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The Coaches Poll is respected out of tradition more than anything else. No one looks at that and seriously believes these coaches are giving any critical thought to this. They absolutely have their own agendas. I simply go a step further and say the same about the other two.

I've noticed this trend with you. You're very free with your criticisms of other measures and standards but you don't go into any sort of detail about what you think would be a better alternative.

At this point, there is no evidence to suggest UCF got screwed out of a playoff spot based on the comprehensive variables most rational people would look to to decide which teams are better or worse than others. An undefeated season is only a statistic if there is no context to give it color. The context here is the AAC conference being weak and UCF not playing against top-tier teams to bolster their SoS.

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Well, first, results on the field need to matter more than subjective opinions. "Alabama looks like they're better than UCF" is not a good excuse. Neither is "this subjective SoS ranking says this about this team, but that about that team." Another positive move would be to identify things that need to be accomplished to make the playoff, and stick to them. Then, even if we do end up with some controversy, we can actually say that everyone knew what they needed to do when the season started. We don't have that now. We have a committee that changes the criteria to fit their four teams.

Standardized scheduling. No more FCS teams. Sorry SEC. Nine game conference schedules. Determine your champion any way you want, but don't bitch if you think your champion might not be the best team in the country. Six teams. All P5 champions, plus the highest ranked G5 champion.

It's not perfect, but it's a start.

Thank you for giving some specifics.

Others have mentioned making conference champions automatic entrants into the playoffs, but that doesn't really solve the problem of picking the best teams. What if an 8-4 team gets lucky and knocks off a 12-0 team in the conference championship game while several other 1-loss teams in the country get left out for not playing in or winning their conference championship? It could hardly be argued that the 8-4 team was a better team than 1-loss teams, but because they won the only game that really mattered, they get their shot.

Right now the conference championship adds another element of value to the selection process but it's not the only thing that matters like it essentially would in that scenario.

Other elements you listed, like requiring 9 conference games and scheduling only FBS teams are fine but have their own drawbacks. Those things won't necessarily get the best teams into the playoffs, though, and that was my point from the beginning. There is no perfect system and whatever changes are made, there will always be some team left out that should probably not be and some team given a shot that probably shouldn't have one.

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Nope. I'm correct. You're just shifting how much weight you give to various organizations.

I'm not shifting weight at all. This is objective. The "weight" of the CFP is objectively greater than the "weight" of UCF based on the acceptance of the CFP by the Div I conferences. Having a single governing body make the decisions is supposed to alleviate schools/teams from going rogue and claiming championships based on their own homerism and subjectivity.

UGA is the SEC champion, and since the SEC is arguably the best conference, we should be crowned as the national champions by default. See how silly that is? It's the same silliness that UCF is perpetuating with their stunt right now by claiming to be the champions because they had an undefeated season. If you don't have a universal standard to measure up to, you have chaos. The CFP--previously the BCS--is supposed to be a standard that is universally accepted to limit chaos. The "weight" comes from acceptance of the standard. Right now it's UCF vs. the rest of the FBS in terms of acceptance of the standard.

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I disagree. "Screwed" is one of the four best teams in the country not being placed into a four team playoff. UCF is one of the four best teams in the country, and there's nothing that shows different.

If UCF were one of the 4 best teams in the country then I would agree with you, but they aren't, so I disagree.

Being undefeated cannot be the only measure of who belongs in the top 4. As has been stated before, if a team like Alabama went independent and scheduled nobodies to whoop all year long, how could you say they are one of the 4 best teams? Compared to who? That's the point: UCF isn't on an island. They are being compared to all other FBS schools, and up until their bowl game (which occurred after the playoff seeding), they didn't play any teams that could give the committee any confidence to put them in the top 4 over teams like Alabama or Ohio State.

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I do think they got it wrong. So do many others. That this is a discussion suggests that there is plenty of merit to that.

UCF schedules two P5 opponents every year. They've been doing this for years. Do you know how difficult that is for a smaller school like them to make happen? They've done their part. It's time for the rest of college football to meet them on that.

There's always merit for a discussion but I don't think there's enough substance to the argument to say UCF deserved to be in the top 4 based on all the information that existed prior to the bowl games (the cut off for selection ). UCF's two P5 teams were Maryland and Georgia Tech and the GT game was cancelled. So yeah, they need to do better to improve their brand if they want to prove they are a serious national championship contender. UGA beat the tar out of several SEC teams but got hit with "the SEC East is down". We had to take down Auburn in the SECCG to get our invite even though we're in a premier conference.

If UCF wants to turn some heads, they need to dominate their conference year-in and year-out and beat the snot out of the P5 teams they schedule. They will get national recognition and probably get an invite to a P5 conference which will solve all of their problems. In the mean time, they are going to have to live with the fact that they need to prove more to the nation than many other teams.

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Unfortunately, I do know. It's circular, much like ESPN's FPI nonsense. They use rankings that primarily benefit other highly ranked teams. "Team A is good because they beat Team B, who is also good because they lost to Team A because they're good, too." It isn't useful.

Got a link to that by chance? If ESPN isn't good enough, then I'm curious what source you use to determine the best teams. Common sense can be used to find reasonable methods for determining quality of teams.