Reforming the College Postseason

By Peter Christian

I have a lot to be happy about. I have a job, a house, a beautiful wife and daughter and another little girl ready to pop out any day now. However there is one thing that would make me happy enough to do a nude back flip into a snow bank: A College Football Play-off.

Yes, I know this is like beating a dead horse (actually it is more like killing the horse with 10,000 mosquito bites, beating the horse with a water noodle for two days, letting the horse rot for three days and then going back and throwing lawn darts at the corpse until you need Tommy John surgery) but it needs to be said. For the past decade there has been a public and media outcry for a play-off but until recently, the information and reasoning why there isn’t has all been relatively speculative. Within the past year, there has been more legitimate reasons and arguments brought up than ever before. While one might sit back and say, “Well, I guess that makes sense,” I on the other hand take everything in, re-load and develop the best counter argument in the history of man (at least that is how it plays out in my head).

C.R.E.A.M. Cash Rules Everything Around Me

Let’s make a few things clear. When people (by people I am referring to the athletic conference commissioners, university presidents and athletic directors) can’t come up with a valid reason for why they are adamantly against something that everyone (yes EVERYONE) is clamoring for, there is one reason: MONEY.  A lot of money. While it can be stated that the television networks have offered more money if there was a play-off, the difference is where that money would go. Don’t think for one second that the current BCS Conferences didn’t think about taking the extra money to add a Plus 1 game for the National Championship. However, you can bank on the fact that they turned down that extra cash because the Conference Commissioners couldn’t agree on how to spread that money out. The conferences that haven’t sniffed a National title game in the past few years wanted an equal share and the power BCS Conferences wanted a lion’s share; and then the issue of what to do if the Plus 1 game features a non-BCS school. The guaranteed money was good enough to make the rich richer so they ran with it. In short, it IS about money. It will ALWAYS be about money.

PC Model

I’ll interject here to propose my play-off system. The current problem with any proposed system is that it has a major flaw; too few teams get in, too many teams get in, travel will be limited, the non-play-off bowls get screwed, etc.
Therefore, everyone always says to utilize a Plus 1 model, an 8 team model or a 16 team model; no one can seem to make the obvious connection to the most exciting play-off model in all of sport – NFL. The NFL Play-off system is perfect because it rewards the Top 4 teams that won their division, but still leaves enough spots available to make the good teams play meaningful games throughout the season. For the College Football version, the top 4 Conference Champions with the highest BCS ratings get a bye and the remaining two BCS Conference Champs would host a home game vs. an At-large team (Personally, I would say all conference champs should get an automatic berth, but I won’t push my luck). The other two games would be hosted by the higher ranked At-large school. These games would be played the weekend after the Conference Championships (Sorry, Heisman Trophy presentation, you have outlived your usefulness).

You can’t tell me that fans and alumni wouldn’t get jazzed to travel to some of the great college stadiums for some meaningful December football. Second, the Conference Commissioners would select 4-5 current bowls that would rotate among the current BCS bowls: Orange, Fiesta, Rose and Sugar (enough with the rotating championship game in the same site as one of the BCS games) to fill out the quarterfinals and there would be a regional game for the higher seeded team (Big Ten and Big East schools would get screwed but who cares, they never win when it matters anyway).

For argument sake, let’s use the Cotton Bowl, Capital One Bowl, Holiday Bowl, Peach Bowl and Gator Bowl as the rotating bowls for hosting a quarterfinal game. The semi-final games would be played in the same BCS site (a New Years Day morning-night double header) with the National Championship being played a week later at the final BCS site. For some fans it might seem like a lot of travel expense, but so does the NCAA basketball tournament and those tickets are always in demand.

Benefits Package

Personally, if the PC Model (named after me, of course) was the route to a national champion I would be far more interested in the college football play-off than the NFL play-off. However, one of the perks of the PC model is that the College and NFL play-offs would only overlap if New Year’s Day was on the first Sat./Sun. of Wild-Card Weekend. So, what would be some of the arguments against this system?

Some would argue that the regular season would become less important with a play-off in place. That is the dumbest argument I have ever heard about anything. Period. How does a play-off system make the regular season less important? Teams still have to play the games, they still have to win their games. In a system where undefeated teams and one loss teams are currently on the outside looking in…yet still get to go to a pretty sweet bowl game and receive the perks of the bowl experience, does it really matter now? How meaningful is the regular season for these teams? What the system would do is make some of the non-BCS games exponentially important, it would make some of the late season non-rivalry games matter more, it would even make the early season non-conference games matter. Would it really be so bad to see a late season game featuring Utah and BYU on national television? Didn’t think so!

Would the non-play-off bowls suffer? Not at all, there are still going to be another 56 teams that are going to the remaining 28 bowl games. Plus the Bowls aren’t going to see a decrease in revenue or attendance but will likely see an increase. If the second or third ranked SEC team is now going to the Champs Sports Bowl instead of the Capital One Bowl is it really going to matter to the fans? Doubtful, it will likely raise the prestige of the Champs Sports Bowl.

Would the student-athletes have a lesser experience? Any athlete that I’ve ever met or talked to has always indicated that their chief goal is to win a championship. Do you think that any player on Utah wouldn’t trade their Sugar Bowl experience and the week that precedes it for a chance at a national title? Plus, these games are still taking place while the schools are on winter break. They could still take part in the bowl festivities prior to the game. Have you heard any players on the teams playing for the current national championship complain that they didn’t get to take part in the real Orange Bowl parties and engagements? Didn’t think so.

Change we Can Believe In

The final word is that the sport needs a better system to determine a champion. There shouldn’t be voting involved, there shouldn’t be debate about which team was better. It should be determined on the field. The best team may not always win, but tell me a sport in which that always happens anyway? Football is a great game because anything can happen, but when the-powers-that-be limit those possibilities out of a fear of losing a portion of their six or seven figure salaries, the people getting hosed are…well everybody!

The fans will continue to complain, the media will continue to complain and the teams that deserve a shot will continue to complain until the conference commissioners realize that the potential within a play-off system is going to raise the profile of their sport exponentially and the one thing that decides everything (MONEY) will not go anywhere but where it has been going for the last few decades- directly into their pockets!

You may also like -

ESPN Analyst Craig James Running for U.S. Senate in TexasNew England Patriots vs. New York Giants: Brutally Honest Game PreviewSuck For Luck Sweepstakes' New Front-Runner: Indy Colts