Playoff committee to have a weekly top 25 poll & show on ESPN

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The college football playoff committee has just one job. One. They have to pick the four best college football teams at the end of the regular season for a four-game playoff.

That’s it. That’s the only part of their job that matters. Instead of focusing on that one goal, they’ve decided to make a circus show, with the help of ESPN of course, of the whole process.

The committee, headed by Arkansas athletics director Jeff Long, will produce six weekly Top 25 rankings before the final playoff bracket is released on Sunday, Dec. 7. And each week they’ll release the rankings in an exclusive ESPN show with Long front and center to discuss and defend the rankings.

First of all, why exactly does the committee need to produce a Top 25 when it only has to pick four teams at the end of the year?

Oh, I know why ESPN wants them to. That show will get huge ratings each week. We are talking about the second-most popular sport in the country.

But other than bringing media attention to Long and his committee, which they shouldn’t need, what does it serve? We’ve already got the AP and coaches’ polls, do we really need another? I don’t think so.

The BCS was different. It was a poll, based on other polls and including computer ratings. It made sense to update that weekly. But not the college football playoffs.

It’s a committee charged with picking the best four teams -- at the end of the year. I don’t care what Long or any of them think about Clemson or Georgia or Auburn in October. It’s irrelevant.

The college football playoff committee should follow the same parameters of the very successful NCAA basketball committee, which selects the 68 teams for the men’s tournament every year.

Put them all together for the week leading up to the championship games and let them come out with the pairings the next day.

When you start putting together a weekly Top 25, you have to defend those picks. And when you defend those picks, you create a bias. It’s human nature.

And we only have to look back to 2004 for a perfect example of how that bias can carry through an entire season and ultimately get it wrong, way wrong

USC and Oklahoma were the top two teams in the polls and as long as they kept winning, that wasn’t going to change. It didn’t matter how hard of a schedule they played compared to Auburn.

You know what did matter? Style points. It was a stupid argument then and even stupider now. But that’s exactly the type of comments will be hearing on a weekly basis from this circus show that is the new college football committee and their good buddies at ESPN.

Instead, how about doing us all a favor. Shut up and do your job.

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