This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy [ride]."

— Bette Davis, as Margo Channing

Yeah, so, this ride is going to be good and bumpy, frustrating and chaotic — only because that's the way it was scripted to be from the beginning.

A punch to the head and a laugh a minute.

The college football playoff selections this year will be doozies, neither logical, nor completely justifiable or defensible, and that, then, will make for great entertainment.

What a beautiful thing.

A thing that might tick enough people off to prompt change.

Those smart, courageous individuals on the selection committee blessed to come together to determine for the rest of us which four teams are best or most deserving or most worthy or most representative of the committee members' own biases and interests will dance hard this time around. They'll examine records, strengths of schedule, head-to-head results, designs of uniforms, marquee values of head coaches, personal frames of reference with candidate schools, weighing heavily whatever data they find most compelling, ignoring what they find extraneous, and present to a football-hungry public what those findings are, what the truth is.

They'll decide who gets opportunity and who doesn't.

Which is to say, they'll come up with all kinds of rationalizations for their decisions, knowing in their minds and hearts that Alabama is in, and that the rest of it is hash on a skillet, scrambled determinations that can be set and cooked any which way.

It's the flawed nature of a four-team playoff.

Committee members on the basketball side have been doing this for years, except for the NCAA Tournament is vast enough to include every school that has a legitimate shot at a title. They might screw up the order of seeds, and leave out a worthy team here or there on the fringe, but that process isn't so selective to genuinely rob an outfit of much of anything past a first-round exit.

This football thing is different.

If the committee, for instance, smiles upon Ohio State, which it appears to be on verge of doing, what kind of farce does that make of the Big Ten championship process? The Buckeyes aren't even in the league's title game, a match that features Wisconsin and Penn State. The Nittany Lions will be left out, even if they go ahead and beat the Badgers, as Ohio State waltzes into the CFP. Remember, Penn State is the team that defeated Ohio State earlier this season. So, not only could PSU be the single opponent to have beaten the Bucks, it could end up Big Ten champs — and still get shut out.

That's got to concern reps from the Big Ten, even if the conference is fortunate enough to get two teams in the Final Four, the most likely addition being Michigan, the team Ohio State beat last week. And, still, its champion casts its sad-and-sorry eyes at some lesser postseason destination.

And what of Washington, if the Huskies beat Colorado in the Pac-12 title game on Friday? Will that championship also be tossed aside on account of the views of committee members who interpret the data to mean a different candidate is more … whatever?

In the latest rankings, Washington sat at fourth, while Michigan was fifth, the margin between the teams being described as razor thin. But if Michigan doesn't play this weekend, and Washington does, beating Colorado, then how would it be even possible for the Wolverines to leapfrog the Huskies?

It's all in the vagaries of the committee's decision making.

The answer to the chaos and confusion is simple: An eight-team playoff.

That should have been put in place at the death of the BCS, but nobody wanted to rattle the cage of college football's establishment too violently right from jump. That would have been too progressive, too revolutionary, too much of a shock to the old guard's system, even as it was plain to prevent the pending problems that plague the process now.

Ppppfffww.

Five champions from the power conferences get in — it's automatic. That preserves the relevance of the regular season and avoids the stupidity of conference title games being played for money only, while teams that didn't even qualify get invites to the CFP. The league winner gets rewarded, regardless of the favored metrics and varying opinions of committee members. Yeah, occasionally an infidel could get in, at the end of a down year in any given conference, but that's less egregious than the chaotic rationalizations now.

And, then, three at-large berths — covering those seasons when proper candidates that, for some crazy reason, didn't win their league (maybe because there are two great teams in the same conference) come on strong, or when a team from a lesser league — or even an independent — evidences its worthiness by way of an outstanding season.

There would still be controversy because … well, there's always controversy in regionalized and fractionalized college football. But if a team isn't thought to be in the top eight, its legitimate chances at winning a national championship would be slim, at best.

Maybe a year such as this, when league champs and other strong candidates likely will be disrespected and tossed aside, really will serve its purpose and advance straight thinking forward to a better, bigger way.

In the meantime, it's left for everybody else to fight off the frustration and aggravation, to fasten their seatbelts for a bumpy ride, and enjoy the rationalizing and the dancing. Who deserves a shot at Alabama? Here's the truth.

It's a beautiful thing.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on the Zone Sports Network, 97.5 FM and 1280 AM. Twitter: @GordonMonson. —

Championship game schedule

Friday

Pac-12 • No. 4 Washington vs. No. 9 Colorado, at Santa Clara, Calif., 7 p.m.

MAC • No. 13 Western Michigan vs. Ohio, at Detroit, 5 p.m.

Saturday

AAC • Temple at No. 20 Navy, 10 a.m.

SEC • No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 15 Florida, at Atlanta, 2 p.m.

ACC • No. 3 Clemson vs. No. 19 Virginia Tech, at Orlando, Fla., 6 p.m.

Big Ten • No. 6 Wisconsin vs. No. 8 Penn St., at Indianapolis, 6:17 p.m.

Mountain West • San Diego State at Wyoming, 7:30 p.m.