Decoding the new college football playoff

You may have been reading this email blast for improvement in your faith life, improvement in your sex life, and, perhaps, improvement in your knowledge of sports.

But, if you're reading this, I bet you want more information on the upcoming college football bowl season and twelve-team playoff.

It's a whole new world out there, gentlemen. Gone are the huge amount of teams competing for a mere four spots in the "Final Four" of college football.

If you like the NCAA basketball tournament, you'll really like the new NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision playoff.

Wondering if your favorite teams will be in bowls as in the past? Wonder no more. All of the bowls you remember are still there.

How about the New Year's Six? Well, the Peach, Orange, Cotton, Rose, Sugar, and Fiesta will now rotate among each other for the six quarterfinal and semifinal games.

So, if your team makes the "New Year's Six", it still means something.

But here is the kicker that makes all projections (ESPN included) close to irrelevant:

The five most highly ranked conference champions will be in the playoff.

The four top-ranked conference champions will be the four top seeds.

In other words, the playoff picture won't be clear until championship weekend (Saturday, December 7 and the days immediately proceeding and following).

Got it, guys? The projections are fine, and they give us a look at what is ahead. But the accuracy is far lacking from what it was.

Conference title games have had a predictable ending in recent years. But, with so much more on the line, these games take on more importance than ever.

The teams that come to play will win and scoot into high playoff seeds. Those who are merely going through the motions? Not so much.

A single upset in the Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Twelve Conference, and/or the Big Ten Conference championship games could turn this world on its head.

Therefore, if I were a betting man, I would put more stock into teams that have a legitimate chance to advance to their conference title games.

For the fifth conference title winner, the Group of Five world gets bigger. How about the American Athletic Conference and Tulane? How about the Mountain West Conference and Boise State? This fifth "automatic bid" gets more mysterious by the day.

And so any prediction y'all make gets more mysterious, as well.