PLAYOFF RANKINGS
What: The inaugural Top 25 rankings by the College Football Playoff selection committee
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, ESPN
Weekly updates: The committee will release updated rankings each Tuesday night through Dec. 2. The committee's final rankings and the four-team playoff bracket will be announced Dec. 7, a Sunday.
Each week since the start of the college football season, media members and coaches around the country have cast ballots in polls that rank teams from No. 1 through No. 25. But those evaluations won’t mean a thing in determining which four teams qualify for the new College Football Playoff.
The only opinions that matter will be those of 12 people on the playoff selection committee, which convened Monday near Dallas for two days of meetings that will culminate with the release of the group’s first Top 25 rankings Tuesday night on ESPN. The rankings will be updated weekly until the top four teams are placed in the playoff bracket on Dec. 7.
“I think everybody who’s interested in college football is really looking forward to seeing what the committee comes up with,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “And I’ll be one of them.”
One of the more interesting aspects will be whether the committee’s initial rankings closely resemble the Associated Press and coaches’ polls — both of which have Mississippi State, Florida State, Alabama and Auburn as the top four teams this week — or chart a different course.
According to the committee’s “selection protocol” document, the AP and coaches’ polls should not be a reference tool. “Committee members will be required to discredit polls wherein initial rankings are established before competition has occurred,” according to the document. The AP and coaches’ polls build off of preseason rankings, while the playoff’s first rankings come nine weeks into the season, providing committee members an opportunity for a fresh look not influenced by preconceptions.
“There’s so many one-loss teams, there’s a lot to choose from, really,” Richt said. “So it’ll be interesting to see what their take is, what criteria they think is most important and how they weigh it.
“I don’t know if they’ll verbalize that, but you might be able to put two and two together after seeing what they come up with.”
The committee has said conference championships will be a consideration — although not a prerequisite — in ultimately choosing the four-team playoff field. Obviously, no team has won a conference championship yet, and the initial rankings will be subject to weekly adjustments. But if the committee wants to send a message about the importance of conference titles, might it resist putting multiple SEC teams in the top four of its initial rankings? Might it opt for one-loss Oregon of the Pac-12 or one-loss Michigan State of the Big Ten over one-loss SEC teams such as Alabama or Auburn?
Just asking.
The committee also has said head-to-head results will be an important consideration. If so, will it rank Alabama behind one-loss Ole Miss, which defeated the Crimson Tide on Oct. 4 but tumbled to No. 9 in the coaches’ poll and No. 7 in the AP poll after losing at LSU last week?
Just asking.
Whatever the answers, expect controversy to follow Tuesday night’s rankings.
“Talk radio Wednesday morning is going to be absolutely amazing,” Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen told reporters.
The selection committee, which includes current athletic directors, former coaches and others, will use a different methodology than the traditional polls. In those polls, each voter ranks teams 1-25, and the ballots are tallied through a points system that yields the weekly rankings. By contrast, the committee will do its work collaboratively by convening in person at a Dallas-area hotel each Monday and Tuesday through the end of the regular season.
Bill Hancock, the playoff’s executive director, described the process as “very detailed, very disciplined.” Committee members will select a large pool of teams to be considered, then rank them through a series of secret ballots that evaluate subsets of six teams at a time against one another.
The committee won’t rely on a single data point such as the defunct BCS standings or college basketball’s RPI. Instead, it will distinguish among “otherwise comparable teams” by considering “conference championships won, strength of schedule, head-to-head competition, comparative outcomes of common opponents without (incentivizing) margin of victory, and … key injuries,” according to the protocol document.
The top four teams in the committee’s final rankings will receive berths in the playoff semifinals, which will be played this season in the Rose and Sugar bowls.
Tuesday night’s rankings show will offer the first glimpse of how the committee sees this season and perhaps how it will form its judgments between now and Dec. 7. Committee chairman Jeff Long, the Arkansas athletic director, is scheduled to discuss the rankings as the sport moves deeper into its new playoff era.
“I don’t even know if the show (will have) an explanation of why they picked what they picked, or if they just say who they picked or how they rank them,” said Richt, whose Bulldogs are ranked No. 8 by the coaches and No. 9 by AP this week. “It’ll be interesting to see how the whole thing unfolds, really.”
