Reaching the College Football Playoff is a lucrative business for schools

The inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff (CFP) is officially here. Once seen as a complicated process that included math equations and plenty of disagreements, college football’s postseason structure has changed a lot over the past three decades.

It started in 1997 when college football’s six biggest conferences joined forces to create the Bowl Championship Series, or BCS. This system used a complex equation to pit the top two teams against each other, ranking teams based on three criteria:

The average of human polls (like the AP Poll and Coaches Poll)

A composite of computer rankings

A strength-of-schedule factor

The problem with this process was that it was constantly changing and intentionally opaque. Over the years, alternative categories like quality wins and margin of victory were added or removed. Many fans had no idea how it worked, claiming it was rigged for the sport’s blue bloods. Worst of all, the Coaches Poll and AP Poll didn’t always agree on the national champion despite a title game taking place.

So, in 2014, the College Football Playoff was established. Rather than having a computer determine the national championship matchup, a committee of 13 people would now vote to determine the country’s four best teams. These four teams were then invited to a knockout-style tournament to crown that year’s national champion.

Notre Dame qualified for the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff. (AP Photo/Michael Caterina, File)

Some people say that a 13-member committee voting to determine the country’s best teams inherently introduces more bias than a computer algorithm — hello, Florida State! However, almost everyone agrees that more games are better, and given the financial success of the four-team format, the playoff has now been expanded to 12 teams.

The new format is simple: Conference…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/reaching-the-college-football-playoff-is-a-lucrative-business-for-schools-142436786.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-12-20 14:24:00

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