There is a new form of clickbait in the college football world. We see it, time and time again, across all manner of college football journalists and pundits. College football news and discussion outlets want us to expect it, because it’s an easy topic that everyone loves to listen and talk about.
And, it needs to stop.
I’m talking about projecting selection committee rankings before they come out. Of course, individuals and experts making their own Top 25’s is a time-honored college football tradition. And every outlet, from small-time blogs to major networks, wants to put out its own form of rankings of teams. In the past, that was mostly fine. Everyone knew that the AP, Coaches’ Poll, and the BCS (from 1998-2013) were the only ones that mattered. Everything else was just for fun.
FOXSports.com still follows that model. They have lots of random rankings for fans to read, including Top 10’s from the site’s top two writers and a FOX Four, a collaborative ranking of the top four teams. Those are fun, and those are rankings that don’t hurt fans to read.
The growing trend we have now, though, is a different concept entirely. “Projecting the CFP selection committee rankings” isn’t the same thing at all. Again, everyone does this. Jerry Palm of CBSSports did it. USAToday.com did it. ESPN has even had an hour-long show the past two Tuesday nights doing it. It’s a terrible idea that can do nothing but enrage and confuse the public when the committee doesn’t meet the expectations set by the national media.
Here’s why.
Let’s start with the obvious and important point why these have to stop: there is no way for anyone to get it right. As much as pundits love claiming that they “follow the same procedures as the committee” or that they “use the committee’s criteria,” they don’t. How can they? The committee is a rotating group of 13 (or 12) people. We never know how close the votes were or precisely what the deciding factors were each season or each week. We don’t know what could swing that from year to year.
The past two years, we heard two very different talking points from the selection committee. Two years ago, “game control” was all the rage. The committee’s main ranking criteria (there wasn’t much discussion of strength of schedule or comparative outcomes of common opponents) was basically a glorified way of using the “eye test.”
Then, last year, we didn’t hear anything about “game control.” Suddenly, we were hearing about a new strength of schedule metric called “wins over teams with .500 or better records.” Without getting into how accurate such a way of judging teams is, it just shows that we have no real way to know what the committee will choose to emphasize to us next. Even more importantly, though, we have no real way of even knowing if the talking points we hear on ESPN and in the conference call on Tuesday nights are even what was discussed in the committee’s meetings.
Palm is honest enough to admit this while introducing his “projections.” Honestly, trying to utilize the committee’s criteria might have been an honorable and worthwhile endeavor two years ago, before we knew the futility of such an attempt.
But doing this, with full knowledge that there is no way to be accurate about it, does nothing positive for the college football fan. Palm knows this and ESPN knows this. They do it anyway because it’s easy programming that college football fans eat up. At best, it’s something meaningless that will be dismissed out of hand by fans, but it would at least entertain fans for a while.
Experience should have taught us better than that, too. Things like basketball Bracketology and polls create an impression in fans’ minds that we can see, thanks to places like Twitter, leads to anger and vitriol when fans don’t get what they expect. Attempting the impossible — trying to predict what the selection committee will do — will just jade and disappoint fans. It’s one thing when at least Palm tells us that it’s a futile effort (not that anyone reads introductions); it’s another when ESPN shows a fake selection committee show for an hour.
We should strive for our most-watched college football outlets to present honest and solid analysis — not easy programming that has no real upside for fans and a large downside.
