After weeks of meaningless (and misleading) rankings, the playoff field is official: Alabama vs. Ohio State in one semifinal and Oregon vs. Florida State in the other. As you may have heard, there was a bit of controversy surrounding Ohio State’s inclusion, and Steve and I spend time discussing that.
1:25 What was the point of weekly rankings?
5:45 The four teams we would have selected for the playoff
7:35 Sorting out the Big 12 mess
16:40 Ohio State’s case
25:05 Halftime: Analysis of football throwing competitions
27:45 What would have happened in BCS era? What is the impact of Vegas spreads? Who are truly the best teams in the country?
37:35 Should the playoff field be expanded?
42:45 Heisman debate: Mariota, Gordon, and other “candidates”
58:00 The committee’s influences watching GameDay
59:55 Recap of “locks,” pop culture discussion on “Lose Yourself” alternate version, Peter Pan
1:04:00 Shoutouts
I hope you’ll also take the time to vote in the poll below (email subscribers: you may need to view this post on the blog in order to vote).
The Sportswriting of Andrew Kahn 
I think this playoff committee did what the basketball committee does in a tough situation: they used objective measures, one of which had to be strength of schedule. OSU had the best strength of schedule and, albeit, not a great one but Baylor’s was significantly worse. Also, Baylor should have beat West Virginia and then it would have been clear cut.
TCU may be the best of three but without a clear conference title and their loss to Baylor it was too muddy of situation for them. Would TCU have gotten into the playoff had Baylor lost to K-State on a last second field goal?
Rob, great question about TCU and one that I hadn’t thought about. If you buy into the idea that OSU was selected as an “easy” way to avoid the Baylor/TCU decision, then yes, a Baylor loss last Saturday could’ve boosted TCU’s odds. But my guess is the committee simply preferred OSU’s resume.