Examining the new College Football Playoff

Welcome back college football. Another season has started.

Goodbye, BCS. Hello, College Football Playoff. Things are going to be different this time around.

If the Bowl Championship Series left you a disgruntled college football fan, you have one less argument in your life. A new era has been ushered in and starting now in 2014, we will have a championship bracket in football – same as college basketball except with only with four teams.

Cincinnati coach Tommy Tuberville can only say, “It’s about time.”  Tuberville was head coach at Auburn in 2004 when the Tigers finished 13-0, won the Southeastern Conference championship, finished second in the AP poll and the coaches’ poll, but were denied a spot in the BCS national championship game because they were No. 3 in the BCS rankings.

“It’s taken 10 years,” Tuberville said. “Everybody was asking, ‘How can you leave an SEC team out?’ It’s been 10 years of trying to make this thing happen. Now it’s here and hopefully we do it the right way. We don’t need to create problems, especially the first year, with the opportunity to have, for the first time, a true national champion.”

The details of the playoff are simple compared to the formula for the BCS. Bill Hancock, executive director of the College Football Playoff, was at the American Athletic Conference media day in Newport, R.I., last month. I sat down with Hancock for a one-on-one interview to discuss the new playoff. Hopefully, this little primer will help fans understand the new system.

Q: Bill could you just explain the basics of how this four-team playoff system is going to work?

Hancock: You know, it’s very simple. Not too dissimilar from the NCAA basketball tournament. There’s a selection committee. They will pick the teams for the bracket. There will be semifinals and a championship game. Of course, the difference is there are only four teams as opposed to 68 in basketball. But think of the basketball analogy and that will [allow] people to understand how this works.

Q: On Oct. 28, the committee will release its first set of rankings. From that point on, the committee will continuously work on getting down to those four teams?

Hancock: Yeah, they’re going to put out rankings every week. The process will be similar to the process the basketball committee uses in narrowing and creating small groups of teams that can be compared to each other and then put into the bracket. By that process, the ranking 1 through 25 will be finished up and the committee will do that every week. Of course, selection weekend will culminate on Sunday, Dec. 7 when the pairings will be announced.

Q: So we will be able to monitor this each week and see where the teams are headed?

Hancock: Yes. Transparency was very important to us from the start on this. A big part of the transparency will be these weekly rankings, so folks will be able to see how their teams stack up. Of course these rankings will change every week, not only with results of games but what games are being played. As people’s schedules get better and they get into conference play, the rankings will be very fluid.

Q: The committee members will have an endless amount of data available to them. Is there anything comparable to an RPI?

Hancock: No, we decided not to have one metric, such as the RPI. We’ve been there, done that with the BCS. And so we decided the committee would have anything they want in front of them that they can consider during the process. The data they will have will be everything you can get in the newspapers and more. In addition the committee members will be watching games during the season. They’re going to be very familiar with all the teams.

Q: You’ve established four criteria to separate the teams that look equal. Is that right?

Hancock: Yes. There was a founding document under which the playoff was created. And in that document the committee was instructed to consider common sense things and the four of them were: strength of schedule, head-to-head competition, results against common opponents, and whether or not the team won its [conference championship]. Those criteria will be used to separate teams that will otherwise look similar. Again, it is very much based on common sense.

Q: For those conferences that have conference championships, how much will that factor in?

Hancock: Conference championships and the games the last weekend will be every bit as important as everything else. The committee will be coming in on Friday of the last weekend, working all day Saturday and finish up Sunday morning. Every game in this will be treated the same. Of course whether you win your conference is one of those four factors. That gives the championship game a little extra weight.

Q: It has taken us a long time to get here. You were in charge of the BCS and worked 16 years with the NCAA tournament. You were the man with the walkie-talkie on the floor at the Final Four. Are you happy where we are at this point? Is this good?

Hancock: Yes, it is good. It’s going to be great for college football. Having said that, I was very proud of the BCS and I still am. History is going to look back on it very fondly because of what it did for the game. There was almost no chance of No. 1 and 2 meeting each other in a bowl game before the BCS and its predecessors. The BCS did great things for postseason football. And there was an unintended consequence, which was all of the good things the BCS did for the regular season. The popularity of college football is on a steep upswing. But having said that, it was time for more. We had two primary goals: preserve the regular season and, of course, preserve the bowl tradition and experience for the athletes. That’s why we have what we have.

Q: Are the bowl people happy with this?

Hancock: Yes, they are. There are six bowls that participate in the semifinals. They’ll host the semifinals once every three years. But the other bowls are also happy about it. They believe anything that’s good for college football is good for them. . . . I believe that through the playoff we’re going to bring new fans to college football. And lots of those fans are going to be watching the bowl games.

Q: You’ve indicated that the biggest problem with the BCS was tweaking it too much.

Hancock: Early on, as we tried to make the BCS better, we made changes every year. And I think that limited the public’s ability to understand how it worked. The changes did benefit. They made the BCS better. On the other hand we had the consequence of the public not quit understanding it.

Q: One vs. four and two vs. three. That should be easy to understand.

Hancock: It’s just a bracket. This year, the winners play 12 days later. It couldn’t be more simple and I don’t think it could be any better for college football.

Q: This is a time of uncertainty with college football and the Power Five. But it seems all the conferences support this playoff.

Hancock: The playoff has unanimous support of all 10 conferences. All 10 own it, manage it and it’s their event. There is a misconception that only a few of the conferences are involved. Not true. It’s everybody’s event.

Q: What does a team like UConn or any other American Athletic Conference team need to do to make the Final Four?

Hancock: If you play a good schedule and win your games, you’re going to be in the hunt for the playoff. No automatic qualification. Play a good schedule, win the games and you’ll be in the hunt. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to talk about any team or conference. But when the committee members are comparing the teams, they’re going to be looking for every little mechanism they can use to separate one team for another. Who you played will separate one 10-2 team from a different 10-2 team. Over time I think you’re going to see non-conference schedules enhanced all across the country. Scheduling is tricky. The first time Team 5 is Team 5 because Team 4 played a better schedule, you know Team 5 is going to upgrade [its schedule].

Q: How are you going to approach home field advantage vs. disadvantage?

Hancock: In the semifinals, the No. 1 seed would have earned the right to play in front of a home, or friendly, crowd – or, in other words, to not have to play in front of a hostile crowd. In that, it will be similar to basketball. Basketball has the ability to lower a team one line in a bracket. We’re not going to do that. It’s going to be 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3, regardless of where they are from and regardless of where they’re going to play.

Q: The committee is an interesting group of people. You have talked about integrity being a key element. Talk about putting this committee together.

Hancock: It’s an all-star team of people with tremendous integrity who are bright and dedicated to the task ahead of them. They were selected by a thorough, detailed process. Every conference was invited to nominate members. They all did. Then we began to screen, based on integrity and geographic reasons. These 13 all said they would be honored to serve. We wanted people who had experience as student-athletes, coaches, administrators, journalists and sitting athletic directors. It’s a great group.

Q: How quickly do you think this playoff will be embraced?

Hancock: It already is being embraced because of its simplicity and its transparency. Of course, Team 5 is going to be very disappointed that they didn’t make it. I wouldn’t have it any other way. It shows how popular the event is.

For more information, the web site for the College Football Playoff has everything in great detail, including the members of the committee.

And for the record, Ken Davis’ Final Four predictions are: 1. Florida State, 2. Alabama, 3. Oklahoma, 4. UCLA.