College Football Season Capped off by Ridiculous Postseason Format

The college football season will be settled yet again by an arbitrary matchup between two teams we are pretty sure deserve to be there.  While a four-team playoff is on the way in 2014, many of the problems that plague college football’s postseason will remain.

In 1992, the BCS was created out of necessity to pit two teams together in a national championship game.  Since teams and conferences had bowl affiliations, the two best teams would rarely play one another to end the season.  As a result, it was difficult to determine an overall national champion.

The new system was an upgrade, but as we have seen nearly every single year this two-team system remains far too exclusive.  This year, Alabama will play Notre Dame in the National Championship Game.  Alabama is one of five teams in the BCS top 25 with one loss.  Alabama may seem to most people as the best one-loss team, but in reality there is very little that separates them from the others.

What’s worse is that there could have been multiple undefeated teams at the end of the season.  If Notre Dame, Alabama, Kansas State, and Oregon had all gone undefeated, two of those four would have been excluded.  This nightmare scenario happened in the 2004-05 season.  Southern California, Oklahoma, and Auburn were all undefeated.  With nothing to separate the three and with a two-team system, Auburn was somehow excluded.  Just as a quick aside, can you imagine an SEC team going undefeated today and NOT getting a place in the National Championship game?

Somehow, the BCS managed to survive until last season when enough was enough and it was announced the format for the national championship will change into a four-team playoff.  While this is progress, it still does not go far enough.

I know it sounds like I am beating a dead horse by tearing apart a system that has been universally panned, but that’s not the point.  The purpose of this article is not to point out the obvious flaws that have already been discussed ad nauseam, but instead to highlight the fact that instituting a four-team playoff is like putting a band-aid on a broken arm.

Let’s take the top four teams in the BCS standings this year as a hypothetical playoff.  This would give us Notre Dame, Alabama, Florida, and Oregon.  One could argue that all four teams are deserving of a title shot.  This would, however, also exclude one loss Kansas State who I would argue is no less deserving.  You are left with the exact same problem of a two-team system: it still excludes teams just as deserving of a title shot as those selected.

But wait, doesn’t college basketball have the same problem?  Every year experts debate over the most deserving teams and some are inevitably left out of March Madness.  Won’t any system have the exclusion problem no matter how big?  While this is true, the difference is that the 69^th best basketball team in the nation cannot reasonably argue that they are legitimate national championship contenders.  The lowest seed to ever win March Madness was an eight when Villanova won in 1985.  There is a huge difference between leaving out the 69^th best team and the fifth.

Still, the powers that be drag their feet on a full-blown playoff system.  Most people want to see either eight or 16 teams battle it out, but the fans are given the most ridiculous arguments for why this won’t happen.

Since the football season ends at the end of November/beginning of December, a playoff system could potentially interfere with then end of the college semester.  Well, the FCS (formerly I-AA football) has been using a playoff system of eight teams or more since 1981.  Somehow not every FCS football player has dropped out of school.  I promise you the football schedule could be adjusted to accommodate academics.

Another argument is that playoffs would either end the bowl system or diminish their importance.  This is untrue for two reasons.  First, the bowls could be incorporated into a playoff system.  For example, the four current BCS bowls could be converted into quarterfinal games.  Whatever bowls are not incorporated could be played by teams not in the playoffs.  The NCAA could make it work.

Secondly, a playoff system would not diminish bowl games any more than sponsors already have.  Do you think players can say with pride that they are playing in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl?  Or how about the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl?  When I see bowls like the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl, it seems pretty evident that people stopped caring about the prestige of the bowl system a long time ago.  Adding a playoff system really won’t hurt, unless of course you’re a big fan of the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl (my personal favorite).

Perhaps the most compelling and only real argument there is against the playoff system is that it could diminish the regular season.  I admit, the regular season of college football is the most important of pretty much any sport.  Every game turns into a pseudo “playoff” game for national title hopefuls.  A single loss can end the dream of raising the crystal trophy.

The problem, however, is that the big teams know their season hangs in the balance every week and so they schedule patsies they can beat up on while preparing for conference opponents.  Here are some of the matchups we were given in week 12 of this season: Alabama vs. Western Carolina, Florida vs. Jacksonville State, South Carolina vs. Wofford, Georgia vs. Georgia Southern, Auburn vs. Alabama A&M, Texas A&M vs. Sam Houston State, and Kentucky vs. Samford.  Even the most casual of college football fans can see these are pretty lackluster games.   Almost the entire SEC decided to take the weekend off and THIS is the regular season we have to protect?

With all due respect to the FCS, people are not glued to the TV when the best conference in the nation decides to hold a series of scrimmages in the middle of the season.  The nonconference schedule for many teams is becoming a joke because the margin for error is so small.  I personally would rather see postseason games against the best teams in the country instead of Alabama’s backups blowout Western Carolina midseason.

Don’t despair though, a larger playoff format is not far behind.  The fact is that college football is dominated by money.  If you don’t believe me, go back and re-read the names of the bowls I listed.  It won’t take long for people to realize that more playoff games between the best teams in the nation will mean more money.  It’s a simple equation.  What’s not so simple, however, is determining a fair system that can finally include all the true national title contenders while keeping all the decision-makers happy, but that’s an argument for another day.

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