Dan Wetzel's College Football Podcast: Playoff selection committee a cause for concern?

On Monday, USA Today published an article in which reporter George Schroeder spent a day following Arkansas athletic director, and chairman of the College Football Playoff Selection Committee, Jeff Long around.

It detailed how Long watches up to 25 hours a week of game footage, even running slow mo through specific plays. On that day, he tuned in to two early games at once, including Iowa at Maryland, even though neither has any chance at all of making the playoff. He said he takes notes from what gets said on the preview shows.

[Also: Listen to Dan Wetzel's podcasts here]

The entire thing seemed like some strange public relations show of force. Yet it is apparently real. Bless Jeff Long and the other members for attempting to consume that much football, data and opinion, but it is a horribly inefficient, exhausting and pointless exercise for a group whose sole job should be to pick four teams at the end.

At least, that’s the conclusion from this week’s Dan Wetzel College Football Podcast, which features the ever entertaining and occasionally insightful Chris Vernon of ESPN Radio Memphis as a guest.

The selection committee remains the most practical way to select the participants for a four-team playoff. There really is no good way to choose four from 128. A single computer formula would be best, but no one is going for that due to college football’s long-standing misunderstanding, or outright hatred, of math.

The selection committee is likely to do a fine job. These are good, well-meaning people. In the end, that’s all that matters.

The article just shows how the process continues to complicate what is really not that complicated. Weighing down committee members with unnecessary work, risking paralysis by analysis, and subjecting everyone to a nonsense top 25 poll that is being done for marketing purposes only will all one day be scrapped for a more streamlined and sensible system.

Right now, the committee is its own worst enemy, but hey, watch all the meaningless games you want on the iPad and make sure you tune into an FS1 pregame show.

The committee process goes along with the one theme – if there is any – of this week’s podcast, which is how the division between smart fans and dumb fans in college football seemingly grows.

As discussed, this includes the endless Zapruder film break down of the pass interference call in the Notre Dame-Florida State game. It also includes Jimbo Fisher’s explanation for how so many Jameis Winston autographs wound up authenticated and on the Internet for sale.

Common sense provides a reasonable defense – e.g. prove he got paid or else there’s nothing to discuss. Most people think punishing a kid for autographs is a silly rule anyway. Instead we get a non-plausible explanation that, presumably, only plays well to the dumbest among us.

There’s plenty more discussed as we’ve hit the midpoint of the season. That includes a breakdown and picks of the following games:

Miss State [-13.5] at Kentucky, Michigan at Michigan State [-17], Alabama [-17] at Tennessee, Ole Miss [-3.5] at LSU, Ohio State [-13.5] at Penn State.

Check it out here or on iTunes. As always, it's free.

More college football coverage from Yahoo Sports: