Some playoff selection committee news today...

https://twitter.com/slmandel

Quote:The @CFBPlayoff officially announced that selection committee will release weekly Top 25 beginning Oct 28.

Committee members will use a recusal process that is "virtually identical to the NCAA basketball committee."

Committee members restricted from discussing or voting on a school they or family member works for. But can discuss teams in its conference.

For 7 straight weeks the committee will meet in person in Dallas on Mon and Tue to do rankings. Huge time commitment.

Committee chair Jeff Long will explain the rankings on TV every week.

Bill Hancock: "The concept will be, if the season ended today, these would be the rankings."

https://twitter.com/CFBPlayoff

Quote:Weekly rankings will be released on @ESPN starting Oct. 28. Additional rankings will come out Nov. 4, Nov. 11, Nov. 18, Nov. 25 and Dec. 2

More: College Football Playoff voting protocol and recusal policy

Quote:The official College Football Playoff Selection Committee Voting Protocol:

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.

(04-30-2014 07:05 PM)Wedge Wrote:  More: College Football Playoff voting protocol and recusal policy

Quote:The official College Football Playoff Selection Committee Voting Protocol:

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.

Anyone feel like drafting an example of how that may have worked last year? I may or may not be following this correctly.

(04-30-2014 07:05 PM)Wedge Wrote:  More: College Football Playoff voting protocol and recusal policy

Quote:The official College Football Playoff Selection Committee Voting Protocol:

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.

Yikes, this seems unnecessarily complex.

The committee has 1 task and 1 task only --- choose the Top 4 teams at the end of the regular season.

Why do they need to determine who the 21st best team is with 3 weeks left in the regular season?

(04-30-2014 08:53 PM)NittanyLion Wrote:  

(04-30-2014 07:05 PM)Wedge Wrote:  More: College Football Playoff voting protocol and recusal policy

Quote:The official College Football Playoff Selection Committee Voting Protocol:

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.

Yikes, this seems unnecessarily complex.

The committee has 1 task and 1 task only --- choose the Top 4 teams at the end of the regular season.

Why do they need to determine who the 21st best team is with 3 weeks left in the regular season?

No. The committee seeds all 6 of the CFP bowls, aside from the contractual tie-ins.

Lots of good info. I think the weekly updates is probably vital if they don't want to be competing with the AP perceptions. This though is what I liked reading the best:

(04-30-2014 05:17 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Bill Hancock: "The concept will be, if the season ended today, these would be the rankings."

[/quote]

If done correctly, that will mean some early polls in very different orders than the AP/Coaches. That means you shouldn't be using expectations and the top teams with smaller resumes at that time should be lower here than in other polls.

(04-30-2014 09:33 PM)CommuterBob Wrote:  

(04-30-2014 08:53 PM)NittanyLion Wrote:  Yikes, this seems unnecessarily complex.

The committee has 1 task and 1 task only --- choose the Top 4 teams at the end of the regular season.

Why do they need to determine who the 21st best team is with 3 weeks left in the regular season?

No. The committee seeds all 6 of the CFP bowls, aside from the contractual tie-ins.

Yep, you're correct. I messed up there.

Still, even to choose the other teams involved in the CFP Bowls, I don't see where there is a real "need" to determine who the 21st best team (or even the best team!) is with 3 weeks left in the regular season.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that ESPN mandated the committee release rankings every week. Then ESPN can have a fairly highly-rated "CFP rankings show" every Tuesday night (remember, that's a night where ESPN generally has no live sports programming on Tuesday nights in the fall --- this is when they tend to show poker) at 9 PM.

Then they'll also have stuff to talk about on their array of talking head shows the next day.

I don't know about you guys but as far as I'm concerned, there's no way this voting process will ever be controversial in the least.

(04-30-2014 09:51 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  I don't know about you guys but as far as I'm concerned, there's no way this voting process will ever be controversial in the least.

I think it'll be controversial every year. Unless we have exactly 4 major undefeated teams and no other undefeated teams.

(04-30-2014 07:14 PM)ncbeta Wrote:  

(04-30-2014 07:05 PM)Wedge Wrote:  More: College Football Playoff voting protocol and recusal policy

Quote:The official College Football Playoff Selection Committee Voting Protocol:

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.

Anyone feel like drafting an example of how that may have worked last year? I may or may not be following this correctly.

You really can't since it's a multiple iteration voting structure, where teams are first tally voted, then ranked, then possibly tally voted again, then ranked again, etc. You could try to do it based on a sampling of 13 AP voters, but I would think that given all the iterations of votes, there could very well be adjustments of the rankings that occur in subsequent iterations.

Be interested to see how close it is to the AP and USA Today polls. There will be at least 8 weeks of polls out. I find it hard to believe these polls want influence the committee.

(04-30-2014 09:45 PM)NittanyLion Wrote:  

(04-30-2014 09:33 PM)CommuterBob Wrote:  

(04-30-2014 08:53 PM)NittanyLion Wrote:  Yikes, this seems unnecessarily complex.

The committee has 1 task and 1 task only --- choose the Top 4 teams at the end of the regular season.

Why do they need to determine who the 21st best team is with 3 weeks left in the regular season?

No. The committee seeds all 6 of the CFP bowls, aside from the contractual tie-ins.

Yep, you're correct. I messed up there.

Still, even to choose the other teams involved in the CFP Bowls, I don't see where there is a real "need" to determine who the 21st best team (or even the best team!) is with 3 weeks left in the regular season.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that ESPN mandated the committee release rankings every week. Then ESPN can have a fairly highly-rated "CFP rankings show" every Tuesday night (remember, that's a night where ESPN generally has no live sports programming on Tuesday nights in the fall --- this is when they tend to show poker) at 9 PM.

Then they'll also have stuff to talk about on their array of talking head shows the next day.

My guess is that they're doing a complete top 25, and not just top 4 or 12, to send the message that this is the "real" ranking, not the AP and coaches' polls that will be pushing their opinion into the media for several weeks before the first committee ranking.

(04-30-2014 10:23 PM)msm96wolf Wrote:  Be interested to see how close it is to the AP and USA Today polls. There will be at least 8 weeks of polls out. I find it hard to believe these polls want influence the committee.

Yeah, I have no doubts that they are going to "mirror" each other over time. Then by the time we add in the "echo chamber" of 24/7 ESPN talking heads, we're going to get a whole lot of "group think" going on here.


I must say, this process disappoints me. I was hoping that the committee would meet ONCE AND ONLY ONCE. Each committee member could generate their own independent thoughts prior to that single meeting. Then they could debate and hash it out over the course of a single weekend. One meeting, and that would be that.

(04-30-2014 10:39 PM)NittanyLion Wrote:  

(04-30-2014 10:23 PM)msm96wolf Wrote:  Be interested to see how close it is to the AP and USA Today polls. There will be at least 8 weeks of polls out. I find it hard to believe these polls want influence the committee.

Yeah, I have no doubts that they are going to "mirror" each other over time. Then by the time we add in the "echo chamber" of 24/7 ESPN talking heads, we're going to get a whole lot of "group think" going on here.


I must say, this process disappoints me. I was hoping that the committee would meet ONCE AND ONLY ONCE. Each committee member could generate their own independent thoughts prior to that single meeting. Then they could debate and hash it out over the course of a single weekend. One meeting, and that would be that.

ESPN is paying big bucks to sponsor the CFP. It wants its talking heads to be able to spend endless hours over the two months leading up to the CFP bowls debating the latest committee rankings and hyping up the impact of each week's ESPN feature games on the rankings. The network is banking on all of college football fandom getting caught up in the "race for the final four" and lifting its ratings in the process.

I am skeptical of any playoff committee that includes Ty Willingham.

Will he have time to come off the links to actually do anything with this committee?

(05-01-2014 07:16 AM)TerryD Wrote:  I am skeptical of any playoff committee that includes Ty Willingham.

Will he have time to come off the links to actually do anything with this committee?

And what does Condi Rice know about ranking teams? And why is Oliver Luck involved, wouldnt he be biased toward the Big12? You can go on and on with this list.

(04-30-2014 10:38 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(04-30-2014 09:45 PM)NittanyLion Wrote:  

(04-30-2014 09:33 PM)CommuterBob Wrote:  

(04-30-2014 08:53 PM)NittanyLion Wrote:  Yikes, this seems unnecessarily complex.

The committee has 1 task and 1 task only --- choose the Top 4 teams at the end of the regular season.

Why do they need to determine who the 21st best team is with 3 weeks left in the regular season?

No. The committee seeds all 6 of the CFP bowls, aside from the contractual tie-ins.

Yep, you're correct. I messed up there.

Still, even to choose the other teams involved in the CFP Bowls, I don't see where there is a real "need" to determine who the 21st best team (or even the best team!) is with 3 weeks left in the regular season.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that ESPN mandated the committee release rankings every week. Then ESPN can have a fairly highly-rated "CFP rankings show" every Tuesday night (remember, that's a night where ESPN generally has no live sports programming on Tuesday nights in the fall --- this is when they tend to show poker) at 9 PM.

Then they'll also have stuff to talk about on their array of talking head shows the next day.

My guess is that they're doing a complete top 25, and not just top 4 or 12, to send the message that this is the "real" ranking, not the AP and coaches' polls that will be pushing their opinion into the media for several weeks before the first committee ranking.

This is true - it needs to be able to rank 25 teams to earn legitimacy with the public.
But the more important reason to go 25 deep is that in a collectively DOWN YEAR for the G5 conferences, the committee still needs to place the top G5 team in one of those access bowls.
I am very pleased with the methodology here and am glad that some careful thought will be given to the rankings 1 through 25. While those in the 20-25 will always be closer to each other than those in the top 5 - those rankings are important.
It's also important to the teams that fancy a playoff run to see just how far out they are midseason. Whether its a few spots back, or way back in the 20s.
This may also solve the dilemma of "running up the score", because the committee will obviously be looking at more than just final scores of games across the country. Statement games and putting a team away in the third quarter is meaningful information. Tacking on meaningless points in garbage time is not, and should not be encouraged. We might even see the committee disincentivise running up the score when they discuss their rankings each week, by explaining that they moved a team up for putting away a quality opponent in the third quarter (especially if the score did not end up looking lopsided)

This is why all the ADs and coaches are predicting an 8 team playoff in the very near future.

I think this may be an attempt to reduce some of the controversy surrounding who they pick and who gets left out of the top 4. If the public knows what the committee is thinking months before hand, it won't be a shock when certain teams get left out. This is especially true if the committee's top 4 differs from the AP top 4.

For example, let's say the AP has teams A, B, C, and D ranked as their top 4 the last few weeks of the season. Now let's say the committee ends up selecting teams A, B, D, E as their top 4. Without the weekly committee rankings, fans of team C would likely have been expecting their team to make the playoffs based upon the AP poll, and would be very pissed at their teams being snubbed. With weekly committee rankings, it won't be such a shock when their team gets left out.

We may as well just rank the Top 10, then see which of those Top 10 teams draws the highest TV ratings, and those will be #1 - #4