Pablo Torre Finds Out - The Secret Formula of the College Football Playoff Committee

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

No conference-championship weekend in the history of the College Football Playoff has higher stakes than the one upon us right now. And so we turn to John Urschel — newly liberated CFP selection committee member; ex-NFL lineman; and current MIT mathematician — to shed the cloak and drop the dagger. And we learn what actually happens, behind closed doors, as hordes of furious fans demand the favor of a cabal that might be more Office Space than Eyes Wide Shut.Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/EjkxEv7nIBY Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. You do wear robes, though. I presume you wear robes. There are torches. We get no robes. They don't even buy us robes. That's fucked up right after this ad.

You're listening to Drap King's Network. So John Herschel, I summon you here finally, after months of chasing you, getting you past the statute of limitations, I suppose, for your testimony as to what it was like to be on the college football playoff committee, who this past week came down with what feels like tablets from the mountaintop, declaring that, in fact, yes, number one Georgia is followed by number two Michigan, followed by number three, Washington, followed by number four Florida State, all undefeated. And then Oregon, OSU, Ohio State, Texas, Alabama, all 11 and one. after them. And so I want to get into how it is maybe that these decisions were reached,

but first I need to explain who the fuck you are and why it is that behind you happens to be this chalkboard that you just wiped clear of suspiciously secretive equations. Right. Who am I? So I'm John Urchall. I'm a former NFL offensive lineman. My day job now is I'm a professor at MIT. I'm a mathematician. And I assume I'm here because I'm a former college football playoff committee member. Okay, so I just got to be clear about this. Nobody has a resume like John Urshel. The guy played on the offensive line of Penn State, got drafted by the Baltimore Ravens,

and while in the NFL playing, you know, the highest level of football in the world, he simultaneously started taking Ph.D. classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you know, arguably the highest level of Massachusetts. mathematics in the world, which meant that John was studying J.J. Watt, and also this. The only solutions to the differential equation, D.Y, DX, equals K times Y, are exponential functions. Given by Y of X equals Y of zero times E to the power KX. Yeah, I didn't understand a word of that for the record. record. But the reason I called up John is not because he just became a full-time professor

of mathematics at MIT last month at age 32. It's because for three years, from 2021 to 23, he was a member of an even more incomprehensible institution, the college football playoff committee. And so now that his tenure is over, officially, I wanted to find out what it's actually like to be a part of this thing. Maybe the most controversial and enigmatic voting body in all a sports. That's probably true. I feel like college football for many who are not initiated into the cult of it, so to speak, is underappreciated as a matter of its hugeness.

Like, this is the second most popular sport in America, John, and the college football playoff now, the culminating event of this whole enterprise, we're talking about a half billion dollars a year as constituted presently in a TV rights deal with ESPN. And we're talking about, yeah, a math problem, therefore, in terms of how to apportion not just the money, but the slots available in a semifinal with Ford teams, a different sort of math problem that I'm curious how you got asked to help solve. Essentially, the way it works, it seems, is that they decide, you know, the people in charge of the college football playoff, you know, the sort of like, you know, underlying board, decides, and I imagine votes on who to select and who to nominate. And you don't tell someone, oh, I'd really like to be on the committee.

You don't ask someone. I just got a random phone call from Bill Hancock. And he introduced himself, said he was wondering if I'd be interested. and being on the playoff committee, and I told him, you know, of course, I'd be happy to. And that's how it goes. You just get a phone call and you say yes. This is not some glamorous thing. I think a lot of people, you know, from the outside looking in, think like, oh, it's some incredibly secret process. It's some, like, insider, whatever.

Some, you know, very important people. No, it's just regular people. We're not getting paid to do this. It's not some extravagant sort of thing. And yeah, we're just there to watch football and try to make the best decisions we can. So you get drafted by the college football playoff committee, is what I'm hearing. Yes, exactly. Is there a salary associated with being on the college football playoff committee?

No, no salary. We're all sort of doing this because we love college football because we believe in, you know, in the mission. with the sanityes and the tribal fanaticisms of everybody who was living and dying on your decisions also involved in this equation. And so Bill Hancock, for the record, the executive director of the college football playoff enterprise here, when he is asking you to commit time, what kind of time are we talking about? Because I want to get into just like, when you say there's travel associated, what the

What does that mean? An incredible amount of time. From Sunday to Tuesday, I am not home. I am with the committee, and we are talking football. Where are you guys gathering? I don't know. I don't want to say, you know, the wearer at all. Oh, come on.

We don't need people, like, trying to hunt the committee down. But the point is, we all are meeting every single week, and we are having, you know, very detailed and long discussions in person every single time before we output a ranking. And so it's a lot of time involved, a lot of travel, and that's not even including all the time you're watching football. It's less secrecy and I think more simplicity, and I really liked it. Okay. Well, now I drag you into the complexity.

Right. Well, okay. Now it's easy for me to talk about. I can tell you what I did. And it's, yeah, I'm not on the committee. I, you know, I'm not, I don't speak for the committee at all. Yes, yes. You are, you are an MIT professor who has a firsthand experience with the thing that replaced

what I feel is a little ironic, which is a computerized system known as the Bold Championship series. And so in that, I guess explain, John, how college football used to be for people who don't know what it was like pre-playoff. Way back when, they just used to, like, see what happens after the bowl game, and then, like, different media outlets would just vote on who they think the best team is. For decades, the national champion was determined by the AP poll and the coaches poll. The power that my people had was remarkable. Yeah, you had the Associated Press deciding who the national champion was.

Then in 1997, the six biggest conferences joined forces to create the bowl championship series, or BCS. In comes the BCS. The idea is, okay, you have all these news outlets, you know, these people voting, people have opinions, they're biased. We need to centralize this, and we're going to centralize this and make this fair with a computer system that takes into account hard data about what is happening in the season. It always felt a little mysterious. People were always a little dubious of it. Yeah. Especially because people always tend to doubt things that they don't fully understand or that's easily understood.

And it was not easily understood, I don't think. I don't know if you've seen the movie Office Space, but I feel like everybody was trying to smash the photocopier. Because no one was thrilled that this robot was telling them actually what was what. I wasn't around when they were deciding to make this switch, but the powers that be the people in charge of college football, the presidents of the universities and all these people come together and they say, enough of this BCS, let's make a playoff. In 2014, after an outcry by many for more of a playoff format,

the college football playoff was born. A playoff of four teams that are decided by football experts. Let's all get together. Let's set a formal criteria of how this is done and get a bunch of football experts to execute this vision. Now, I should also make clear, though, that when you refer to experts, it's not just, you know, people who know the game or played the game.

It's people with skin in the game. Like, what we're talking about here, again, is in the current constitution of this, a four-team playoff, we're talking about a deal with the ESPN that pays each Power 5 conference, $74 million annually, with also $6 million on top of that for each team that is selected for the semifinal games.

Oh, gotcha. Well, I love how, I love how I am telling you this. Why would I know anything about, why would I know anything about the finances of this? Right. That's not your concern. But I suppose that it's relevant insofar as there are rules when it comes to who on the committee can debate whether one team or another is involved because there are rules of recusal, right? In terms of like governing, oh, wait, you're the AD at, let's say, for example,

Notre Dame, you cannot be in the argument about whether Notre Dame specifically should be ranked here or there. Yeah, I mean, of course not. And yeah, I mean, that's, that's, I think, it's like that in any job. Like if I'm, you know, if I'm on some. committee for, you know, selecting someone for some math prize, if an MIT person comes up, I can't be in the room. I mean, that's just like, I feel like that's how it works for any job. And so just the sense of what I'm curious about, too, is just your sense of the argument, of the arguing over, I believe this ranking. I have my, because again, I need you to help explain what it is that you do as a committee.

in terms of like providing lists and all of that, like the mechanics of just how you replace a computer decision with a human decision. Yeah, there are 13 of us. We all meet every single week when we put out a ranking, and we vote based off principles. Conference championships won, strength of schedule, head-to-head competition, comparative outcomes of common opponents,

and other relevant factors such as unavailability of key players and coaches, that may have affected a team's performance during the season or will likely affect its postseason performance. The way that we vote on this generally includes seven rounds of ballots through which the selection committee members first select a small pool of teams to be evaluated

and then rank those teams. I didn't know about the money part of it that you were talking about. Yes, I'm sure there are financial things that impact the teams, that impact the conferences. Yeah. But at the end of the day, this really impacts the players. And so the difference between having a shot to play for a national championship and being on the outside looking in, going to whatever other bowl game,

this is a huge difference for a player. And so, you know, it's really, really important that we all take the time, we put in the effort, and that we try to make the right decision. I want to talk about the controversies, though, that you were in the room for or the big one, which is, I think, a retrospective or retroactive controversy maybe, which is the TCU question. Georgia Bulldogs blot you in their way to back to back. TCU, I mean, they got embarrassed so bad.

I don't think those football players are short for the rest of the semester. What's the question? The question is, did you guys fuck up by putting TCU in the college football playoff? Wasn't TCU in the championship game? I'm confused. I love that you have this reaction because, I, again, I love, I want to be clear about this, my disclosure of biases. I love going on NBC and doing this show Morning Joe.

Joe Scarborough is the host. Joe Scarborough is an Alabama guy. I was on with him on Monday. He said something along the lines of what the fuck did the playoff committee do putting TCU, which got blown out 65 to 7 in the championship game, in this field at all. What a terrible mistake. The committee screwed up with TCU badly last year.

It caused them ratings. It costs them credibility. It costs them money. I don't want to talk about, do I think, you know, do I think in hindsight this was the best decision? Was that the best decision? I don't want to talk about the specifics of TCU versus Alabama. TCU beat Michigan.

Is he screaming that Michigan shouldn't have been in the playoffs? I think he's actually... Is he saying that as what... Spoiler alert. It should have not been. It should be four SEC teams, I believe. I see. Okay. Gotcha. I understand. But truly, like, when you're watching these games, there is this human impulse to be, like, vindicated by the results as opposed to your process.

The idea of, again, if I'm a human being on this committee, I would like to not be made to be a fool by a team that I vouched for that then gets blown out by approximately 50 points in a championship game. And I imagine that's a difficulty for the actual humans making these calls on some level. I don't really have this difficulty, I don't think. I think the reason why I don't have this difficulty is that the way in which I'm evaluating these teams is really straightforward in the sense that I am given these principles of how I am supposed to select these teams. And I follow these principles to the best of my ability. And so it's actually not at all up to me, and I'm glad it's not, for me to decide what exactly should the rules be for deciding who the best team in the country is. And how we decide what actually constitutes the top 25 ranking, when you think about it for a little bit, it's murky. It's governed by sort of tradition.

It's governed by cultural values. Well, I think the point that you're making, which is an undeniable one, is that these teams aren't actually playing each other by and large. It's incredibly uneven. None of the variables are held constant by and large. And so these are imperfect decisions with imperfect data that are trying to arrive at something approximating fairness. And so you have these rules to create,

order out of chaos. To try to decide what's fairness, what's fair. Is there a particular team that you fought for, that you remember that you were moved off of because someone else had a perspective that was contrary to yours? I absolutely have. Okay, I'm not going to name a specific team because I don't need, like, hate mail from that team. Look, the SEC is a totally even-tempered group. What do you mean?

Yeah, I don't want to encourage, so I don't want to talk about the hate mail, like the hate mail you get. Let's not focus on that. Were you already getting hate mail? You, you get some... Well, this is important, John, for me to understand. It was pretty, it was pretty mild on my end.

Most of mail I got was very much along the lines of, you seem like a very honorable and respectable person. You have to stand up. Wait, wait, wait. You got, hold on, you got the hate mail from people who are like, I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. Yeah, I got the, I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed male. So my mail was very, very mild in comparison, I would say. But yeah, there were 100% instances where I come in, I have some opinion, I have some, you know, I have some hypothesis about how I think this should go and why.

and I start talking to other people. And whether, you know, formally during this process or informally, you know, when I get into town, maybe I'm grabbing dinner with someone, maybe, you know, it's in the mornings when we're all having breakfast together, whatever it may be. And I start hearing other perspectives. You know, maybe I was focusing too much on certain aspects of them. But there was a key deficiency they really have that I didn't really hone in on just because, you know, just because, you know, I had a blind spot. Like, there are things that I naturally look at more than other people and people with expertise in areas that maybe I have less in. You know, this is helpful. Like, for instance, you know, if I'm watching a team and, you know, let's say just, I'm just making up an example.

Ronnie Lott tells me, you know, he has a different opinion on that team based off their secondary play. Then I'm going to go back and really hear what he says and try to think about that and really try to look at that. Yeah. How similar were your colleagues on the committee in their approaches? I guess what I'm curious about is just the diversity of like, oh, wow, this guy is the way he sees this is just very different. How much clashing was there, how much consensus was there at the outset of any given gathering? I think a lot of times, you know, when ESPN is talking about the committee, or when people are talking about the committee, they're saying, the committee did this, the committee did that, as if it's 13 people in a hive mind all towards one sort of like common belief. and it's 13 people and people with different perspectives and unique sort of unique opinions,

unique beliefs, and it's important that we have that diversity. Because it's through that diversity that we are robust, that we don't have blind spots, that we really think these things through. Because when you have 13 people in a room and everyone comes in with exactly the same opinion and looks at teams and evaluates them exactly the same way, that sounds dangerous to me. What was most frustrating in terms of how people would think about what you guys were doing as you guys kept silent?

I think, I wouldn't say frustrating. I think the one thing that was, that I didn't quite understand, was I always got the sense that people felt like it was this very secretive, thing and like they were trying to like get something out of me it's online all the information all are like the criteria that we use to evaluate the teams is online the process we do is online when we meet is freely available online how we gather information from like conferences like the point person system for gathering information from conferences about additional information that we wouldn't get through normal means is online like i should say i should say that even the location that i asked you

about which you did not want to disclose due to safety reasons has that online as well yeah the gay lord texas hotel and grapevine it's online yeah the gaylord texas and excuse me that's also online online i can feel you john you're inverting the office space metaphor that I threw at you before. You're describing this as if it is a mundane office in which you're processing pretty mundane details. First of all, I love being on the college football playoff committee. This was a huge honor.

This is, you know, one of, I really hold this in high regard, and I'm, you know, I'm really honored that I had the opportunity to be on the committee. But at the same time, I want to stress this isn't. like some secret society. You do wear robes, though. I presume you wear robes. There are torches. We get no robes.

They don't even buy us robes. That's f***ed up. Can you believe that? I was promised robes. So on Selection Weekend, I think sometimes ESPN does B-roll of us watching the final playoff games together.

So we have a bunch of chairs set up with like all these TVs so we can watch all the games. And I remember one year, like, you know, they show the video or they show the photo. And, like, people were, like, kind of making fun of us on Twitter or wherever. Like, can't they get better chairs? The Gaylord Texan chair quality, substandard. Yeah, they were unhappy with the chair quality of what we were sitting.

The lumbar support. Yes, yeah, insufficient lumbar support. So, no, it's. It's very mundane. It's very normal. It's very much like, yes, what we are doing is incredibly important and has huge impact. But at the same time, in part because what we're doing is so important and has this impact, it's important that everything that happens is, you know, like clockwork, everything is structured,

everything is ordered. And in that way, everything really is mundane in the best way possible. You know, I do remember that beaveral. I do remember some of those like memes. I do want to ask you, though, why you think it is that fans on the outside presume that what you guys are doing is a lot like that photo of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, like, watching the assassination of Osama bin Laden. I have no clue what photo you're talking. Oh, yeah. I haven't seen this.

We're going to Photoshop you into this photo now. It's everybody like in the situation room just like, watching with the gravity of the assassination of Osama bin Laden on their face. So people assume from the outside that you guys are like up to stuff and it should be like this. Metals, laptops,

hand-on face. Why the disconnect then? How do you account for the vast disconnect? It's easy to believe that? I think it's so much easier to let you. your mind sort of like go wild about like what's going on in the background than to just like Google a little bit. I don't know how much you're paying attention to as MIT professor full time now to like

the college football playoff rankings now. I don't do you do you watch with interest? Are you now checked out? How does this work for an ex-committee member? I'm just so I mean I have two small kids at home and you know I'm teaching. and I... How dare you? The class I'm teaching right now,

I kind of overhauled it, so it ended up being a lot of work. What's the name of the class? I'm trying to do research. It's like an upper level undergrad class on numerical analysis, which is, it's like pretty much

solving problems from continuous math using a computer. The BCS. In other words. BCS for undergrad. It's a class on the BCS. Yes. But I do want to,

I do want to explain. that there are some inflection points in the current so we're for to catch everybody up we're in the penultimate ranking right now um of the college football playoff uh of the ultimate uh four team exactly right exactly right and so we have the top 25 and just to explain for people who don't know or even give a shit about this some of the interesting kind of issues that have to be hashed out here um so for instance the top four teams are all undefeated for people who aren't familiar it's Georgia number one, Michigan number two, Washington number three, Florida State number four, all 12 and no teams, followed by Oregon, OSU, Texas, and Alabama, in that order, all 11 and one.

And there is a looming nightmare here, John, which you're already laughing at. Because I imagine you imagine what the committee must be feeling as they watch Georgia play Alabama this weekend. For the draft game of YouTube audience, John is sticking his tongue out with the relishing of of a guy who does not have to actually make this decision. To explain the obvious, and it's obvious, we can talk about this openly. Georgia is the number one team in the country, Alabama is the number eight team in the country. If Alabama beats Georgia, two 11 and one teams, and they just happen to be some of the most fanatical institutions with tribes, as aforementioned, that's ever existed. And if Alabama beats Georgia, now chaos spreads across the land.

And so why are you laughing, buddy? One, I'm laughing because I'm not on the committee this year, but because it looks a little tough this year. Oh, yeah. I think you have eight teams, four undefeated, four one-loss teams. You have three of those one-loss teams playing in championship games. Yes. And I'm pretty sure, though I haven't really checked the statistics, it must be true.

This year must be slightly an outlier in terms of how top teams have performed against their competition. It seems like it is indeed an unusual year. I imagine it is statistically unusual. I was just going to say it feels like the hardest year in the existence of the College of a ball playoff committee. when it comes to all of the things that are about to maybe change depending on who beats who. And a lot of those are head-to-head matchups among those eight teams we just mentioned.

Oregon and Washington, for instance. Texas looming. And so I guess as a human being, right, if I'm on this committee, my life is made so much easier if Georgia beats Alabama. When it comes to these sorts of things, of things, I think the best thing to do is you watch the games, you can't control what's going to

happen. And the thing you have to do is whether the outcome of the championship games make it fairly obvious, which some years there's a very natural divide that pretty much everyone in the country agrees with. And some years, it might be more difficult. Who knows what type of year it's going to be this here. But the good thing is, no matter how easy or difficult it may be, there is a strong protocol in place, a strong set of guidelines and criteria to help guide the committee to make the right decision. And this is where I think it's really important. Okay, this is just my beliefs. Different people have different beliefs. I really believe that things are just always better. when you have clear and understandable criteria and guidelines about what you're supposed to do when

thing X happens. I'm always a believer in more like more guidelines, more instructions when it comes to dealing with important things. I am shocked to discover that the only MIT professor in the history of the NFL likes rules. having rules allow you to be equitable. It allows you to make the same decision over and over and over again. Now, of course, there's always the question of, are the rules right? Should we change the rules? But I think coming together and agreeing on rules and then applying those rules fairly over and over makes it so much easier than people subjectively, you know, deciding what the rules are. the sincerity of your pursuit of fairness is also undeniable to me at this point. And so I want to do something that college football does not do, which is appoint you in this hypothetical that I am drawing here at Pappletory finds out exclusively. I'm appointing you the commissioner of college football. The college football czar, John Erichol. You get a robe, which is great news for you in this new job I've given.

You're still unpaid because, you know, come on. on. What can you do? What can you do? But what would you change? What would you do? So I give you a blank map upon which you can write your vision for how to make this better. And it's not just about playoff stuff. It could be about anything. As you put your hand to your beard, scratching your chin, what do you want to begin with? Promotion and relegation. Oh, there it is. There's no question. Promotion and relegation. I want, okay, I don't know how you would do this now, now that the PAC 12 has sort of like...

Is it two teams, is the PAC two? Yeah, I don't even want to go down the rabbit hole of how depressing that is. So you mourn that? I strongly mourn that, but I have a job to do. And my job is I am going to institute promotion and relegation. So what we need to do is we are going to tie some Power 5 conferences

with Group of 5 conferences, group of five teams will go up, Power 5 teams will go down. Cincinnati is doing very well. Congratulations. You are going up into whatever conference you are tied to. And you get to play in that schedule. Maybe, you know, you win the Sunbelt.

You get to go to the SEC next year. Wow. Okay, so wait, just to be clear for people who don't get this, right? Power 5 is the ACC, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big 10 Conference, the Big 12 Conference, what used to be the Pac-12 Conference, the SEC, the Southeastern Conference.

Group of 5, meaning conference, U.S.A is the American Athletic Conference, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Sun Belt, as aforementioned. And you do this, and in that way, you reward teams for performing well, and teams that are in Power 5 conferences that maybe people on the outside looking in,

maybe the American team says, oh, we could beat that team that's at the bottom of the Big Ten or the bottom of whatever. You get a chance to. Then we have a system where everyone can move up, and then you have some playoff system, let's say, by taking the top teams of these five tracks, maybe you add three at large and you have an 18

playoff at the end. And I think it would also make it more exciting. Now all of a sudden, if you're a Vanderbilt fan, you are very excited at the games near the end of the year, you are fighting against relegation. Every single year in one of the group of five conferences, it's not just winning the conference, it is incredibly high stakes.

You are fighting to go up. Something happens. You know, there's no ceiling. Whereas if you're a group of five team, I imagine sometimes it must feel like there's a ceiling here because you have to try to schedule strong non-conference games. And if you can't schedule strong non-conference games, it's tough. Right, because you're not incentivized.

Let's make a direct path. Yes, the incentives, what you're addressing are the incentives right now for a Power 5 team to risk a loss to a good group of five teams. team, which they generally don't want to do for obvious reasons because the college playoff committee, by the way, beyond determining fairness, is also, as aforementioned, apportioning fees from this TV rights deal to the power five in proportion that is grandly in excess of the group of five. And so, John Herschel, what you were doing as commissioner of college football is saying, this whole 12-team college football playoff, that's cute. But I want to do something

far more drastic here. It would never happen. It could never happen. But I think it would be great. I want to see this world. I want to see you in this robe making this radical change. And I also want to see the hate mail that you're about to get.

Who would hate a promotion relegation system? How could you hate a promotion relegation system? John, you're really asking how an Alabama fan could possibly hate a world in which they have to be in the sunbelt? I don't think Alabama's ever going to be in danger of going to the sunbelt. I think they will be fine.

John, thank you for your rationality and also your insanity. At the end here, I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. No, you're welcome. So what I found out today is that every jury, every committee should be so lucky to have John Urshall on it. Because you'd probably heard me at various points, shamelessly try to mine him for the untold secrets held in the little black book of the Illuminati Cabal of American sports. And only now do I realize that I probably should have tried

that on like one of the seven financially conflicted athletic directors who were serving alongside John on the college football playoff committee. But John, I mean, it feels safe to say this now. The only MIT mathematician to ever play offensive line in the NFL? Probably the worst person on the planet to try and sneak something past when it comes to breaking rules. But speaking of a qualified committee, Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Michael Antonucci,

Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Wanda Lindo, Patrick Kim, Neilie Lohman, Rachel Miller-Hawr, Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tuminello, and Juliet Warren, with studio engineering by RG Systems, post-production by NGW Post, our theme song, as always, by John Bravo, and the phrase that I'm left with at the end of this week that I found out is Hoop Burn. Thank you to David Samson. I'll see you next week.