Mid-Majors, Human Bias, and the College Football Playoff

College football will decide its national champion by a playoff this year for the first time in its long, convoluted history. Past national championships have been awarded by computers, pollsters, and coaches, which has led to quirks like 11 years with multiple national champions since 1954. The playoff is "the biggest innovation in the sport in decades," boasts its website. It was ostensibly developed to demystify the process of seeding the national title game, but it has a lot of the same flaws as its backroom predecessors, and could end up being just as exclusionary.

On Wednesday, I spoke with Richard Billingsley, a computer model rankings pioneer with over 40 years of experience, about the concept of a playoff. Initially, Billingsley was opposed to the playoff. "I fought it to the bitter end," he told me, "but my hope is that it's gonna be a good thing for college football." He pointed out that the selection committee charged with seeding the playoff, which includes Condoleeza Rice, has structural flaws. "To some degree, there's going to be a human bias," he says. The problem for Billingsley is "not the individuals…the 13 panelists they chose are beyond reproach," but rather the cloak-and-dagger way they vote. "I would like to know how each member of that committee voted," he said. College football isn't assuaging any fears about corruption by keeping the balloting process secret.

The playoff is only a two-round affair, not the eight-team scrum Barack Obama wanted. Theoretically, opening up the gates to four schools rather than two makes it easier to avoid barring undefeated teams from a shot at the title. In the recent past, teams like Boise State and TCU have gone undefeated but have been shuffled into lesser bowl games because of their status as mid-major schools.

Having a playoff means there are more slots for schools like Boise State, but they still have to go undefeated and get the approval of a committee. They are at the mercy of human discretion, as Billingsley pointed out. Further complicating the situation is the recent decline of both Boise State and TCU, right as the system that could benefit them has come into place. There aren't any historically elite mid-major teams in contention for a playoff slot this year, but BYU is the closest.

Billingsley agreed that BYU is the outsider team with the best chance of hijacking the playoff, but "the playoff would have been better served if they had stated 'There's an automatic spot for the Group of 5 and this group of independents.' It really kind of makes me angry." The Group of 5, which doesn't include the now-independent BYU, is made up of the MAC and other second-tier conferences. They have one guaranteed spot in a major bowl game every year if they field an undefeated team.

"BYU is an elite program," Billingsley went on, "it made me mad when the SEC and the ACC said they were not a worthy opponent." As of this writing, BYU is 4-0 with impressive wins over Texas and Virginia. They could easily win out their schedule and miss out on every major bowl game because of perceived weakness and the geographical entrenchment of the establishment. It's a different version of the same old college football story, where an upstart is denied a chance to win a bowl game by SEC and establishment biases.

Looking at their schedule and all the teams they'd have to leapfrog, they could very well go undefeated. Their only major conference opponent is Cal who, despite being the best and coolest team in college football, is mediocre at best. They will have to play the perception game and convince the committee that they're worthy. Meanwhile, BYU will have two extra spots worth of leeway, but the basic paradigm is the same.

"Can you imagine a BYU team that's ranked in the top 10 in the nation playing in that little bitty bowl in Florida?" Billingsley asked me. "That would be a tragedy." BYU may or may not earn consideration for a spot in the playoff or a top bowl game, but if they do, let's hope they get a chance to play. College football is a wild and unpredictable sport. It's vibrant in a way that most sports aren't. The fabled bowl season would be better served with more variety. For now, we'll have to wait and see if the playoff system is really as forward thinking as its proponents make it out to be.