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Tom Osborne on College Football Playoff Selection Committee

The College Football Selection Committee has been announced. Nebraska legend Tom Osborne is on it, along with a bunch of other old men and one old woman. Their decisions will be based on whatever they feel like, and they will not be questioned. This is the playoff you wanted, isn't it?

By Jon Johnston
Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

The BCS will die next season as the four-team College Football Playoff takes its place. Gone will be the formulas, the influence of the polls whether they be the AP, Coaches, Harris, Jabber-Wocky, or a poll I made up in my head on the way to the beer store.

We'll still have polls, of course, before the season starts, too, otherwise what we would have to argue about?

Win loss records might not even count. Instead, selections will be based on... whatever the hell might be happening at the time.

Team-Selection Method:

Unlike the BCS, which uses a formula based on a combination of computer rankings and human polls to select teams, selection committee members for the new playoff will have flexibility to examine whatever data they believe is relevant to inform their decisions. Among the many factors the committee will consider are win-loss record, strength of schedule, head-to-head results, and conference championships won.

All of those determining factors, messy things anyway, will be replaced by the COLLEGE FOOTBALL SELECTION COMMITTEE, a group of people whose wisdom will not be questioned.

The members of the selection committee are:

  • Jeff Long, vice chancellor and director of athletics, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, Chair
  • Barry Alvarez, director of athletics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Lieutenant General Mike Gould, former superintendent of the United States Air Force Academy
  • Pat Haden, director of athletics, University of Southern California
  • Tom Jernstedt, former NCAA executive vice president
  • Oliver Luck, director of athletics, West Virginia University
  • Archie Manning, former University of Mississippi quarterback and all-pro NFL quarterback
  • Tom Osborne, former head coach and director of athletics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  • Dan Radakovich, director of athletics, Clemson University
  • Condoleezza Rice, Stanford University professor, former Stanford provost and former United States Secretary of State
  • Mike Tranghese, former commissioner of the Big East Conference
  • Steve Wieberg, former college football reporter,USA Today
  • Tyrone Willingham, former head coach of three FBS institutions

These are the wisest people in the land when it comes to college football.

Not only that, but they are decision makers, as emphasized by the decisionator himself, Jim Delany:

Yes, people who MAKE decisions, and by that implication, not tiny little decisions like you make on a day-to-day basis. No, these people already know what beer/wine/expensive liquor they're going to get before they go to the beer store because they're old, dammit, and they've been making those decisions for years before you were born, having already decided what beer/wine/expensive liquor is best in 1978 and then moved on to make decisions on whether or not to invade Iraq, hire Lane Kiffin or play Lawrence Phillips.

They will serve for three years and not be paid. They will release updates every other week throughout the season beginning half way through the season or so they say so now, this might change by next season because that's what decision makers do - CHANGE THEIR MINDS AT A MOMENT'S NOTICE IF THEY WANT TO BECAUSE THEY'RE IN CHARGE YOU SUNSABITCHES! IN CHARGE OF EVERYTHING!

There is a cheerleader at the beginning of this article because that's what I want college football to be - beautiful, youthful, innocent (get your mind out of the gutter, dammit), in short, all of the goodness in life with a bright future ahead.

Instead, what we get is Bill Hancock and a bunch of mostly old crusty men. Just to switch things up, they threw in a crusty old woman to distract us. All together they'll make decisions that affect our favorite sport, base those decisions on criteria roughly resembling gut feelings  and we'll have no choice but to live with them.

This is what we asked for, and we asked for it for many years. It's nearly here. What do you think of it now?

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