College football selection committee is already devaluing the regular season

The king is dead, long live the king!

When the four-team college football playoff was announced most everyone rejoiced about the decision. More teams creates a better way to crown a national title, and with four teams that theoretically allows a better chance of non-power teams to get into that top four.

Now, I assume most rational fans from Mountain West and other like schools realize that it would take a very special season to get into the pending college football playoff even with the two additional spots.

We all knew that the BCS was awful by using computers to do a lot of the work and college football coaches who don't have times to really rank teams not on their schedule. Well, handing the reigns over to actual humans who would be tasked to just watch college football might actually be worst.

This tweet from Arkansas athletic director and college football chairman Jeff Long is very concerning toward non-power teams:

Jeff Long says it's not most DESERVING teams, but the focus is the BEST four teams that shall get into the bracket

— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) April 30, 2014

This is very concerning for Mountain West, MAC and all of the non-power teams who go undefeated, because how many times have we heard Craig James type say that this MAC or Mountain West team couldn't even compete with the lower half of most of the power conferences.

Assuming these comments are going to be the case going forward, we can easily see a 13-0 Mountain West title team who is ranked somewhere between four and six in the various rankings but there could be this 12-1 Big 12 which lost a conference game and won their conference title or the second SEC team that is 11-1 but didn't win their division. Then comes the great debate between who is most deserving or the best team.

Yes, strength of schedule should be included but this statement undermines the sentiment that the reason there is a four-team college football playoff and nothing larger is because of the sacred regular season. What this statement says is that if the selection committee takes two-loss SEC team over an appropriately ranked undefeated non-power team or even a one-loss major power team who still wins their league then the regular season means squat.

If the regular season is devalued then why stop at four teams, make this playoff bigger and make it 16 teams so that every conference gets a chance. As long as a four-team playoff is in effect and the committee values best over most deserving then say goodbye to ever seeing a non-power school in a four-team playoff.

No matter how many times things change, they end up remaining the same.