The College Football Playoff Committee Got it Right

Welcome to the world of college football, where the quest for a coveted national championship collides with the complexities of committee decision-making.

Dec 11, 2023

You are reading Monday Morning Economist, a free weekly newsletter that explores the economics behind pop culture and current events. This newsletter lands in the inbox of over 3,000 subscribers every week! You can support this newsletter by sharing this free post or becoming a paid subscriber:

In the last NCAA College Football Playoff selection meeting of the 2023 season, the undefeated Florida State Seminoles found themselves sidelined, sparking controversy and leaving fans scratching their heads. How is an unbeaten powerhouse from a major conference not considered one of the top four? To make matters worse, the team picked ahead of them, the Alabama Crismon Tide, already lost to one of the other playoff teams earlier in the season at home. Welcome to the world of college football, where the quest for a coveted national championship collides with the complexities of committee decision-making.

As it turns out, decision-making in college football is far from straightforward. The playoff spots are scarce, and the governing association has chosen this method to decide who gets a shot at the championship. They’ve put it in the hands of a committee—yes, a committee—tasked with allocating those precious playoff spots among the 133 teams vying for glory each year. This isn’t an issue that will disappear when the playoffs expand to 12 teams next year. We’ll eventually be back again to debate which team should make the 12th spot.

Now, you might wonder, why go through all this committee drama? Well, it wasn’t always this way. Less than a decade ago, we relied on a cold, unfeeling computer algorithm to decide which two teams would battle for the national championship. Spoiler alert: people weren’t always thrilled with that either. So, the NCAA decided to switch gears and let a committee take the reins in 2014. Now, as the dust settles, we’re beginning to see the challenges that come with committee decisions—challenges that, it seems, not everyone saw coming.

Allocation Decisions

Every economic system must answer three foundational questions: what to produce, how to produce it, and, perhaps most contentiously, who gets to enjoy what is produced? The answer to each of these questions can be challenging, but they’re important for allocating everything from pizzas, healthcare, and housing to the annual question of which teams should have the opportunity to compete for a national championship.

While we’ll analyze this challenge through the lens of college football, keep in mind that it impacts every society. This is true regardless of whether that society leans capitalistic, socialist, or occupies some intriguing middle ground. The governing body that oversees our college football system acts as our economic system. Their mission? To determine a national champion each year. Now, here’s the twist—they’ve chosen to craft this championship spectacle by using a four-team playoff structure, with the allocation of those prized playoff spots entrusted to… a committee.

The 2021 playoff committee [Souce: **College Football Playoff**]

Enter the Playoff Selection Committee. Their task? To handpick the four teams they deem the cream of the crop across the country. But it’s not just about selecting the best; they must also factor in what the nation wants to watch. Case in point: Last year’s championship game, where the Georgia Bulldogs thrashed the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs with a staggering score of 65 to 7. While Georgia’s die-hard fans may have reveled in their team’s triumph, most television viewers would like to see a match where there is some uncertainty about the outcome.

We know how the NCAA currently allocates the four spots, but let’s consider alternative ways these spots could have been distributed. As we’re about to discover, not all goods and services adhere to the same distribution methods. Let’s keep our committee in place, but consider alternative allocation methods they could have selected. After going through our alternative options, we may find that this is the best method available.

There are nine basic strategies for allocating goods and services in an economy and a combination is often used:

Price: The item goes to the highest bidder, or to the person willing to pay a specific amount at a set time, much like an auction.
First-Come-First-Served: The quickest claimant snags the item, a lot like grabbing concert tickets (usually involving a price tag!).
Majority Rule: The majority’s choice prevails, whether through votes or elections, much like a political race.
Sharing: Items are divided among recipients who mutually agree to use only a portion, mirroring the principles of a community garden.
Force: Items are acquired through legal or illegal means, often without consent – think theft.
Competition: The winner of a game, contest, or event emerges as the rightful owner, just like Olympic gold medalists.
Arbitrary Characteristic: Items are awarded based on predetermined criteria, be it age, grade, geographic location, or other traits – like handing a balloon to the youngest child.
Command: A government entity takes charge of distribution, as exemplified by housing in the Soviet Union.
Random/Lottery: A lottery decides who gets what, offering everyone an equal shot, much like a typical lottery.

The current approach is a blend of command, competition, and arbitrary characteristics. Teams play each other throughout the season, and the committee uses pre-determined criteria to select the four teams at the end of the season. The ultimate champion eventually emerges from competition among these four teams, despite the selection of the "best teams” relying on more arbitrary measures. Factors such as conference championship wins, schedule strength, head-to-head results, and comparisons with common opponents all come into play in selecting the four finalists.

Now, consider this: How would the college football playoff landscape look if the governing body had chosen a different method for allocating those four coveted spots? Some options are easier to imagine than others, but play along with these alternative allocation methods:

Price/Auction

Market-based systems often rely on prices to distribute goods and services. Instead of trusting a committee to pick the four playoff spots, the NCAA could’ve transformed these spots into commodities up for the highest bidder. The four highest bidders each year would secure their golden tickets to the playoffs.

College sports are already scrutinized for becoming too commercialized, with deep-pocketed programs wielding disproportionate power. If we assume that the athletic programs earning the most revenue would also bid the most money for a spot in the playoffs, we’d be watching Ohio State ($251 million), Texas ($239 million), Alabama ($214 million), and Michigan ($210 million) in the final four. Florida State, by the way, ranks #15 with revenues totaling $161 million. This method got three of the top four teams right, but is this the game we want to play?

First-Come-First-Served

Now, let’s talk about a method that looks a lot like the scramble for tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour—the first-come-first-served approach. In this scenario, teams would race to claim their playoff spots immediately after the season concludes. The first four to stake their claim secure a spot at the playoff table.

Sounds simple, right? But this method comes with its own set of issues. Even concert tickets require someone to pay for the ticket when it’s their turn in line. Perhaps we limit the field to only teams who won their conference championship. Even this condition would overlook crucial nuances such as performance, strength of schedule, and overall team merit.

Based on the date championships were played, the first four conference champions were Liberty (Conference USA), Washington (Pac-12), Texas (Big 12), and Miami (Ohio) from the MidAmerican Conference (MAC). Michigan and Florida State were the two last conference champions to be determined.

Majority Rule

Imagine a scenario where the fate of teams is determined by a nationwide vote. Fans, coaches, and players all participate in a democratic poll to decide the top four. But here’s the catch: it might favor programs with large alumni networks (like Penn State) and turn the selection into a popularity contest rather than a reflection of on-field merit.

Various respected polls already rank football teams each week. The Coaches Poll, based on the input of 66 head coaches, placed Michigan, Washington, and Florida State in the top 3 spots, but ranked Texas and Alabama tied for the fourth spot. Meanwhile, the Associated Press, using ballots from 62 sportswriters and broadcasters, ranked Michigan, Washington, Texas, and Florida State as their top four. It’s democracy in action, but does it truly capture the best?

While the polls may capture the quality of teams, this is what the playoffs would look like if we based it on the four most popular college athletic programs:

Communal Sharing

Next up, an allocation method that challenges the very essence of competition within sports—the communal sharing approach. Instead of selecting the four best teams, the NCAA could opt for a system that celebrates underdog programs, giving them a chance to earn a title. This would immediately eliminate powerhouse teams like Alabama (16 titles), Notre Dame (13), Michigan (9), and Southern California (9) from contention, as they’ve already claimed the most championships among eligible teams.

But here’s the kicker: this method alone wouldn’t help us find four teams since most teams have never won a national championship. Five teams haven’t ever won a conference championship, so we’d be looking at the following options: Charlotte, Georgia State, Old Dominion, South Alabama, and South Florida. Let’s remove Charlotte from the list since they’re the newest FBS team and rank the remaining teams based on when they started playing at the top level:

This would likely be a really bad allocation method since part of the goal is to make sure TV audiences tune in to the game. This method would not only fail to recognize the outstanding performance of individual teams during the season, but it would also diminish the value of the playoff system as a whole.

Force

Allocating these spots by force is a method that’s hard to imagine in the realm of college football. The closest we get is a team that doesn’t make it to the playoffs but claims a national championship title anyway. Remember the University of Central Florida’s antics in 2017? They went undefeated but were denied a playoff spot. So, they hung a banner, held a parade, sold championship merchandise, and declared themselves champions. It’s a bold move, but they’ve essentially forced people to watch them claim a title. Perhaps Florida State will do something similar if they win their matchup with Georgia in the Orange Bowl. It wouldn’t be the most absurd time a team claimed a title.

The University of Central Florida claims the 2017 National Championship. Source: Orlando Sentinel

Competition

Under the current system, teams play about a dozen games each year. This makes it challenging to establish head-to-head comparisons. Selecting only four teams based on about a dozen games limits the amount of competition teams face en route to a national title.

Next year’s expansion to 12 teams aims to address some issues, but the debate over the "last team in" will likely remain. The Football Championship Series uses a 24-team structure with automatic bids for conference champions. Division II invites 28 teams and Division III includes 32 teams. But remember, the longer the playoffs, the greater the risk of the best team losing early, potentially diminishing the value of the final game.

Arbitrary Characteristics

Finally, let’s explore the notion of allocating spots based on arbitrary characteristics. The committee’s task was to determine the best teams, but there was an ongoing debate before the results were shown—should the spots go to the best or the most deserving teams?

While fans and the committee hashed out the "best vs. most deserving" conundrum, they could’ve opted for selecting programs based on different criteria. The point here is that the arbitrary condition can evolve. The committee could’ve chosen the four teams based on characteristics like overall team age, geographic location, or even proximity to a Sonic. Fans may not have been happy with the perceived subjectivity behind determining the “best teams,” but they would have probably hated other measures that are disconnected from on-field performance.

The Committee’s Final Say

As we wrap up our exploration of the College Football Playoff Committee’s options, one thing becomes clear: their command approach may not be popular, but the alternatives looked a lot worse. A command approach, wielding centralized authority to make the final call is not without its share of challenges. Subjectivity, bias, and the insurmountable task of pleasing the diverse landscape of players, fans, and analysts all loom large.

Let’s face it; no matter who gets the last spot, there will always be a group of unhappy fans. Some accused the committee of biases, suggesting that personal preferences swayed their decisions. But, to be fair, their task was no cakewalk.

Beyond the world of college football, the committee’s struggles resonate with historical challenges confronted by command and control economies, both past and present. The same pitfalls seen in these centralized systems cast their shadows on the committee’s decisions—questions of fairness, transparency, and the ever-elusive ability to meet the expectations of a diverse and passionate fan base.