Daniel Uthman

USA TODAY Sports

On the occasion of the two-year anniversary of its birth Friday, the College Football Playoff released a document to USA TODAY Sports and other outlets that reveals its vision for how teams should be selected. The document, drafted June 20, 2012, also details the order of criteria its founders envision for the selection committee to break ties when setting the four-team playoff field.

"Strength of schedule, head-to-head competition and championships won must be specifically applied as tie-breakers between teams that look similar," the document reads. Those were proposed to differentiate between "teams with similar records and similar pedigree."

Those also are three of the criteria the College Football Playoff Management committee, a group of commissioners from Football Bowl Subdivision conferences and Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick, outlined in the document titled "How to select the best four teams". The final criterion listed is "Comparative outcomes of common opponents", but without factoring in margin of victory.

"The criteria to be provided to the selection committee must be aligned," the document reads, "with the ideals of the commissioners, Presidents, athletic directors and coaches to honor regular season success while at the same time providing enough flexibility and discretion to select a non-champion or independent under circumstances where that particular non-champion or independent is unequivocally one of the four best teams in the country."

The document reveals the management committee's thinking about the limitations of the traditional polls that for years have determined college football's national champion. Of particular concern were occasions when the winning team in a head-to-head competition is ranked behind its opponent, or when a non-champion from a particular conference is ranked ahead of the champion.

As such, the management committee urged two approaches when it comes to polls: One, that "any polls that are taken into consideration by the selection committee must be completely open and transparent to the public"; and two, that preseason polls must be ignored.

Since that time, the Playoff has decided its selection committee will create and reveal its own top 25 poll each week beginning Tuesday, Oct. 28.

Contributing: George Schroeder