College football fans and teams alike will learn the fate of the Conference’s playoff picks over the coming days, as officials meet to discuss the make-up of the new conference committee.
Representatives of the Big 12 Conference are meeting in California to finalize details of the new playoffs structure, due to come into effect in January of 2014. It is expected that the meeting will produce some of the finer details for how the game will be organized in future.
The new committee will be installed to decide the four teams that should progress from the conference to compete for a championship place. But with just 20 committee members set to replace over 170 different polls and data sources, some are concerned about just who will be involved in the decision making process.
Conference officials have yet to spell out all of the details, but there has been some disclosure over the likely makeup of the committee.
Bill Hancock, executive director of the BCS, said that whoever ends up on the committee, they will be impartial and have a strong understanding of the game.
According to quotes in AL.com, Hancock suggested the committee would act like a jury in determining the best four teams to compete in the playoffs.
“I’d be very surprised if we have an RPI or any other kind of universal metric. I think instead there will be several different sets of data that the members can look at. What kind of data? We don’t know. Obviously their decision will be made based on common sense: Who did you play? How did you play them? How did you do? Who was injured when you played? How was the weather? Just common-sense things that any sports fan would use.”
The identity of the committee is a major concern for football fans nationwide. Many are worried that bias and misplaced loyalties could skew the decision. While the committee will feature representation from all sides in the conference, there is still some reluctance to move to a system with no objective data component.
StubHub.com has NFL football tickets, and sports fans that use the site are anxious about the committee line-up and its possible effect on the playoffs next season.
“We’re finding an increasing number of football fans are expressing concern over these plans. The opposition isn’t fundamental, but most of our users would agree that there needs to be more information given about the new conference structure. The meeting of Big 12 officials should hopefully help clear up some of the remaining confusion.”