When the new College Football Playoff selection committee chooses and seeds the four-team field, it won’t try to avoid semifinal rematches of regular-season or conference-championship games.
That was the word Wednesday from Bill Hancock, executive director of the playoff, speaking at SEC Media Days.
The committee will put its four highest ranked teams in the playoff, which will open with the No. 1 seed playing No. 4 and No. 2 facing No. 3 in the semifinals. The seeds won’t be manipulated to delay possible rematches until the title game.
“They won’t monkey with the pure seeds,” Hancock said of the 13-member selection committee. “If the pure seeds are … Auburn is 2, Alabama is 3, they’ll leave them right there and there will be a rematch.”
So, if the four-team playoff system had been in place last season, Auburn and Alabama likely would have met in a national semifinal just over a month after meeting in their regular-season finale.
Auburn was ranked No. 2 and Alabama No. 3 in the BCS standings after the conference championship games. Florida State was No. 1 and Michigan State No. 4.
It’s even possible, Hancock said, that teams could meet in the playoff semifinals for the third time in a season. That scenario might unfold if teams met in regular-season and conference-championship games and split those meetings.
“The concept of the third game has come up,” Hancock said. “It sounds a lot like Duke-Carolina (basketball), doesn’t it? The fact is, it’s absolutely based on the pure seedings: 1, 2, 3, 4. If that yields a rematch, or a third game even, then that’s the way it will be.”
The approach is different than that of the NCAA basketball tournament committee, which seeks to avoid early-round matchups of teams from the same conference.
