Although a strong case can be made that Florida State University should be in this year’s College Football Playoff (the Seminoles not only went undefeated this season; they arguably have the best defense of all the top teams), they were excluded by the playoff selection committee. What most, if not all, sports commentators and FSU fans have failed to mention, however, is that this egregious injustice is not just the inevitable by-product of scarcity — the fact that there are many more deserving teams than the precious few four available playoff spots. Instead, this shocking failure might have also resulted from the quirky voting rules used by the committee! In summary (see also here), the committee goes through the following five steps to produce their playoff rankings:

Step #1: Each committee member (there are 13 members in all) individually and subjectively selects 30 teams that they think are the best in the country. (Also, if three or more committee members pick a team, that team stays under consideration.)

Step #2: Each committee member then selects (again, individually and subjectively) who he or she thinks the best six teams are, in no particular order. The six teams that get the most overall votes in this round make up the pool for the next step.

Step #3: Next, each member ranks those top six teams in the pool (i.e. the six teams that got the most votes in the previous step) from one to six, with one being the best, and based on those rankings, teams obtain points as follows: teams ranked No. 1 will get one point; teams ranked No. 2 will get two points; and so on. The three teams that get the fewest points win the top three seeds (spots 1, 2, and 3).

Step #4: Each committee member then selects another set of six teams (again, in no particular order), and the three teams that get the most votes in this round will be added to the next set of three top seeds (spots 4, 5, and 6).

Last step: Steps three and four are repeated until all top-25 teams have been seeded.

Note: Tomorrow I will explain how these voting rules ended up hurting FSU’s chances for a playoff spot.