The first college football playoff

How about that committee selection process?

As it turns out, it wasn’t a case of Baylor or TCU in the collective mind of the College Football Playoff committee after all. It was neither, and the joke’s on both.

TCU wins by 52 points and falls from third and a spot in the playoffs to sixth and oblivion?

“The committee doesn’t see the fall being very far,” chairman Jeff Long said.

Off the top of my head, Jeff, I’d say it’s the longest free fall by a Top 10 team after winning its last game by half-a-hundred in the history of polls, rankings or cave markings.

[…]

The only surprise Saturday was the Buckeyes’ big win with a third-string quarterback.

But that was nothing compared with Sunday’s shocker, especially if you’re a TCU fan or were under the impression the committee really meant to provide more clarity than the BCS’ much-maligned process. As impossible as it seems, the committee mucked it up even more.

Frankly, I was startled last week when TCU vaulted from fifth to third over Florida State. The move seemed less a vote of confidence in TCU than a shot across the bow of the Seminoles.

Florida State beat a pretty good Georgia Tech in the ACC title game, but it was a typical FSU win this season, a little less than convincing, the kind that started it on a slow slide from first to fourth.

Until Sunday, anyway, when the Seminoles moved back up to three.

And TCU fell in a black hole.

“I wouldn’t be honest if I wasn’t a little surprised dropping from three to sixth,” Gary Patterson told ESPN, smiling, playing good cop for a change.

Had the committee made TCU fifth or sixth last week, it wouldn’t be an issue now. All this result does is feed the conspiracy theorists. For that matter, the weekly release was probably a mistake. Long insisted it was a new world every week, but that’s a hard sell for a public unused to seeing such volatile movement from one Tuesday to the next. Made you think it was less about providing transparency and in reality just an excuse for an ESPN dog-and-pony show.

I have no dog – or pony – in this fight. Honestly, if I’d been on that committee, I have no idea who my fourth team would have been. Given all the past hubbub and controversy that led to the creation of this committee as a replacement for the unloved and unmissed BCS system, it’s quite the irony that in the first year of a four-team playoff for all the marbles, four slots weren’t enough. When does the drumbeat to expand this sucker to eight teams officially begin, I wonder.

And speaking of expanding

The Big 12 commissioner says the conference will reconsider how to declare its champion after being left out of the four-team college football playoff.

In a phone interview on the College Football Playoff Selection Show, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told ESPN’s Rece Davis: “It’s clear that we were penalized for not having a postseason championship game. It would have been nice to have been told that ahead of time.”

“We have to weigh whether this is substantial enough to add institutions. … It’s certainly a major consideration.”

The Big 12 would need to add two teams or have the NCAA approve a waiver to have a conference championship game. The Big 12 has 10 teams, and a conference must have 12 teams to have a conference championship game.

Clearly, there had been too much stability in conference composition lately. Round and round she goes…

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