How Does the New College Football Playoff System Work?

Say goodbye to the Bowl Championship Series and say hello to the College Football Playoffs. The NCAA’s new system for crowning its champion promises to create a more sporting conclusion to the college season, making for an even more exciting 2014-2015.

But how exactly does it work? Read on for our complete breakdown of the new College Football Playoffs and while you’re at it get set for the action with our compilation of experts’ predictions for the 2014-2015 season and our list of the best games of the college football schedule.

The New College Football Playoff

With the BCS era now a thing of the past, the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision is now going to take a stab at appeasing the old system’s detractors by rolling out the College Football Playoff or the CFP.

[sc:NCAA240banner ]For a refresher, the BCS, which ran from 1998 t0 2013, relied on polls and computers to tell which teams were going to play in the national championship game. Those teams were the top two ranked schools after the regular season.

However, the mystery around the system led to the claim that underserving teams were being tapped for the national championship game. Furthermore, the old system was a one-game finale. Why not spread the action out for fans and players alike, and let the four best programs face off against each other for more games, more competitiveness and more sweet sweet college football?

Selection Committee

Under the current scheme, computers and polls will all be thrown out of the window. Replacing these two entities will be a selection committee composed of 13 individuals, who will all convene regularly to discuss and determine which schools will make it to their Top 25 list. To do that, the committee will have to consider a number of factors in their deliberation.  The 13-man assembly includes a configuration of players, coaches, athletic directors, and former media members.

The first Top 25 rankings will be released by the committee on October 28, 2014. The rankings will be updated every Tuesday throughout the season.

The Four-Team Playoffs

At the end of the regular season, the committee will select teams that are going to play in the four-team Playoffs. The committee will not be limited by the rankings they’ve come up with when selecting those four teams, though. So in a sense, just because a team made it to the top four by season’s end, it doesn’t conclusively mean that they are assured of a slot in the four-team Playoffs.

In the new system, two of college football’s annual Bowls will be tapped as the semifinals each year – two of the most prestigious six on the schedule: the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Chick-fil-A, and Fiesta Bowls. For the inaugural season of the CFP in 2014, the semifinal teams will be slotted into the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.

Next season, it will be the Orange and the Cotton. After that, it’s the turn of the Chick-fil-A and the Fiesta. In short, all CFB bowls will rotate as hosts every three years.

Selection Factors

The selection committee will have at their disposal a number of factors to consider when ranking the teams. The committee will even be supplied with statistics by ESPN. However, none of those is going to be absolute determinants of how teams will be ranked, as in the end, it will be all up to the committee on how to organize their list.

And while no hard-and-fast system is in place, there are several known elements that will be taken into account by the all-powerful committee.

Strength of Schedule. A school’s strength of schedule or SOS will be the biggest factor to consider every time the committee holds their deliberation. For example, if a mid-major team is to make it to the Playoffs, that school will most likely need to take down a couple of football powerhouses to have a better shot of being picked as their week-to-week competition is not up the level of that in a conference like the Big-12.

Conference Championships. As mentioned above, there is no clear-cut deciding factor of how teams will make the Playoffs, but since SOS can be considered important at some point by the committee, winning a major conference should be a big plus for any team that will do that.

Other factors include win-loss records, head-to-head matchups, and even injuries and the weather.

Excited as we are? Create a betting account now and bet on which team you think will be crowned as the first-ever national champions of the College Football Playoff era.
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