper on how it works. During data entry a win loss was swapped which happened to make some non real significant ranking swap like #8 and #9. However it did reveal that the computers can be wrong from human error and we can't double check any of them but one.
They should have kept the BCS rankings and seeded based upon that.
bingo.
wow, that's rather paranoid
Just because your paranoid, does not mean they are not after you.
You know, I've heard this said a lot...but paranoia is a state of delusion. If they really were after you, you wouldn't be delusional about them being after you, you would be in a state of heightened caution for very real reasons. Perhaps it's a chicken and egg existential quandary pertaining to the fact that they could be after you and you don't KNOW that they're after you, but you're acting as if they are.
Hmmm...
I think there are more hurdles to our making the playoffs than just committee members' possible prejudices. Let's solve those other things before we worry about that. As for the method of determination, keep in mind that the method of determination under the BCS system changed several times during its' run. I imagine the same will occur here. There's lots of time for further examination this fall...
This is my fear. I think we should do it this way:
Simple and without human bias.
You're exactly right.
The problem wasn't the BCS rankings. The problem was not using the rankings to seed a playoff. I never had a problem with the top teams the BCS rankings produced.
Well, the only problem I had with it was if you couldn't win your Division and play for the Conference Title you shouldn't have been in consideration in the MNC.
True. They could have created a rule to prevent that from happening in the future.
To be honest how many times has there been any real argument that the Top 4 teams aren't the Top 4 teams? Usually 2 or 3 of them are major conference champs or undefeated mid-majors(Boise, TCU, Utah). You can always argue fringe teams.
My big problem with the BCS was human bias. An undefeated mid-major with a marquee win would be left out of a chance at the MNCG if there were two AQ undefeateds and possibly one loss. It showed major bias to traditional powers. It simply needed to not be 1v2, but 1v2v3v4.
It is a tough question to ask:
Team 1:
11 wins over teams outside the top 100
1 win over a top 10 team
Team 2:
6 wins over teams outside the top 100
2 wins over teams 50-100
2 wins over teams 25-50
2 wins over teams 10-25
Team 3:
4 wins over teams outside the top 100
2 wins over teams 50-100
2 wins over teams 25-50
2 wins over teams 10-25
1 win over a top 5 team
1 loss to a top 5 team
it's not black and white IMO. Which team do you pick (IMO team 2 is a given, but between teams 1 and 3)?
But yes, over all I agree, the top 4 in the BCS are usually fairly accurate.
i really like the idea of a playoff... but hate the idea of a selection committee, I would have been happy to just keep the BCS selection process in place, and take the top 4 teams
I'm willing to take a wait-and-see attitude on the selection process. I think regardless of whether it was the BCS method or the Selection Committee method, the real controversy will be the choice of team #4....and why team #5 wasn't team #4.
Remember, there is absolutely no incentive to put anyone in the Top 4 into the playoff. You just know that one year, there will be an undefeated or 1-loss team who isn't as flashy or as big a name as someone else who will be up there at maybe 2nd overall in the country according to the polls, but there will be a big media push to get a 2 loss SEC team in there because everyone arbitrarily claims they played a tougher schedule, and that lesser team will get left out in the cold.
If you don't think that will happen... Utah State was a Top 25 team in 2004 with a 25-2 regular season record. They were completely left out of the NCAA Tournament. The precedent is already there, its just now moving to football as well.
"Utah State was a Top 25 team in 2004 with a 25-2 regular season record. They were completely left out of the NCAA Tournament. The precedent is already there, its just now moving to football as well."
And it will be magnified because there are so few teams, 4 vs 48 (or however many they actually have to pick for hoops, that aren't auto qualified)
This is all just prelude until we get the 8 team playoff. The five main conference champions unless they have 3 or more losses and disqualified (No 2005 FSU or UCONN with 4 losses) and three at large bids. No more than 2 teams from any one conference.
Holy sheet, what kind of common core math problem did they come up with to decide this? I agree with most of the other people on this thread, keep the BCS for ranking and 1-4 make up the playoff. The two years that come to mind when the BCS screwed up was 2004 (undefeated Auburn) and 2011 (LSU-Bama). Other than that it's been pretty legit.
I think 2009 was far worse. Undefeated Texas, Alabama, TCU, Boise, and Cincinnati. 2010 kind of pissed me off with TCU.
I think 2009 would have been the only year that would have sparked some intense controversy over whose 4 and 5.
I dont think the sky is falling with this whole setup. I do agree that I wish there were some younger individuals. Maybe former players and media types that would balance out the good ole boy individuals in the committee. I think that the greatest flaw is that all of the members are in a very similar demographic and likely to think the same way
people keep saying to use the BCS rankings...which were 2/3 human polls with zero accountability and gave zero consideration to whether or not a team won a conference championship. common sense things like when Stanford won the Pac12 as 5th in the BCS while Oregon was 4th can be avoided with a committee...the BCS would have sent the Pac12 runner up.
give the committee a chance. this is not a backdoor, closed room, one weekend thing like the NCAA. they will be releasing polls the last 6 weeks of the season so we (media) can pick them apart and call them to task if things don't make sense. i've even heard they will be available to answer questions and discuss how they are arriving at their polls, etc. i'm not saying it will be flawless, but i can say with high confidence it will not be worse than just taking the top 4 of the BCS...
"which were 2/3 human polls with zero accountability and gave zero consideration to whether or not a team won a conference championship"
it is my understanding that the new panel will be voting in secret, so I'm not really sure your zero accountability statement will change, .. and if people don't consider whether a team won it's conference, I don't see how you can say that people will consider it now... the very flaws you point out will still be there, but in the old system you could tweak the computers, change the polls used, etc ... who will take the blame when the panel screws up? and how will you know which people screwed up and need replaced?... seems to me that the BCS rankings are much more easily tweaked to get a fair outcome
The difference of this 'human system' is that the committee is a cumulative review of the entire season,
rather than a week by week readjustment of teams relative to where they were the prior week, such as the AP and Coaches Polls.
What will be nice is the early loss not being as damaging as a late loss syndrome will go away.
As for committee members, it will be a group effort. What will be most interesting is how
members find and filter their resources. I feel if one strays too much from the norm, they
probably won't last very long . Anyone have any idea how for long members are appointed?
Myth: 1. Each committee member will create a list of the 25 teams he or she believes to be the best in the country, in no particular order. Teams listed by more than three members will remain under consideration.
2. Each member will list the best six teams, in no particular order. The six teams receiving the most votes will comprise the pool for the first seeding ballot.
3. In the first seeding ballot, each member will rank those six teams, one through six, with one being the best. The three teams receiving the fewest points will become the top three seeds. The three teams that were not seeded will be held over for the next seeding ballot.
4. Each member will list the six best remaining teams, in no particular order. The three teams receiving the most votes will be added to the three teams held over to comprise the next seeding ballot.
5. Steps No. 3 and 4 will be repeated until 25 teams have been seeded.
REALITY: Nick Saban picks his own personal Top 25 and the top 4 get into the playoff.