The work of College Football Playoffs committee has rarely been simple, but it has certainly never been this complicated.

In the old days of the four-team playoffs, the picks were often obvious. Now there aren’t just 12 teams to select and rank, there’s something else that adds a certain degree of difficulty.

Parity.

The transfer portal and name, image and likeness payments quickly dispersed top talent to more schools — while strengthening contenders and weakening favorites. The gap between the great and the good has narrowed. It’s not quite Any Given Saturday, but it’s a far cry from five years ago, when there were only two or three legitimate contenders for the national title.

This means not only more teams that can now legitimately contend for the playoffs, but also more regular season losses that make differentiating between teams more difficult.

Consider trying to sort through the Southeastern Conference — something the committee attempted to do Tuesday night at its meeting. second playoff ranking (Oregon is also No. 1).

The SEC has historically been the biggest player in the playoffs, winning six of 10 four-team tournaments from 2014 to 2023. Yet the league was mostly made up of top players during that span, with select programs capable of stockpile the top five recruiting classes and ride season after season.

In the previous decade, only three SEC programs reached the four-team playoff: Alabama (8 times), Georgia (3) and LSU (1). Everyone was a pretender.

What now – especially after the SEC added Texas and Oklahoma to expand to 16 teams?

Nine SEC teams are ranked in the committee’s top 25, including four that would be in the playoff field: Texas (No. 2 seed projected as league champion), Tennessee (No. 8), Alabama (seeded No. 10) and Ole. Miss (seeded n°11).

Georgia (12th ranked but out of the playoff field), Texas A&M (15), South Carolina (21), LSU (22) and Missouri (23) are on the outside looking in. For now at least. This is the league this season. For the first time since 2007, no SEC member reached November without at least one loss.

How did the committee settle the SEC? They probably don’t even know it, and it could get even more complicated. Do you want chaos? Consider that if the following things happen, the league could finish eight for first place, with each team holding a 6-2 conference record and the need for complex tiebreakers to determine the title game in Atlanta.

1. All teams win the matches they are favorites, except:

2. Missouri beats South Carolina this Saturday.

3. Auburn upsets Texas A&M or… either Kentucky or Arkansas upsets Texas and…

4. Whichever team is upset wins the Texas-Texas A&M game.

That’s it: Eight teams would be 6-2 in the league.

Great chances, of course? Impossible? Not even close. And while it may not end in an eight-way tie at the top, the likelihood of some variation of a multi-team tiebreaker needed to settle the SEC Championship Game is pretty high.

There are only a few games left with these eight potential teams facing each other – just Tennessee at Georgia and Texas at Texas A&M. (Note: Maybe it’s time to add a ninth championship game and ditch the late November cupcake game).

All this makes the committee a nightmare. How do they measure the field – head to head, strength of schedule, margin of victory, margin of defeat, draw?

And this is likely to be recurring. While early concerns about NIL and the transfer portal centered around “the rich getting richer,” the opposite has happened. Players crave playing time, settling for whatever money they can get anywhere. They have little interest in staying on the bench and burning seasons of eligibility… and purchasing power.

“Teams don’t have as full rosters as they used to,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said last week.

Earlier this season, he specifically highlighted the quarterback position, which is particularly fleeting as signal-callers seek a starting job wherever they can get one.

“With the portal and the era of college football, anyone can have a quarterback, and it could be a niche quarterback,” Smart said. “It’s like maybe he won’t be the biggest pro. … If he can make plays, and you can build your offense around him and create problems for the defense… you can beat n ‘no matter who.’

At the SEC, this was proven true. The league office might want seven or eight teams in the tournament, but that’s not going to happen.

It is up to the committee to examine the files and determine who is legitimate and who is not.

Then there will be some serious screaming.