If AP poll members were on the College Football Playoff committee...

The College Football Playoff is new, and there's a lot of mystery behind its process. Instead of voters, we have committee members. The committee will have its own ranking, but it's a multistage process to get there. 

Here's how it works:

A. Each committee member selects its best 25 teams (unordered). Schools have to appear on at least three ballots to be eligible. 

B. Each committee member provides the best six teams (again unordered). The six teams on the most ballots proceed.

C. Each voter then ranks those six teams 1-6. The three teams with the lowest combined totals are ranked in order and the other three are subject to the next round.

D. Repeat B and C until 25 teams are ranked

I decided to test how this process works and used ballots from 13 AP voters. 

My sample: Adam Jude (Seattle Times), Seth Emerson (Macon Telegraph), Jon Wilner (San Jose Mercury News), Brett McMurphy (ESPN), Sam Werner (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Chris Murray (Reno Gazette-Journal), Daniel Berk (Arizona Daily Star), Harold Gutmann (Durham Herald-Sun), Kellis Robinett (Wichita Eagle), Steven Sipple (Lincoln Journal Star), Joey Knight (Tampa Bay Times), Josh Kendall (The State (South Carolina)), Grant Ramey (Volquest)

Here's the result from just adding up their ballots, the way polls do it.   

1. Auburn 319

2. Florida State 311

3. Mississippi State 290

4. Ole Miss 284

5. Baylor 272

6. Notre Dame 252

7. Alabama 231

8. TCU 228

9. Arizona 223

10. Oregon 208

11. Oklahoma 203

12. Michigan State 195

Note: Auburn is not first in the actual AP poll (trailing by two points). My sample just favored the Tigers (and the Wildcats) relatively more than the other AP voters. 

All 13 voters included the poll’s top four teams – Florida State, Auburn, Ole Miss and Mississippi State in the top-six, while 10 had Baylor and nine had Notre Dame. Those six schools move on because they were on the most top-six lists,

Using their Top 25s, I can tell the the preference each team has with each voter. So assigning 1-6 values to those six teams, this is how they would have voted, sticking to their ballot:

1. Auburn (19)

2. Florida State (25)

3. Mississippi State (46)

NR Ole Miss (52)

NR Baylor (58)

NR Notre Dame (73) 

Auburn, Florida State and Mississippi State are the 1-3 teams in the playoff if the season were to end this week and these AP voters were committee members. The process then repeats itself. 

In the next round, Ole Miss, Baylor, Notre Dame, Alabama, Arizona and TCU were on the most top-sixes of remaining teams. 

4. Ole Miss (21)

5. Baylor (30)

6. Notre Dame (45)

NR TCU (57)

NR Arizona (59)

NR Alabama (61)

In the third round, Alabama, TCU, Arizona, Oregon, Oklahoma and Michigan State appear on the most ballots.

7. Alabama (31)

8. TCU (36)

9. Arizona (38)

NR Oregon (51)

NR Oklahoma (58)

NR Michigan State (59)

In the last round (for this blog post), Oregon, Oklahoma, Michigan State, Georgia, Texas A&M, UCLA were on the most top-six ballots of remaining schools.  

10. Oregon (24)

11. Oklahoma (28)

12. Michigan State (36)

NR Texas A&M (52)

NR Georgia (61)

NR UCLA (72) 

In short, the Top 12 is the exact same as their AP ballots. 

1. Auburn

2. Florida State

3. Mississippi State

4. Ole Miss

5. Baylor

6. Notre Dame

7. Alabama

8. TCU

9. Arizona

10. Oregon

11. Oklahoma

12. Michigan State

It's interesting that this complex methodology reveals the exact same ranking as just a straight 1-25 poll (though I only checked the Top 12). 

There's two ways this method produces a different result. The first is when there is a close race between two teams and one team has more variability than the other (as in a ranking lower than sixth). 

Hypothetically say Auburn and Florida State are tied for third in a three-person poll. Auburn has 2 third place votes and 1 fourth place vote. Florida State has two second place votes and one seventh place vote. Adding it up, they each have 67 points (or 11 if starting the other way). In this system, Florida State's seventh place vote gets replaced with a sixth place vote and the Seminoles would prevail.

The second way is a voter having a team ranked in the top six that is not one of the six most frequent teams.  Let's say one voter's top six is Auburn, Arizona, Florida State, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Notre Dame. Arizona is not one of the the six most frequent teams listed in voters' top six, which means every school this voter had 3-6 gains a point on Auburn.