A lot of college football fans and sports media hacks aren't thinking properly about the complexities associated with the playoff selection process.

From my perspective, the committee's mission, or overriding goal, is not very complex at all. It's actually quite straightforward and austere: select the four best teams, period.

On the other hand, the process by which the committee selects the four best teams is highly complex. Sirius radio host, Mark Packer was invited to participate in a mock playoff selection process with some of the committee members. He said that the committee pores over reams of data from seemingly any and every angle. In addition to old fashioned handicapping of past performances, scrutinizing each team's game-by-game results, committee members analyze raw statistics, advanced statistics/models, strength-of-schedule models, etc. Based on their exhaustive assessments, the committee then continually debates and re-debates how to seed the respective teams before ultimately settling the debates with votes.

So, to summarize, the right way to think about it = simple goal, highly complex process.

Unfortunately, many media and fans (and maybe even some committee members?) are intent on getting it backwards, by complicating what should be simple and trying to simplify what is complex. By their thinking, the committee does, or should, complicate the straightforward mission of selecting the four best teams by including other values and considerations, such as fairness, what teams "deserve," t.v. ratings, matchups, conference parity, politics, etc.

But, then, after complicating the goal, they seem determined to oversimplify the analytical selection process. They're always looking for Betty Crocker Easy Bake recipes, such as "you have to win your conference championship game" or "the committee will punish a weak out of conference schedule." As a result, media hacks end up playing whack-a-mole every year, "I thought we had the playoff selection criteria figured out, but I guess not." They complain that the committee spokesperson isn't able to go on a 10 minute t.v. segment and provide them a simple explanation of how 12 different committee members finally arrived, together, at their final votes and rationales. As if the spokesperson could magically synthesize weeks of painstaking analyses and the cacophony of different opinions, analytical methods, etc. Sorry, but it can't be reduced to a simple 1, 2, 3 recipe that can be turned into a cute infographic in ESPN The Magazine.

So, to summarize, the wrong way to think about it = over-complicate the committee's mission, while oversimplifying the selection process.