A Modest Proposal For An NCAA Football Playoff
This is part 2 of Leaky Pipes’ thoughts on the Bowl system; Part 1—Dr. Strange-Bowl—can be found here.
The weather is cold, our Christmas lights are hung, and someone is talking about a College Football Playoff System—it must be December. Frankly, we all know the reason we keep talking about it is because it hasn’t gotten any better. The BCS was supposed to fix the debate about who’s the best, and instead it’s only muddied the waters further. Bowling, wrestling, fencing, indoor track and field, outdoor track and field, and something called “rifle” all have NCAA National Champions, each of whom immediately become qualified to run for Vice-President. Football is the only NCAA sport without an official National Champion. But with all due respect to the President-elect, an 8-team playoff isn’t going to cut it (maybe he thinks it’s just the best plan he could get through Congress?). If I were President—and frankly there’s no reason I’m not already President (other than some Constitutional restrictions and my low polling numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire)—my plan wouldn’t settle for anything less than a real playoff: a 32-team one.
As I addressed in Part One, there are major reasons to keep the Bowl system, namely the money for each school and money for the local economies around the country; so to get a real playoff scenario we need to help, Rod Blagojevich-style, the schools and the cities that already have bowl games. There are big problems with a small, compromise playoff plan—namely that smaller teams (like say Boise State) that are undefeated and have a history of knocking off bigger schools still get left out of an 8-team plan.
In my 32-team playoff plan, there would be 31 games which could allow every current bowl location to host 1 game (Orlando, San Diego and New Orleans each currently host 2 bowl games). In the current 34-bowl game system, there are 68 teams that make it, so this plan would eliminate more than half the teams, but keep a similar number of contests. A lot of schools fire their coach even when they qualify for a bowl. Clearly 6-6 isn’t cutting it—so let’s get rid of that crappy half and turn the Top 32 into something meaningful.
The season already runs from August through January, so in order to add a few rounds of playoffs I’d get rid of the conference championships—just ask Texas and Texas Tech how those are working out—which shaves off a few weeks of the regular season. A 32-team playoff would be 5 rounds, which could start the first weekend of December and culminate on or around New Year’s.
The bowl system already has a regional makeup; in fact about half the bowl games feature at least one team that plays within 50 miles of the Bowl site. Let’s break the teams up into regions—but choose better venues. There are currently 7 bowls in Florida, 5 in Texas, 4 more in California—so let’s keep the SEC and ACC in Florida, the Big 12 in Texas, and the Pac-10 and WAC in California. Currently there are almost no games in the upper Mid-West; Detroit gets to host a game, but no one else in the area does. There are tourist destinations, with adequate stadiums, that are being ignored. You think the President-elect is going to tolerate Chicago not having a bowl game? What about putting a big game in Green Bay? Wouldn’t a Penn State-Ohio State Big 10 rematch in the regional final draw a pretty decent crowd to Lambeau? Save the big travel for the last few games, and have the early rounds played within driving distance.
The Television contracts for the BCS have always been considered a major hurdle for a playoff system, but I think ESPN is already trying to fix that. They currently air 25 of the 34 games, and recently they out-bid Fox for the right to air their 5 BCS games. That means that ESPN already owns 88% of the bowl games out there, they only have to negotiate the 2 away from CBS and 2 away from NFL Network to have every bowl game. And then they hold all the cards in making the NCAA Football Tournament their exclusive property. They could design it around their programming schedule—they have enough networks to broadcast every game even if they are played simultaneously. The biggest hurdle for a playoff just became the biggest proponent, and when ESPN wants something done in the sports world, it will happen.
Suddenly football has its own version of March Madness. It still has every region host local games and keeps those local economies happy. It keeps undefeateds from being left out in the cold. Boise State and Utah aren’t powerhouses, but they have beaten everyone they’ve played and they need to be allowed to keep going until someone stops them. And while each of those schools would be a big underdog, at least most college football fans have heard of them. This playoff would allow a true underdog, a George Mason-type underdog that no one has ever heard of before, to make a run.
I’d love it if the D1-AA playoffs could end first, and then put the winner in the 32-team playoff. What if Michigan got their stuff together, made it into the playoff—then drew Appalachian State (last year’s D1-AA winner) in the first round? I’d give every participating school $10 million with more money for advancing into later rounds—the NCAA men’s basketball tourney TV rights breakdown to about $550m a year ($6 billion over 11 years); so there’s enough money out there to make the big schools drop their objections.
I’m not saying a 32-team plan is perfect. There is going to be some 33rd ranked team that complains about not getting in. There are going to be a lot of fan bases that complain about having to travel multiple times in a single postseason. There will be University Presidents that try to stonewall this. There are going to be people that try to talk up how great bowl games are (like me for instance, in Part One). But think about how boring March would be if college basketball had a bowl-system. Last year Davidson against Gonzaga in the BFE Credit Union Bowl would have still been fun and exciting, and when it was over Davidson would have a happy ending to their season. However in hindsight, I think everyone can agree that it was better that Davidson got to play Gonzaga, then Georgetown, then Wisconsin, before they lost to Kansas. And that’s the reason we need a playoff: every team deserves the chance to end their season with a loss. If this is going to happen, we all need to admit that a happy ending is just a story that hasn’t finished yet.