Former Wisconsin Badgers football coach Barry Alvarez had some input in the first-ever College Football Playoff rankings that were released on Tuesday night.
Alvarez, who is now the University of Wisconsin’s Athletics Director, is one of the 12 people who came up with the ranking of 25 top teams on Wednesday, and who will do so every Tuesday night through the end of the regular season in December. The eventual top four teams will play in a tournament to decide the national champion.
Alvarez is one of five active athletic directors on the committee. Some observers say they’re concerned about conflicts of interest, though the committee does have a recusal system in place in case members would be put in a position to show bias.
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“You would hope that these are very high-integrity people, that they would really objectively rank these teams,” said Sam Chi, managing editor of the website RealClearSports.
Chi said he thinks one meeting of the committee at the end of the season would be enough, but that ESPN — which will air the College Football Playoff rankings show each week — was looking for programming on one of the slowest nights of the week.
“You’ll note that the show is held every Tuesday night, which is unusual, but completely within reason in the realm of television, because Tuesday’s usually kind of a dead day so it’s a good time slot to fill,” said Chi.
Chi said it remains to be seen if the playoff system is better than the old Bowl Championship Series. For all its faults, Chi said he thinks the BCS was more transparent than the new selection system.
This week’s list was topped by Mississippi State, Florida State and Auburn. Wisconsin, which currently has a 5-2 record, did not make the list.
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