Death to a Playoff: Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1: The Plan

The first chapter broadly covers many topics, most of which are explored by later chapters, so I won't get into too much detail in this writing. The most significant part of the plan is indeed the most flawed. While I understand that inviting all the conference champions may be the “fair” thing to do, it is wrong for college football's postseason, and it is one piece of what is wrong with many current playoff systems. 

The Seattle Seahawks making the playoffs this year with a 7-9 record should be reason enough to accept that this is a bad idea, but it has been going on for years in the NFL, most notably when the 9-7 Arizona Cardinals made it all the way to the Super Bowl, and darn near won the thing. Stewart Mandel does a great job of explaining why this is bad for college football, but he basically argues the point that it would extremely devalue the regular season, which is what is most enticing about college football. Peter King even asked “What exactly does the regular season mean anymore?” If we used the authors' plan in that same college football season, since Florida had clinched a berth in the SEC Championship game by November 8^th, they could've lost their next 3 games to South Carolina, The Citadel, and Florida State, and still have an equal chance at being named National Champions as undefeated Alabama or Oklahoma. That is a problem. If Florida loses those 3 games, we don't need a playoff system of any kind to tell us if they are the best team because we know they are not!

The authors do bring up good ideas about the logistics of this plan if it were in place, mainly about how early round games should be held in home stadiums of the higher seeds and that bowl games would not be eliminated, but to assert that college football has no “Cinderella possibility,” or that “competition for the five at-large spots would make the final month of the regular season a circus of action” really discredits the current state of the game. Firstly, there are legit Cinderella possibilities almost every year. I don't know if Auburn, or any SEC team outside of Vanderbilt, necessarily constitutes a Cinderella, but no one outside of their campus was considering them as a likely title contender. In 2009, Cincinnati could certainly be called a Cinderella team, but probably not TCU and Boise State since, even as programs in non-BCS conferences, they have established themselves as winning programs. 2007 was a banner year for Cinderella candidates, with California, South Florida, Boston College, and Kansas all reaching the #2 spot in the BCS standings, none of which are traditional powers. The authors are being a little short-sighted if they think there is no room for a Cinderella story.

Secondly, the final month of the current regular season can't really get more exciting, because instead of five at-large spots, there are only two, and as opportunity to reach a any goal decreases, the stakes and excitement increase. If they watched the Alabama-Auburn game this year, or the Boise State-Nevada game (later that same night!) and didn't get excited, they need to have their pulse checked. Heck, Auburn and Oregon both made a habit of second half comebacks throughout the season. More to the overall point is the question of why does only the last month need to be exciting? The ten most watched games during the regular season spanned the entire season instead of just the last month. 3 games in September, 2 in October, 3 in November and 2 in December. Why change something that elicits a 4 month “circus of action?”

The book makes an interesting final point that every other sport in the NCAA is decided by a playoff, so the people involved in NCAA athletics obviously have the knowledge of how to construct a successful playoff, yet college football does not use a playoff. Maybe it is because they understand that college football is more than just a playoff? Maybe they don't want it to become an NFL knock-off, where the regular season is more about hype and talking heads until we get to the playoff, then there is 4 weeks of intrigue, and the 2 best teams of the year seldom play each other for the championship. College football has 3 months of an interesting, meaningful, and exciting regular season, and maybe the guys in charge see the value in that.

I am glad someone does.