The NCAA is taking this playoff thing seriously, and it’s about time. No more of this bush league math final ranking stuff. Well there’s still math, but at least it isn’t as arbitrary. Plus, more football!
The committee released its protocol Thursday, and it’s pretty simple stuff. One has to wonder why they didn’t do this about 60 years ago. The release uses a lot of mumbo jumbo to make it sound all fancy, but it’s basically a runoff system until four teams are selected for a semifinal. The bowl games playing host to the semifinals rotate annually between the Peach Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl and Fiesta Bowl.
There are some interesting tidbits though.
“8. Participants. There shall be no limit on the number of teams that may participate from one conference in the playoff semifinals and the associated bowl games.”
Very interesting indeed. I don’t know how they finagled this with the Power Five conferences, but at least they’re saying we want the best teams and we don’t care where they come from. Or they just want to fill this thing with SEC teams. I don’t care, more football.
“9…B. When assigning teams to sites, the committee will place the top two seeds at the most advantageous sites, weighing criteria such as convenience of travel for its fans, home-crowd advantage or disadvantage and general familiarity with the host city and its stadium. Preference will go to the No. 1 seed.”
As a Big Ten guy, I’m a little sad we won’t have the Rose Bowl each year. But this is obviously for the better. It’s kind of hard to get from Illinois to southern California. Plus there was always the disadvantage of playing in the Pac-12’s backyard.
There are also recused members for the voting process. Basically if a committee member went to the school, they can’t vote on it but can still give factual information about it.
Oh, and Condoleezza Rice is one of the committee members. Don’t know how I forgot Condi was saving college football, but it’s obvious she’s gearing up for a 2016 presidential run. All the other candidates can talk about how they turned the economy around or want to be hard on terrorism or have the last name Clinton or Bush. Doesn’t matter. Condi saved football. You think that won’t register? She’s putting butts in seats and voters in the booth.
#Condi2016 all day.