I didn’t realize that everyone involved in hockey just loves the NCAA selection process so much that it is recommended that CFB adopt it. I know this is D3, but every year we get a thread titled “ Post here to whine about why your team was left out.”
From Yahoo Sports:
sports.yahoo.com
From Yahoo Sports:
Could college football learn from college hockey when it comes to deciding its postseason field?
The SEC's cries after the reveal of last season's CFP field was only the beginning of the objective vs. subjective debate. As hated as the old BCS rankings were, could a computer formula be the answer? It's working in another college sport.
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Could college football learn from college hockey when it comes to deciding its postseason field?
From Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wolken:
We are a little more than a month away from the weekly outrage ritual where the College Football Playoff Selection Committee puts out rankings that don't matter and explains them poorly before ultimately selecting a 12-team field that will spawn an entire offseason of grievance for the teams and conferences on the wrong side of the line.
For better or worse, committees are part of college sports culture. There's a Committee on Infractions, competition committees, a Division I Council and of course blue-ribbon panels that choose the at-large participants for NCAA championship tournaments in basketball, baseball and a variety of other sports.
If the football powers that be ever wanted to overhaul the CFP selection process and implement a mathematical formula for choosing the teams, there's already a model for it that exists in college sports. And in general, the participants wouldn’t want it any other way.
"You like the fact that everyone knows the rules going in,” Providence men’s hockey coach Nate Leaman told Yahoo Sports. "It’s cut and dry. Everyone knows where everyone stands throughout the whole year. You know whether you're in or you're out."
From Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wolken:
We are a little more than a month away from the weekly outrage ritual where the College Football Playoff Selection Committee puts out rankings that don't matter and explains them poorly before ultimately selecting a 12-team field that will spawn an entire offseason of grievance for the teams and conferences on the wrong side of the line.
For better or worse, committees are part of college sports culture. There's a Committee on Infractions, competition committees, a Division I Council and of course blue-ribbon panels that choose the at-large participants for NCAA championship tournaments in basketball, baseball and a variety of other sports.
If the football powers that be ever wanted to overhaul the CFP selection process and implement a mathematical formula for choosing the teams, there's already a model for it that exists in college sports. And in general, the participants wouldn’t want it any other way.
"You like the fact that everyone knows the rules going in,” Providence men’s hockey coach Nate Leaman told Yahoo Sports. "It’s cut and dry. Everyone knows where everyone stands throughout the whole year. You know whether you're in or you're out."
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| Western Michigan celebrates winning the 2025 national championship. (Isaac Wasserman/NCAA Photos via Getty Images) |
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Since the early 1990s, college hockey has used a completely objective system to choose at-large teams for the NCAA tournament, with rankings that are publicly available and updated every night there are games.
Though the formula has evolved over the years and is still evolving, the gist of it was to take the three factors the committee was supposed to consider and measure every team in the country by comparing them with every other team.
All the selection committee does after the conference tournaments is plug in the six automatic bid winners and then take the 10 highest-rated teams from the formula to plug into the bracket. Sometimes there are necessary small seeding tweaks to deal with geography issues, but the committee has zero discretion when it comes to team selection. No mess, no controversy, no complaints.
"It certainly takes a lot of the pressure off," Tim Troville, the Division I men's ice hockey committee chairman and associate athletics director at Harvard, told Yahoo Sports. "We like to be really open and transparent. Mathematically you’re in, or mathematically you’re out. It’s been really good for hockey."
Perhaps the best part is that fans (and coaching staffs) can play with the numbers online and know exactly how certain wins and losses will impact their team's chances of getting in. For bubble teams, that means a lot of clicking the refresh button toward the end of the season and at the conference tournaments.
While that means the NCAA tournament selection show isn't particularly filled with suspense, the drama becomes a slow burn throughout the season. And at the end, if you don’t make the cut, there’s really nobody to blame.
The big question: Could something similar work for college football, which is still undecided on a playoff model for 2026 and beyond?
Though the formula has evolved over the years and is still evolving, the gist of it was to take the three factors the committee was supposed to consider and measure every team in the country by comparing them with every other team.
All the selection committee does after the conference tournaments is plug in the six automatic bid winners and then take the 10 highest-rated teams from the formula to plug into the bracket. Sometimes there are necessary small seeding tweaks to deal with geography issues, but the committee has zero discretion when it comes to team selection. No mess, no controversy, no complaints.
"It certainly takes a lot of the pressure off," Tim Troville, the Division I men's ice hockey committee chairman and associate athletics director at Harvard, told Yahoo Sports. "We like to be really open and transparent. Mathematically you’re in, or mathematically you’re out. It’s been really good for hockey."
Perhaps the best part is that fans (and coaching staffs) can play with the numbers online and know exactly how certain wins and losses will impact their team's chances of getting in. For bubble teams, that means a lot of clicking the refresh button toward the end of the season and at the conference tournaments.
While that means the NCAA tournament selection show isn't particularly filled with suspense, the drama becomes a slow burn throughout the season. And at the end, if you don’t make the cut, there’s really nobody to blame.
The big question: Could something similar work for college football, which is still undecided on a playoff model for 2026 and beyond?
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