College playoff already making people lose their minds

A collection of college football media people were invited to Dallas this week to get an idea of what the 13 members of the College Football Playoff's selection committee will face this season.

And, there have been stories this week on FoxSports.com and ESPN.com describing the amount of work and sacrifices committee members are making.

Condoleezza Rice, who is on the CFP committee because she was a U.S. Secretary of State and she likes football, said she isn't traveling overseas this fall because she has football teams to rank.

'Something has to give,” Rice told ESPN.com. 'This year I just didn't make it because it would have come right in the middle of the time we were ranking.”

Yeah, you could say this stuff is just a bit self-important.

The committee members are talking about the mass volume of games they are watching, recording, taking copious notes about. And they want you to know about it.

Lt. General Michael Gould, the retired former Air Force Academy superintendent who is on the committee, uses cut-ups from coaches' film.

'You can watch those and it gives a little more critical eye to how well an offensive line or defensive line is performing,” Gould said in the Foxsports.com story I linked in the second paragraph. 'You can look at schemes and run it back and forth and see how blitzes develop.”

What the what?

Here's the job of the committee: Pick the four best teams for the playoff (Rose and Sugar bowls) and seed them, and pick the teams and pairings for the four other CFP games (this year, the Cotton, Orange, Peach and Fiesta bowls).

You can do it in a couple hours. It's likely two and maybe even three of the four teams will be automatics, like the SEC champion and a 13-0 Florida State if it stays unbeaten.

Then you show up in Dallas on Saturday of the conference-title games, decide what's what among everyone else after Saturday's games are done, share your picks with the world the next day, tell everyone how excruciating the process was, and go have a lovely dinner with your phones unplugged. Because there will be one or two groups of fans who are hopping mad at you.

But don't tell us you need to watch every game that's on TV every Saturday, that you have to break down film in October, that your entire life is being put on hold so you can determine if a pulling guard from Mississippi State gives the Bulldogs a microfiber of an edge over Baylor.

'I've got one of our statisticians helping me,” Wisconsin Athletic Director/CFP committee member Barry Alvarez told ESPN.com.

(Yes, each of the Power Five conferences has a current AD on the committee. What could go wrong with that?)

'He works in our sports information office,” Alvarez said, 'and he's a stat nut. We look at statistics, we watch film together, we sit down, and he and I talk about the games and put our things together.”

Barry, Barry, this is Mike you're talking to. You're a busy guy and a smart guy. You know you'll show up in Dallas and do what a football guy like you should do. You'll have used the eyeball test to say Team X is better than Team Y or Team Z and should get the final spot in the playoff, case closed.

I'm not saying it can't or won't be sticky business separating the last playoff team from the final one out. Of course it will. But it doesn't require studying every FBS team but Idaho, and it doesn't require noting which team's punter had a falling-out with his girlfriend in September.

It also doesn't require looking at television ratings, contrary to the very odd thing Michigan State Coach Mark Dantonio said this week.

I'm not talking about last month when Dantonio said only conference champions should be in the playoff.

On Tuesday, Dantonio said 'If we do what we're supposed to do or what we're attempting to do and get in the (Big Ten title game) and win that game, then I think good things are possible. I think we turn on a lot of TV sets, and let's not be naive. It's about who is watching the game, too. And so you've got a quarter of the country watching a football game. They want to see a football team from this part of the country in that game.”

First of all, if Michigan State wins the rest of its games including the Big Ten championship, chances are pretty good it's going to be in the playoff. Never mind what all the nutty, worthless bowl projections of early October say.

If a 12-1 Big Ten team whose only loss was on the road against Oregon isn't in the Final Four, Condoleezza Rice may need to use her clout as a former U.S. Secretary of State to get military muscle brought in to subdue Alvarez.

Secondly, when did Michigan State become a combination of 'NCIS” and 'The Big Bang Theory” when it comes to television ratings?

As AwfulAnnouncing.com notes here, the Wyoming-MSU game of two weeks ago was the 11th-most watched college football game on television that day.

They aren't going to pick playoff teams based on TV ratings. The games will go through the roof, ratings-wise, no matter who's in them.

But this all goes to show how nervous so many people are about Year 1 of the playoffs. It's a great unknown the first time around, and a lot of people don't like the great unknown. Especially people in power who are afraid of nothing more than not being in total control of something.

Have you ever noticed that, by the way? The Big Guys of the world don't like to sit back and yield to others even on little things.

As always, I'm rooting for non-harmful chaos. Last Saturday was wonderful, with just about every football team in Mississippi taking traditional powers down a peg, and TCU beating Oklahoma in a Fort Worth stadium that's less than half the size of the ones used by mighty, mighty Alabama, LSU, Ohio State, Georgia and Texas A&M.

Here's to more of the same Saturday, and in even more-shocking fashion. Let's see Syracuse upset Florida State, North Carolina do likewise to Notre Dame, and Purdue throw a huge scare at Michigan State.

If the playoff selectors really are putting in as much thought to their task as they say they are, then load up their plates with as much craziness as possible.