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Yesterday marked the final bracket release for the first 12-team College Football Playoff. Personally, I think the first year of an expanded playoff was a smashing success. While some fans and columnists worried an expanded playoff would mean the regular season would become devalued, fans instead were treated to meaningful November games involving Syracuse, Army, BYU, South Carolina, Indiana and Kansas…the sort of games that would have been ignored by casual fans over the last 40 years.

I can also attest, speaking as an Ohio State fan, that losing to Michigan still made me want to contemplate throwing my television onto the Dan Ryan Expressway, even though the Buckeyes will still play in a playoff game and compete for a national title.

I honestly don’t have any major quibbles with the final bracket, although I know some folks in Alabama or part of the SEC State Media Apparatus are quite upset.

Based on the rules of the Playoff, I think this grouping did about a good a job as possible for rewarding regular season success, penalizing losses to lousy teams, not penalizing teams for losing conference championship games, and creating a balanced bracket. I understand the concerns that Oregon, the only undefeated team, has what appears to be a harder path to the championship than Georgia, but what can you do? Alabama appeared to be better than Oklahoma on Nov 23.

Football is weird and not completely predictable! Especially football played by 20-year olds.

Still, even though the expanded playoff improved the stakes for many other regular season games and led to a pretty fair final bracket, I still have one major quibble with the entire enterprise.

Even though the result turned out pretty okay, I think the process was lousy. Not because of anything Playoff Committee Chair Warde Manuel said on TV. But because he was on TV at all.

It’s time to get the athletic directors off the College Football Playoff Selection Committee. And heck, kick them out of all the selection committees while we’re at it.

This year’s committee includes Chet Gladcuk (Navy athletic director), Warde Manuel (AD at Michigan), Mack Rhoades (AD at Baylor), David Sayler (AD for Miami), Carla Williams, (AD at Virginia), and Hunter Yurachek (AD at Arkansas). That means six of the 12 members have day jobs running athletic departments for schools that could be involved in the College Football Playoff. Four other members were former college football coaches (Chris Ault at Nevada, Jim Grobe at Ohio/Wake/Baylor, Gary Pinkel at Toledo/Missouri, and Mike Riley at Oregon State/Nebraska.

The remaining three members: NFL Hall of Famers Randall McDaniel and Will Shields, and Kelly Whiteside, a journalism professor and longtime reporter.

It’s easy to see why many fans would look at this lineup and be concerned about potential bias. After all, half the committee actively works for an FBS university, and most everybody else used to. But I don’t personally see this as the major problem.

Is the College Football Playoff Committee biased? Sure it is! It’s a committee made of human beings with emotional ties and personal connections all over the college football industry. That’s called being a human. It doesn’t matter if we filled the room with the 13 most decorated names at NACTA, the 13 best college football reporters, the 13 smartest bloggers, or the first 13 names from the Chicago Phone Book. That group will be shaped by the experiences, perspectives and biases of those members.

If anything, this particular group may even be better insulated from certain pressures or biases. Do I think Jim Grobe, Chris Ault or Kelly Whiteside gives two craps about what their selections might do for hypothetical TV ratings? Dear reader, I do not.

Still, I think there’s some wisdom in ol’ 1 Thessalonians 5:22, which advises to “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” If you’re trying to build trust in a person or institution, it’s good policy to try and avoid stuff that looks bad or corrupt, even if it actually isn’t. I actually don’t think anybody on the committee would be so hamfisted or shortsighted as to actively try to torpedo a particular school or coach out of personal reasons…but I get why talk-radio hosts and message boards might leap to that conclusion.

That getting rid of active ADs on these sorts of committees may provide a boost in the trust and credibility of the committee is a nice bonus. But it’s honestly not the biggest reason I’m suggesting removing those folks.

Honestly, I just don’t understand how anybody has the time to do this right

When I, an idiot reporter, am covering a game in-person, I am not watching seven other college football games, absorbing information and taking notes. I am watching one football game, and I’m interviewing fans/coaches/administrators, editing stories, and traveling. If I’m going to be in-person for a 3:30 CT kickoff, it’s entirely possible that will be the only college football game I watch that entire day.

The same is true for ADs. On Saturdays, (if they’re not traveling with their team), they’re at the game, gladhanding boosters, checking in with operations staffers, meeting with nosy reporters like me, and taking care of a dozen other pressing duties of the department.

And while I believe that anybody who sits on a selection committee wants to do a good job, and may even spend time in the evenings catching up on other games or crunching film, they still have a completely different, full-time job to attend to, one that requires a very different skillset than Ball Knowing.

I’ve even had other administrators who have previously served on selection committees for other sports tell me that after an 11-hour day, it can be pretty hard to go home, fire up the laptop, and watch a Big West baseball game or Big Ten basketball. There’s just too much stuff to keep track of!

I don’t think it’s fair to administrators, honestly. Most folks would face massive professional and personal pressure to say yes to such an invitation, even if it’s an almost impossible task that will also put a target on their backs from angry fans/coaches.

I think there are two possible solutions to this problem

One, you can ditch committees entirely and computerize as much as humanly possible. A good example of this would be the Pairwise System used in college hockey. While the college hockey commitee includes coaches and athletic directors, the process of selecting at-large teams is, as I understand it, completely mathematical. If you know how to calculate RPI and are good with a spreadsheet, you can predict almost exactly what the NCAA brackets will look like.

We used to have something kind of like this in college football….the BCS. The problem with relying on computers is that their rankings and formulas are created by humans…and when humans don’t like what those computers spit out, they just change the formulas. It’s hard to find coaches and administrators in other sports who love the RPI, and I struggle to imagine a scenario where the power-brokers and nerds of college football can actually agree on how to best set up a computer system.

The other problem with college football, at least compared to stuff like baseball, basketball and hockey, is that you just don’t get to play very many games…and most of those games are conference games. Universal Strength of Schedule metrics, Strength of Record and many other Power Ranking-type metrics are going to be more noisy than they might be in other sports, because we won’t have as much intersectional data.

The other is to change the committee structure

You could go the model of the AP Poll, and try to mitigate concerns about bias by simply having a ton of people vote in the process. I actually think the AP Poll has many of the same logistical and bias problems of the current committee (why would a Syracuse beat writer stay up to watch an Iowa at USC game that kicked off at 10 PM local? He doesn’t get paid for that, he’s got copy to edit!), and could be worse in some ways, as beat writers may not know ball the way former coaches and players might.

But if you have 60 dang people voting, well, some of that provincial bias (ideally) gets drowned out.

Of course, that idea has limitations. If you let too many people vote, you often dilute specific experiences. This is what I think happens with the Heisman Trophy, where dozens of folks who do not regularly cover college football end up with votes, and then we all complain that quarterbacks win almost every year. Trying to cram 60 people into one hotel conference room also would make terrible television and would be almost impossible.

So that’s probably not a great idea. The other solution is to reevaluate what sort of person gets to be on the committee.

In a perfect world, you want individuals who clearly understand college football, spread out enough geographically and professionally as to not give one conference or region disporporante influence. You want folks who do not currently work in college athletics. You want folks who can bring different perspectives and methodologies to the table. And you want folks who have the time to do the job right.

The College Football Playoff Committee has 13 members, so lets stick with that here, although I think these same principles could be applied to other sports and committees.

That gives us 12 committee members, but we need 13. For our last member, we need somebody who has strong experience making uncomfortable and high pressure ranking decisions on a weekly basis. Somebody who isn’t afraid of controversy or ruling against popular sentiment. Somebody who is good on TV.

That’s right.

The College Football Playoff Committee should add Paul Hollywood.

Which reminds me, you know what isn’t underbaked? The Extra Points Library

No soggy bottoms here, just thousands of college athletic contracts to help you make better decisions, write better stories, and give better advice. Most recently, we’ve added additional contracts from Cal, Ohio State, Auburn, Ball State, and others. If you’re looking for contracts this buyout season, check out the Extra Points Library here.

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