Problems with College Football Playoff selection process

Maneesh Somisetty, Staff Writer

The No. 2 ranked Oregon Ducks join the No. 4 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes in the inaugural college football championship on Monday, January 12th.  The game will be played at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.  The dawn of a new age in football is upon us.

After Ohio State defeated Alabama and Oregon defeated Florida State on the first day of the New Year, the teams were set for the championship game.

But, the question is, how were the original four teams selected for the semi-final games?  Were there many rounds beforehand narrowing down the best four teams in the nation?  Were the top ranked teams in each division selected?  It was none of the above.  There were no computer rankings or polls that were used to select the teams.  The teams were actually selected by the College Football Playoff Selection Committee.

Photo source: Chaheati
Photo source: Chaheati

The committee consists of 13 members who get together weekly to select and seed the teams.  This group is composed of multiple university athletic directors, retired coaches, former football players and even Condoleezza Rice, the former U.S. Secretary of State.  The committee was in charge of releasing its top 25 rankings seven times during the season.  They also are selecting four teams and their pairings for the two semi-final playoff games.

I have many problems with this process.  First of all, the fans of college football had no say in the selection of this so called “qualified” committee.  Also, I don’t think that 13 randomly selected people should have the power of all of college football in their hands.

Why should the selection of the best four teams in the country be completely up to them?  I believe there are many better ways to decide these rankings.

My first solution that can fix all of these problems is to create a national poll.  This way all the fans will have an equal say in which teams will play in the semi-final games.  Rather than 13 people selecting the teams, hundreds of thousands of fans can select the teams.

Some may think that the public is not educated enough to decide this but, this way, if the public selects the teams, and they don’t like the outcome, they would have no one to blame but themselves.

My other idea is a little bit more realistic.  I am totally fine with this bracket system for the playoff but, in order for it to work properly, they need to create more rounds.

More teams should be able to compete to play in the championship game.  To make it fair for every team, the playoffs should resemble the National Football League’s Playoffs Bracket System.  This way every team will have an equal chance of winning it all.  In the new college football playoffs, it would begin with maybe the top two teams in each conference, and would get narrowed down to the top two teams in all of college football.  This would lengthen the process but would be much better in the long run.

Whichever one of the two ideas the administration chooses, it would be better than what we have right now.  By next year the NCAA needs to make some changes or the fans of this beloved American sport will not be happy.

Football Members