Welcome to December, the month most commonly known for the Festivus holiday. A celebration that includes, among other things, the airing of grievances.
And in that spirit, I'd like to take this opportunity to air my grievances about the new College Football Playoff.
For the first time since 1998, this season's rankings are completely the work of humans. The selection committee is comprised of 13 members that gather every week and come up with the top 25 teams in college football. The most coveted real estate is in the No. 1- 4 range, because those teams earn the right play in an abbreviated bracket-style "tournament" to decide the national champion.
This is what we all wanted. The former system, the Bowl Championship Series, had a laundry list of flaws that was highlighted by its inclusion of just the top-two teams into the national title hunt at the end of the season. Teams were left out, questions remained unanswered and fanbases were left to call Paul Finebaum's radio show and make idiots out of themselves.
That last part has stood the test of time, but the current playoff is a giant overcorrection from the previous system.
There's a very real debate to be had on whether the CFP should be expanded from four teams to eight or even more, but we can all agree that any one of those options is better than two. My issue is with how the teams are chosen.
The computerized element of the rankings wasn't what was wrong with the BCS, and eliminating that from consideration wasn't the correction that needed to be made. The teams that were hurt the most by the computers were the Boise States of the world that spent the BCS era compiling some of the best records in the nation from over in the Mountain West and WAC without ever finding their way into a national title game.
Both of the Broncos' undefeated seasons be damned.
The human polls should've been how those schools got a seat at the table from outside of the power-five conferences (SEC, ACC, Pac 12, Big 12 and Big 10), but with only two spots available, there was never any room to toy with that idea. Under the new four-team system, the computers can take more factors into consideration than humanly possible, while the committee employs the eye test and explores new ideas, such as a team from outside the power-five in the playoff.
Man and machine should work together, and the BCS had that right.
But since the committee is flying solo, it's left to make statements and dish out shocking conclusions on its nationally televised unveiling of the rankings each week.
That's how the two greatest injustices of the new system have come to be, with undefeated Florida State sitting at No. 4 and TCU finding itself ranked ahead of Baylor, despite losing to the Bears earlier in the year.
The Seminoles have never been ranked No. 1 in the CFP committee's rankings, and for the first two weeks, that was fine. Mississippi State was also unbeaten, and more power to the committee for removing FSU's status as the reigning national champion from the equation.
But the committee lost me when it bumped a one-loss Oregon team ahead of the Seminoles in week 12.
The sanctity of an undefeated record in a power-five conference should mean something, and the justification that Florida State is still in the playoff regardless isn't a valid excuse. I won't jump to conclusions and say the committee is out to shock the world for the sake of shocking the world, but having more wiggle room shouldn't mean the eye test all of a sudden outweighs the most obvious criteria.
The higher-ranked teams in the top-four earn the right to play closer to home. And as the only undefeated team remaining, the Seminoles shouldn't be sitting in the back half of the playoff facing further travel to the site of their semifinal than if they were in the No. 1 spot.
The Baylor/TCU conundrum is the other most hotly-debated topic in this first year of the CFP, but this situation is more likely to simply work itself out.
The No. 6 Bears and the No. 3 Horned Frogs have the exact same record at 7-1. Both hailing from the Big 12, these two have already played each other this year. Baylor won. Regardless, the committee has still deemed TCU worthy of a higher ranking.
I'm less up in arms about this one because the Bears are likely to leap the Horned Frogs if their records remain the same when all is said and done. If that scenario plays out and the committee still gives Texas Christian a ticket to the playoff, then we'll have a problem. The point is, head-to-head victories should be the end-all be-all when it comes to tiebreakers between two teams with resumes as similar as Baylor and TCU.
Congrats to the Horned Frogs for beating Minnesota.
I was all set to launch into an impassioned plea for an unbeaten Marshall team's inclusion into the playoff out of Conference USA, but the Thundering Herd went and lost to Western Kentucky this weekend and mooted that point pretty well.
When all is said and done, this system is, in fact, better than its predecessor.
More teams on the hunt for the national title means more money for schools and networks, more football for fans to watch and more inclusion for teams that would otherwise be left out. But it is by no means perfect.
College football is a pretty reactionary business, so expect tweaks to the rules following this inaugural season that could include anything from more committee members to more teams in the playoff.
But for now, we'll just find things to complain about. Because we're football fans, and that's what we do.