Amidst all the issues hemorrhaging college football in terms of PR (most of them coming out of Tallahassee, Florida), one diamond in the rough is the new college football playoff system.
At long last, an unbiased committee of experts is focused on finding the four best teams in college football and putting them together in a playoff bracket. No longer are fans constantly complaining about the broken BCS system, and teams can finally focus on their own body of work with the hopes of being one of the four teams in the playoff picture.
The 13 committee members sit down every week and determine a top-25 based on a number of factors such as record, strength of schedule, strength of conference, game-management and the all-important eye test. All of these committee members have played or currently play key roles in college football, from coach to athletic director, with the exception of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is for some reason the only female voice in the committee and one of only two members that aren't white.
Despite a severe lack of diversity, there is no shortage of expertise on this committee, which results in fair, accurate and unbiased rulings on who the top teams are in college football.
What makes a committee so much better than the BCS is the elimination of the three factors that influenced the BCS rankings: computers, coaches and the media. All three of those factors were fatally flawed given that the computers were based strictly on numbers, coaches were biased in favor of teams from their conference, and the media possessed a certain *cough* SEC *cough* bias of its own.
With this committee, no matter their affiliation, members drop their biases and analyze the body of work of every team to determine their rankings. You saw it in last week's rankings where one-loss Oregon jumped undefeated Florida State, which sent some of ESPN's shining personalities into fits of rage.
Despite the insistence of those like Kirk Herbstreit that the committee tries to "send messages" to schools with its rankings, that's just not true at all. The committee's job is to objectively rank the best teams in college football from 1-25 and if it believes one team has a more impressive body of work than the other, it's going to rank the more impressive team higher, even if the other one has FAMOUS JAMEIS and is the REIGNING NATIONAL CHAMP.
The excitement and disappointment involved in the process is what makes it so great. A team like ASU, who nobody thought would even be in the national championship conversation, was ranked sixth last week until they fell to the inferior Oregon State Beavers. Those type of games are what separates good teams from elite ones in the eyes of the committee, and smooth out the selection process.
There will undoubtedly be gripes from the numbers five and six teams at the end of the season, but fans of those teams should and will understand that there are clear differences between a top four team and everyone else — there had to have been a valid reason as to why your team didn't make it, whether it be a bad loss or an unimpressive conference schedule.
While it's not perfect, the college football playoff is a hell of an improvement compared to the BCS system. If the NCAA could work on fixing everything else that is wrong with itself and its teams in the morality department, it would be in a near perfect situation.
Reach the columnist at RClarke6@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @RClarkeASU
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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