I’m reading how the College Football Playoff works and I’m losing my mind. So the NCAA has so very many football teams, and about a dozen every year that are exceptionally good, sure. But sports needs a champion. Every game has a winner, every season has a biggest winner. And you’re not allowed to do a big tournament.
The solution for a while was the BCS. All the football went in a big computer and the computer told you which teams would play for the championship, as well as which teams would play in other games with prestige and big TV contracts.
People did not like the big computer. They wanted playoffs. But you’re not allowed to have playoffs. The prestigious games with big TV contracts won’t accept being subordinate to other games and you can’t add a postseason to the calendar.
So they replaced the big computer with a secret committee that meets every week to say who is best at football. It’s not actually secret, they meet in a hotel and their names are public, but it’s cooler if they’re secret. There are 13 rotating members, a very secret number. It’s a rule that they do not use computer models. They just argue.
The committee is made of athletic directors, retired coaches, former players, and other football experts. For three years it included Condoleeza Rice and I’ve never wanted to read football meeting minutes before learning that. She got an MA at Notre Dame and I guess you just absorb football if you’re around there long enough.
The committee is not required to publish a ranking weekly, or even at all. They just do. Which requires them to meet, in person, ten times a year outside of Fort Worth, Texas (another place you learn football via absorption). These rankings are separate from the rankings from other bodies which have no effect on anything, unless the secret committee uses them while arguing with each other to make their own rankings which also do not matter.
The part that matters is the top 4 picked at the end of the season. The rest is just because. Maybe the Dallas airport is nice, I don’t know. Those four are put in a rotating pair of prestigious games with big TV contracts to act as that year’s semifinals. Because the big important idea, the idea to fix football, is adding a single game to the schedule. A brand new football game that the big computer cannot sully. An elegant solution that lets you technically have a playoff without extending the season.
The College Football Playoff brings in over half a billion dollars per year so the leadership unanimously voted to extend it from four teams to twelve. Whoops.
