Why does college football have to be a beauty contest?

[KaHOOnah]

There is no truly "objective" system. If you use human polls, you've got opinions of the pollsters. If you use a committee, then you've got the committee members' opinions. If you use a computer poll, then you've got the developers' opinions about what is important and what isn't.

At some point in any selection system, subjectivity is going to enter the process--it's unavoidable. A four team playoff increases the likelihood that you're including the best team over what we've got now, but there's no way to completely engineer subjectivity out.

My problem is the bias showed to SEC schools. Look, in most years, it's probably the best conference. But last year, by many metrics, the Big 12 was better, but if you watch ESPN's College Football Live, you would've thought you were watching the SEC Network or that the only good football teams were SEC teams. All I heard was that the SEC is head-and-shoulders above the other leagues.

I don't begrudge anyone for making a little paper, least of all ESPN. The deep south probably has more rabid college football fans than anywhere in the country, so ESPN appears willing to prime the SEC pump to pay their freight even when another conference is arguably more deserving. It was the human element, no doubt influenced by the ESPN hype machine, that put Alabama in the BCS Championship Game; the computers had LSU at #1 (no argument there) and Okie Lite averaged #2 (though that certainly wasn't unanimous). To boot, Okie Lite played and beat more ranked teams than Alabama last year. The ESPN hype machine put its full weight behind Bama, though, and you know how that turned out.

Take last year's sham of a title game as proof positive that the subjective rankings game is rigged in the SEC's favor. Forgive some of us if we're a little leery of using a ranking system that is stacking the deck for the SEC, as if those schools need the built-in advantage.