Poking holes in CFB Playoff selection procedure

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Bowl Championship Series executive director Bill Hancock, left, and Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long, chairman of the College Football Playoff Committee, announce the 12 members selected to the committee during a news conference, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013, in Irving, Texas. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne and College Football Hall of Fame quarterback Archie Manning and Long are among the 13 people who will be part of the College Football Playoff s - AP

The College Football Playoff announced Wednesday that it will release its first rankings of the 2014 football season on Oct. 28, with new rankings coming out every Tuesday from that point onward.

College Football Playoff Executive Director Bill Hancock has stated that the selection committee doesn't care how many conference games a team plays, but that it will examine a team's entire schedule.

Selection committee procedures were also unveiled on Wednesday.

Some highlights:

1-- 'People, not formulas': The selection committee will place emphasis on win-loss records, strength of schedule, conference championships won, head-to-head results and results against common opponents. They'll take the record of a team's opponents into consideration, but, according to the College Football Playoff's press release, the committee 'will not use a single data point such as the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) that is used for NCAA championships.'

'People, not mathematical formulas, will pick the teams, and we want to make sure the committee members have all the information they want so they can make the best decisions,' Hancock said.

My thought: Cue the first round of grumbling now. It sounds like this non-scientific process leaves plenty of room for controversy and disagreement.

2-- Voting Procedures: The committee will rank the nation's top 25 teams and assign teams to the national semi-final games and the Cotton, Peach and Fiesta Bowls. How will this work? Each committee member will create a list of 25 teams he or she believes are the best in the country. The teams are not ranked in order of merit. Teams listed by more than three committee members will stay under consideration. Each member then lists the six best teams, and the six teams receiving the most committee votes get into the pool for the first seeding ballot. In the first seeding ballot, each member ranks the six teams from 1 through 6. The three teams with fewest points become the top three seeds. Any leftover teams are held for the second seeding ballot (No. 7-12). The listing-then-ranking process begins again.

My thought: This could take a long, long time.

3 -- Recusal policy: Committee members will be recused from voting about a team if they, or an immediate family member, receives compensation from the school or has a professional relationship with the school.

My thought: While the committee has included a caveat that it retains the option to add other recusals 'if circumstances arise,' this recusal policy will never account for influence of personal relationships in this small world that is college athletics. Even if Committee Member A doesn't work for School A, what if his boyhood friend is the coach of School A? Or an alum and prominent booster of School A? Will said committee member recuse himself? Or just stay in the process and vote anyway?

Still, when it comes down to it, no system will please everybody.

Let's see how much controversy arises from season 1 of the College Football Playoff