College football is starting a new era by having a four-team playoff.
Unlike in past years, computers will not pick the teams. A 13-person committee of experts will select them.
The playoff will consist of the four best teams based on strength of schedule, head-to-head results, whether a team won their conference and other factors.
All teams from the five power conferences have a tie-in to the top six bowl games which are the Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl and Chick-Fil-a Peach Bowl.
These bowls are going to be on a three-year rotation in which the playoff semifinal will cycle between games.
This year the two semi-final games will be played in the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.
There are 10 conferences total; the five power conferences are the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12. The remaining five conferences can get into the playoff and into the top six bowls, but it’s going to take a lot work from those teams to make it in there.
Just like with the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the system that came before the playoffs, there will be controversy with the playoff. Some people will think that a certain team was better than the teams that are actually picked.
The BCS always had a lot of controversy when it came to picking the teams for the championship games.
The new playoff selection process will be a little better, but not much if you ask me.
The committee will select the teams that have won their conference championships, and this will probably end up leaving out a team that will be better than one of the teams chosen on their conference championship win.
The playoff system definitely will not stay in its current form. They will have a lot of stuff to work out to make it better.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the four-team playoff went to an eight-team playoff in the future.
The schools will argue about how they are being left out and the NCAA will have to do something to fix it.
The playoff is going to solve a lot of problems that the BCS had, but it is still not a perfect solution. That’s why they will have to work on it and make it better in the coming years. The playoff will never be perfect for everyone, but what is perfect?
