College Football Playoff: Selection Committee Criteria Eliminates Need to Watch

The world is rejoicing as college football has got the playoff that it so desperately "deserved." The dreadful wrongs of the BCS have been righted. At least that is how it seems if you pick up the paper, turn on the computer or check out the Twitter. This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it; and all of that jazz.

Except, as we've been told all along: The devil is in the details. As the Presidential Oversight Committee pushed the playoff through there is still much to resolve with respect to the structure of the playoff. Rotational usage of six sites, distribution of revenue, getting the green light from the NCAA to play and of course, how the selection committee operates.

Nicole Auerbach, from USA Today, tweeted out the criteria for the selection committee. So while we do not know how the committee will be constructed, we do know how they will be instructed to make their decisions. 

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Selection committee will rank 4 playoff teams based on: W-L record, strength of schedule, head-to-head & if team is conference champion.

— Nicole Auerbach (@nicoleauerbach) June 26, 2012

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First and foremost; hats off for the criteria. The actual usage of criteria is more than the Harris Poll, Coaches' Poll or AP Poll afforded voters. Instead of a mishmash of resume voting, eyeball test voting and power ranking voting, the selection committee has created a standard metric by which to rate all teams.

The problem here is the metric sucks. 

This is a computer print out. It is a blind resume test. It does not tell you who is better than anyone from an on-the-field standpoint. This is the type of "system" that would put 2009 Cincinnati ahead of 2009 Florida because they won the Big East and did not have a loss.

As we discussed yesterday, evaluation of the actual on-the-field product has to be a big part of the selection committee's job. This criteria does not allow for that element. This criteria, if it is the way the system to be used, should be plugged into a computer and they can spit out four teams come season's end.

College football does not have parity. Numbers do not tell the true story of what a team is. This shouldn't be about a data set, it is about which teams are the four best in the nation. It takes some game tape and legitimate evaluation to do that; something this criteria does not push.