re: College Football Playoff using top 4 Conference winners: BCS era

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I guess we will see, but I have not reason to believe that the committee will be much different than that top 4 anyway.

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There probably is when you read what's been said:

LINK

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The championship game will be managed by the conferences and will not be branded as a bowl game. The presidents also announced the creation of a selection committee that will rank the teams to play in the playoff, "giving all the teams an equal opportunity to participate." The committee will consider win-loss record, strength of schedule, head-to-head results and whether a team is a conference champion.

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When you look at those listed criteria that makes it a long shot for an at large who didn't win their conference to make the field.

1) Win/loss records are unlikely to help at large teams that don't win their conference; their W/L records are similar generally (MSU, UCF, Baylor, and Alabama have the same records this year).

2) Strength of schedule won't help teams like Alabama unless they start scheduling more aggressively out of conference. Note they have one win against a team in teh top 20 of the BCS in LSU whereas conference champs like Baylor, MSU, and Stanford may have better quality wins on their schedules (again, I refer you to the BCS rankings of teams like OU, tOSU, Oregon, ASU, and UCLA compared to Bama's best team beaten in LSU)

3) Head to head results - another way of saying win your conference. If you lost those games against teams you should have beaten to win your conference you are going to have an uphill battle to an at large berth.

4) Winning your conference - By definition this will not favor at large bids.