The college football playoffs are broken. Repairing it is not that difficult

They want a bold and beautiful Ferrari, an elegant machine that will explore the new frontiers of college football.

They did it to a 1972 VW Bug engine, hesitating and gulping through Turn 1 of the new College Football Playoff.

“It’s the first year, and soon we’ll be able to step back and take a look at everything,” Ohio State athletics director Ross Bjork said.

We don’t have to wait for those who run the CFP – the reactionary revolutionaries that they are – to figure out what’s wrong with the new 12-team format. It’s not that difficult to understand.

When the two championship game losers of the sport’s two strongest conferences are offered an easier path to the playoffs than the champions of those conferences, it’s time for a change.

When three teams (Indiana, SMU, Tennessee) that didn’t deserve to be on the field came in and were unceremoniously eliminated in first round games, it’s time for a change.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Hayes plan to repair the Ferrari:

– Eliminate top seeds for automatic qualifiers.

— Sow again after the first round.

— And for the love of all things Pigskin, the strength of the schedule must be heavily considered in the selection process.

Consider this madness: Indiana, SMU and Tennessee combined to beat a team that was ranked in the top 25 in the last playoffs. They have also won 31 other games between them without consistency.

No. 1 Oregon beat No. 4 Penn State in the Big Ten championship game and No. 2 Georgia beat No. 3 Texas in the SEC championship game, but the bracket — sir, stop trying to brand everyone the “bracket.” to impose things in college sports – spit out these quarterfinal gems: Oregon vs. No. 6 Ohio State and Penn State vs. No. 9 Boise State, plus Georgia vs. No. 5 Notre Dame and Texas vs. Arizona State No. 12.

I think I can speak for the sensible among us when I say: What the hell is going on here?

I refuse to believe that intelligent, resourceful and well-meaning men and women in college sports have agreed to a playoff structure so flawed that seven computer idiots are hiding in their houses poring over their rankings – with their own “secret “Formula of quartiles and variations – appear to be the preferred process for selecting postseason teams.

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Or that the same well-meaning men and women watched the NFL – you know, the sport/structure that college football is desperately trying to restore – and the playoffs and thought, yeah, the whole re-seeding thing is stupid. Let’s not reward the success of the regular season and leave everything to chance!

All in the name of bracket branding.

You must be joking. We have to be better, all of us.

There’s too much money at stake (an estimated $800 million annually and potentially $1.2 billion starting in 2026) for college football officials to go through with this willy-nilly in the hope that on Everything works out in the end.

Remember the nonsense from years past? Remember when the Bowl Championship Series formula (see: computer idiots) was a unique mathematical formula that Joe Sixpack wouldn’t understand?

Trust us, everything will be okay in the end, they said. The two teams that were scheduled to play in the national title game will play in the national title game.

Forget that these seven computer polls, which together made up a third of the process (the Harris and AP polls were the other two-thirds), had completely different polls throughout the season – only to strangely and conveniently produce almost identical results ( using various computer formulas) until the end of the season.

So we can go back to that or just decide that the strength of the schedule means something. You can’t play a team that has a winning record and a non-conference schedule with Florida International, Western Illinois and Charlotte and expect to be taken seriously in future playoff polls.

You can’t win a big rivalry game (Tennessee vs. Alabama) in late October, then play (and blow out) a difficult game the rest of the season, and then punch your ticket to the show.

After Tennessee’s win over Alabama, the Vols played Kentucky (4-8), Mississippi State (2-10), Georgia (loss), Texas-El Paso (3-9) and Vanderbilt (6-6). That has to play a role in the selection process – it just is has to – when there was nothing else significant in the first half of the season.

If you want to screw Indiana about their game plan, you can’t give Tennessee a pass just because it’s playing in the Eat Eee See.

Actually it’s a simple solution. The college basketball tournament uses quad wins, with a team’s wins and losses classified into quads of significance. The victories and losses of Quad 1 are the most important, and the victories of Quads 2 and 3 are less significant and outweigh losses.

In other words, strength of schedule is everything. That doesn’t mean the basketball committee doesn’t neglect some decisions every year, it just means there are defined metrics with little room for nuance.

You know, the unbearable nuance of “You can only play whoever’s on the schedule.” If that’s your argument for inclusion, every undefeated Group of Five conference championship over the years has also been diminished.

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