BCS Meetings: Playoff Coming, but How Do We Determine the Teams?

BCS leaders, conference commissioners and other college football decision-makers announced Thursday that a four-team playoff is likely to happen starting in 2014. Three specific formats were revealed by CBSSports.com, and ESPN.com reported that 8- and 16-team options have been eliminated.

No method of determining the participants was agreed upon.

There are really only three options: Using the current BCS system with some minor tweaks (looking at you, Coaches Poll and Harris Poll), a selection committee to determine the top four teams or a combination of the two that will determine which four conference champions are worthy.

We've already discussed how foolish the idea of mandating that the four participants be conference champions is. Hopefully the decision-makers of our sport will recognize this and eliminate option No. 3 at the next meeting.

My colleague Michael Felder over at Your Best 11 thinks that college football should use a committee of people, rather than a computer/poll system like the current BCS standings. I tend to agree.

A committee can still use all of the information available—both via polling and computer rankings—to determine which teams qualify for the new FBS championship event. Will there be some disagreements? Absolutely. Humans are inherently biased.

That's a good thing, though.

College football isn't college basketball, nor should it be treated that way. The eye test is more important in this sport, which is why the human element has to be kept at the forefront. 

With that said, the Coaches Poll should be the first thing eliminated from the discussion no matter how we designate the four teams, and shouldn't be in the current BCS standings to begin with. Coaches have both financial and professional interest in the outcome, and rarely do they even fill out their standings anyway.

Good for college football's leaders for not going past four teams. That's the important part. Now just avoid reserving the spot for conference champions, and we'll be all set.

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