The chapter titled “Presidential Powers” touches on 2 objections to most playoff scenarios: academic impact for the student-athletes and economic impact of bowl game host cities. The academic impact argument is a very common one while the economic impact argument is not made quite as often. The authors admittedly do a good job of addressing these hollow arguments, but the impact of this chapter is not as strong as others because the arguments themselves are pretty weak. Punching holes through a weak argument is not difficult, nor does it do a lot to advance your cause, but they do address anti-playoff arguments that are commonly made, so I understand the reason for their inclusion.
They begin the chapter focusing on the University of Nebraska President, Harvey Perlman, and analyzing 2 of his, quite frankly, poor assumptions on a college football playoff. Simply put, they are uneducated and misinformed ideas of how a playoff would progress. For some reason, Perlman believes that it is not feasible to play December or January football games in cold weather climates like Nebraska, and he thinks that the student-athletes would miss too many classes if they went to a 16 team playoff format. I am obviously against the playoff idea that the authors are proposing, but if a 16 team playoff was implemented, they would have to play the first few rounds of games at a university stadium and not a bowl site. The travel expenses would be too costly for the fans, and possibly even the teams (why make both teams travel, and make 2 teams travel 3 times if they make it to the championship game). You can't ask fans to potentially travel across the country 3 times on a week notice. Fan bases like Texas and Alabama may be able to pull that off, but if the whole reason of implementing a playoff is to include more teams, you are going to be including teams with much smaller and not as dedicated fan bases, and that is going to leave you with empty stadiums. Thinking that the athletes would miss too many classes is, as the authors and many others have already brought to light, baseless and hollow excuse, but it is an easy one to make, and maybe one that educators feel they have to make. The2 main problems with it are that all of the lower football divisions already do it, and that no one seems to care about athletes missing class when the NCAA basketball tournament starts in March. The authors successfully provide these obvious examples.
The authors discredit the “economic impact” argument fairly well, but it is not a very common one, so the value of including it is difficult to gauge. They make the claim that, as far as spending in America is concerned, spending $100 in Lincoln, NE is the same as $100 in Orlando, FL because of concept of “displaced spending.” The concept and examples provided are explained well, but I question the benefit it gives the rest of the chapter. However, it does provide good historical insight about how bowls used to be an way to get a team more national exposure, but it has recently turned into a scenario where bowl games are inviting local teams so that they can sell more tickets. This is not a surprising turn of events; after all, these are businesses that need to make money. However, there are still many bowl games that do feature out of town teams, and even though some will feature local teams, this is not bad either. More fans will go and support, more tickets will be sold, the game will be a better experience for the community and the fans, and nowadays the games are all broadcast nationally anyways, so anyone can watch them.
All in all, the chapter is not the strongest, but I see the necessity to break down this common argument made by anti-playoff people. The argument does not hold any water and the authors do a satisfactory job of exposing it.
No comments:
Post a Comment