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College Football Playoff's weekly ranking is a bad idea

George Schroeder
USA TODAY Sports
Josh Robinson and Mississippi State figure to be key factors in the initial College Football Playoff Top 25 released Tuesday night.

GRAPEVINE, Texas — On a hat rack just outside the Bluebonnet Room, a dozen white ball caps hung Monday afternoon, each emblazoned with the name of a member of the College Football Playoff selection committee. Jeff Long came up with the idea as a visual reminder: Biases must be checked at the door.

"We're leaving those things outside," said Long, Arkansas' athletic director and the committee chairman, "and we're acting within the best interests of college football."

But is what the committee is doing this week — and for the next five weeks? — good for college football?

On Tuesday, after several hours of deliberations over parts of two days, the initial College Football Playoff Top 25 will be unveiled. CFP executive director Bill Hancock called the occasion historic, and "very cool." During a brief interview session Monday evening, Long described the mood of the meeting earlier that day as "much more intense" than any other time the committee had convened.

"You could feel the seriousness of what we're doing in that room," he said.

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By now, the selection committee members are well acquainted with each other. They know their way to and from the suite of conference rooms, which sit atop a faux Alamo inside the Gaylord Texan Resort. They're familiar with the process by which they'll select teams.

In August, the members participated in a mock selection using data from the 2008 and 2011 seasons. They won't say how those pretend-tournament brackets turned out, which is too bad — because in essence, that's what they're doing this week, too. And the next five after that.

Yeah, their ranking will be official. But what does that mean? With the season only two-thirds complete, does it matter at all which teams populate the top of their poll right now?

Until Dec. 7, it's a pointless exercise.

It's very possible the selection committee will mirror the other polls, crowded at the top with a bunch of SEC teams. Or maybe they'll come up with something radically different. The only certainty is there will be howls from somewhere.

What remains unclear is why the howling must be weekly from now until December. "Bear in mind," Long said, "whatever decisions we make (in the first poll) … those will undoubtedly change."

Like the playoff itself, the method of choosing teams is supposed to represent a complete break from the past. No more human polls and computer rankings mashed together to create a formula that was widely derided.

Instead, a "committee of experts properly instructed," as described by a College Football Playoff position paper, "How to select the four best teams to compete for the college football national championship", will put their bare heads together to produce a superior result. Although the process will be at least as subjective and potentially more controversial than ever, it's probably the best way to choose and seed a four-team tournament, given all of the inequities inherent to college football.

But why now?

Why, in the final days of October, are a dozen people flying to Texas, spending several hours Monday afternoon and several more Tuesday morning, to come up with a Top 25? And then doing it again next week, and the next, until the regular season ends?

Until December, it's a pointless exercise — unless we're talking ratings points.

The weekly Top 25 is TV programming, plain and simple. And if you doubt that, consider the timing. The old BCS formula was released, beginning in late October, every Sunday night. In the last few years, ESPN built a show around it, an unveiling followed by our favorite talking heads babbling about what it all meant and whether they agreed or disagreed.

It was hugely interesting to college football fans. It was also overshadowed on all of those Sundays by the NFL. Monday might make sense — but ESPN already has a little football on Monday night.

So Tuesday it is. In primetime. Every week from now until the end of the regular season, for no good reason — or, on average, $470 million reasons annually over the life of a 12-year contract.

Nothing against must-see TV, but it's not a good idea. By doing a weekly ranking, the selection committee runs the risk of painting itself into a corner.

"We felt like college football fans in general had come to expect a Top 25 ranking," said Long, explaining why they're doing it. "We also said we wanted to provide an opportunity for fans to see what the committee is thinking as the process occurs."

The members have promised they'll start over over each week, from scratch, as though they hadn't met and ranked teams a few days earlier.

It's clear they will spend far more time evaluating teams than media members or coaches ever have in the other polls. They'll have done a lot more research and watched a lot more football. In their meetings, they'll discuss and debate the merits of all sorts of data points. Long said Monday's meeting included "lively, frequent and sometimes pointed" discussion.

In addition, the voting process is more complex than just creating an individual Top 25 ballot, turning it in and then counting up the votes.

Much of the process is modeled after the NCAA men's basketball selection committee. But that committee does not produce interim rankings of any kind. By voting every week, rather than simply at the end of the season — after each team has compiled its full body of work — the Playoff selection members run the risk of getting locked into a poll mentality, where they've got teams slotted into a personal hierarchy and have a hard time reordering them.

It's not easy, once you've created several sets of rankings, to blow up everything and start anew.

And what happens if they really do that?

If, after several weeks of similar rankings — or after the final week — there is sudden change because the committee members decided that Team B's body of work is now better than Team A's? Or Team C is suddenly playing better than both of them? Or whatever?

As an example: Among the official criteria to be factored when considering similar teams is conference championships. As Long noted, most conference titles will be decided on the final weekend.

Uh oh.

College Football Playoff selection committee chair will be asked to explain, and a times defend, his group's decisions.

As the group's spokesman, Long will have to address those kinds of changes, if they occur. Hopefully, as he promised, there will be real transparency, and we'll know how and why the changes occurred. But it still will be incredibly jarring to the public, which is conditioned to incremental shifts in polls, and usually because of losses.

Far better just to meet the final weekend, send out a puff of smoke from the top of that faux-Alamo, and then unveil the four-team bracket.

"We didn't think that would be good for college football," Long said.

Or maybe they could get together now, come out with an official midseason Top 25, then agree to gather again in six weeks for the real show.

Instead, they're locked into this process. On Tuesday, we'll get the first official College Football Playoff Top 25. As Hancock said, it will be historic. Sorta. And if you don't like what you see, that's OK. Keep telling yourself: Only the final poll matters.

Until then, the rankings are just mock selections.

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