College Football Playoff Committee Defies Logic, Precedents with 2016 Final Four

The College Football Playoff Committee proved in 2016 that whether or not BCS computers pick the eventual champion, the problems don’t go away.

I’ve been a fan of the College Football Playoff format since its inception. The BCS was (for lack of a more eloquent term) hot garbage and completely without a soul.

In 2016, the College Football Playoff committee should just change their name to HAL 9000 for all the soul they showed in their ranking of the final four teams. The obvious selections of Alabama and Clemson aside, the playoff committee defied logic and their own precedent in this year’s selections.

Specifically, the Ohio State Buckeyes.

I had previously argued that there was a case to be made both for and against Ohio State making the final four, but that determination had much to do with the eventual results of the conference championship games (of which Ohio State did not participate).

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Given the results of those games, and the precedents set by the committee in previous years, there was no way Ohio State belonged in the top four to end this year’s rankings.

You may remember in 2014, the Baylor Bears were snuggly sitting within the top four, but were playing in a conference who didn’t (and still doesn’t) have a conference championship game. After the championship games were concluded, Big Ten champion Ohio State leap-frogged Big 12 co-champion Baylor to make the playoffs and eventually win the national title.

Baylor was a conference CO-CHAMPION but was essentially penalized for not having the advantage of a 13th game.

The 2016 Ohio State team – as good as they are – wasn’t even able to call themselves a co-champion or even a runner-up for that matter. They were completely left out of the Big Ten title game, and the team who won it, Penn State, beat the Buckeyes in a head-to-head meeting.

Yet once again, the committee felt the need to have Ohio State, rather than Penn State, represent the Big Ten in the playoff group.

My colleague Tim Brando nailed it two days before the rankings were even released.

Let me make this perfectly clear for those screaming about the Washington Huskies. I don’t care about non-conference scheduling. While it should be part of the equation, its something many teams and coaches have no control over. These schedules are set years in advance, and some matchups that may look difficult end up being cupcakes, and vice-versa.

Washington did their job, won their conference, played two ranked opponents in their final two games (including a conference title game) and finished the season with one loss and a Pac-12 title. They belong in the playoffs.

Winning a conference championship in college football is extremely difficult, and is certainly much more of a resume builder than the results of one or two early-season games. For the conferences who play an actual title game, that’s a 13th game against a quality opponent. It’s risking not only a ranking, but also injuries to key players.

The committee has illogically watered down the journey of winning a Power-5 conference, and instead decides to reward a name-brand for taking a week off and risking absolutely nothing.

The soul of the College Football Playoff has been compromised, and expansion is not the answer. There are enough bowl games and enough conference championship games that adding more teams to the playoff shouldn’t be necessary.

The answer lies in having clear, tangible and definable criteria for determining these rankings. Certain points should bear more weight than others, and there should be no waffling around those talking points because of a coach’s reputation or a school’s brand.

Next: 2016-17 CFB Bowl Projections

Bad form, committee. You’ve dealt a blow to the integrity of this championship system and have shown that branding and money are still paramount in a sport which should be more about the hard work of the athletes involved.