Reusse: Old-fashioned politics drives football playoff committee

Geoff Charles was the midmorning host in the halcyon late '80s of KSTP AM-1500. Those days were halcyon and the label was generic because listeners didn't know what they were going to get when tuning in, other than it figured to be goofy.

Charles upheld his end of that bargain. Among Geoff's memorable proposals was that 12 people with varied backgrounds be selected to vote on all national issues, including (as I recall) the identity of the U.S. president.

As it turns out, Geoff was ahead of his time, at least when it comes to the world of big-time college football and the method for making crucial decisions.

In any group, the smaller the number the more probable that the decision becomes strictly political, and that was the case when the first College Football Playoff committee came in with its final rankings on Sunday morning.

The lone criteria for selecting the committee a year ago was that it include an athletic director from each of the five major conferences.

The rest of the committee was random: former college sports bureaucrats (Tom Jernstedt and Mike Tranghese), a coach revered for a failed two-point conversion attempt three decades earlier (Tom Osborne), a failed former coach (Tyrone Willingham), a sportswriter (Steve Wieberg), an Air Force guy (Michael Gould) and a former Secretary of State with idle time (Condoleezza Rice).

Archie Manning, a famous father of quarterbacks, was supposed to be the 13th member but did not participate due to health reasons.

Based on the lack of conviction we now see existed in the first six weeks of rankings, we must consider the possibility that Chairman Jeff Long, the athletic director at Arkansas, simply was jotting down a Top 25 on a napkin while eating barbecue at the Whole Hog in Fayetteville, and then announcing that it was the result of hard work by his committee.

If the committee actually was convinced that TCU was worthy of being rated No. 3 after the games of Nov. 27, there was no sane reason that it could rack up 722 yards in a 55-3 victory against the last team on its schedule, Iowa State, and fall to No. 6.

What did the committee want from the Horned Frogs — to have them haul piles of opponents' limbs out of Amon Carter Stadium in wheelbarrows?

Pat Forde, a college specialist and columnist for yahoo.sports, offered a precise observation on the CFP's weekly rankings that ultimately proved to be meaningless:

"The weekly made-for-ESPN shtick should end; ultimately, it proved to be nothing but reality TV show fakery. … If the ranking releases aren't going to be useful and accurate guideposts that inform the public on what the committee values, don't release them.''

That's OK, Bill, we all know the marching orders for weekly ratings came from ESPN, with a request to mix 'em a little along the way, such as jumping TCU ahead of unbeaten Florida State for no earthly reason.

My favorite lie came as Long explained Sunday's switch of Michigan State and Mississippi State at Nos. 7 and 8, when neither team played a game on the last weekend.

What Long said was the committee took a harder look and decided it had been wrong in having Michigan State at No. 7 a week earlier.

What actually happened was Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany reached inside the committee room and asked to have the Spartans dropped to No. 8, so that they wouldn't go to the Orange Bowl, allowing the Big Ten to send a team (the Gophers, as it turned out) to the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, and still put the Spartans in the Cotton Bowl, and get all the Big Ten bowl-eligibles lined up neatly.

There was no way for Long to explain the Michigan State/Mississippi State flip-flop other than to tell a tall yarn. Luckily, the chairman could draw on the experience of overseeing a committee that had produced rankings that were a lie for the six previous Tuesdays.