I'm willing to give the CFP as much a benefit of the doubt as possible, but 3 years of evidence leaves it very clear that virtually all the criteria cited by the selection committee are nothing but tie-breakers. The 2 most important criteria in order are:
1. This is as simple as it gets and completely obvious -- how many games did you lose? Only 2 times has a team with one more loss been ranked ahead of another team in the top 10 of the final rankings and neither time did it have any effect on the final 4. Frankly, if a 2-loss Penn State who won the championship of the strongest conference and beat one of the final four teams head to head is not going to be given the nod over a 1-loss Washington team that had the weakest OOC schedule of anyone in consideration when will it ever happen? You have the 3 most prominent criteria cited by the committee right there in one sentence and all of them together were not enough to overcome the fact that Penn State had 2 losses and Washington only had 1. Honestly, if Oklahoma would have played anyone instead of either Houston or Ohio State they would have only had one loss and they would have been in ahead of Washington no matter what the committee thought about their defense.
2. Traditional powers are given preference. That too is not debatable.
Once criteria 1 and 2 above are used to identify the 4 top teams the other criteria are applied as needed to justify the final order that is arrived at. That's the formula -- that's what it all boils down to. I'm not even accusing the committee of being corrupt -- maybe they don't realize what they are doing. But that's what they are doing.
1. This is as simple as it gets and completely obvious -- how many games did you lose? Only 2 times has a team with one more loss been ranked ahead of another team in the top 10 of the final rankings and neither time did it have any effect on the final 4. Frankly, if a 2-loss Penn State who won the championship of the strongest conference and beat one of the final four teams head to head is not going to be given the nod over a 1-loss Washington team that had the weakest OOC schedule of anyone in consideration when will it ever happen? You have the 3 most prominent criteria cited by the committee right there in one sentence and all of them together were not enough to overcome the fact that Penn State had 2 losses and Washington only had 1. Honestly, if Oklahoma would have played anyone instead of either Houston or Ohio State they would have only had one loss and they would have been in ahead of Washington no matter what the committee thought about their defense.
2. Traditional powers are given preference. That too is not debatable.
Once criteria 1 and 2 above are used to identify the 4 top teams the other criteria are applied as needed to justify the final order that is arrived at. That's the formula -- that's what it all boils down to. I'm not even accusing the committee of being corrupt -- maybe they don't realize what they are doing. But that's what they are doing.
