No More Bull, Please: Why College FB needs a Playoff System

   It's the holiday season, which means this time of year you get to see all of your familiar Christmas movies, and none better than Christmas Vacation.  Easily the funniest Christmas movie out there, that never gets old.  There's a scene in there in which Clark, who's expecting a fat Christmas bonus from his boss, instead receives a "jelly of the month" club.  Naturally, Clark snaps, and chaos ensues.
   
    That must be how most of the coaches in D-1 college football feel after a long regular season, in which they are rewarded with some meaningless bowl game, in some remote location, instead of receiving the grand prize - the right to play for a national championship


   D-1 college football deserves a playoff system.  This isn't an article on how I would devise such a system - I'll leave that up to the experts - but several plans for a system do exist.  Joe Giansante, a former Senior Associate Athletic Director at the University of Oregon, writes about one here: http://viewfromthebeachcs.blogspot.com/2011/12/fixing-bcs-it-is-within-reach.html

   Instead, this is an argument in favor of a playoff system.  But to be fair, lets examine some of the counter arguments shall we?

    The BCS conferences have stronger teams in them. An undefeated or one-loss record in a BCS conference should mean more than the same record in a weaker, non-BCS conference because the teams are not facing opponents of the same quality. The BCS rankings consider strength of schedule in the computer rating formulas, and the human voters account for it as well.

   Critics will also say that bowl games are meaningful to players, coaches, and fans.

    They point out that BCS rankings are designed to favor consistency over the course of the entire season. It rewards teams that beat the opponents they are supposed to beat as well as underdogs that upset higher-ranked teams. Under a playoff system, a team could lose an entire season's worth of hard work by having one bad day.

    They say a playoff system would extend the 13 week regular season by at least a month, which would interfere with athletes' college studies and which could potentially lead to more injuries from playing.

   And lastly, they say a playoff system would take away from the regular season, and ratings for games would go down.

   There are several flaws in all of these arguments, starting with the first one: that BCS conferences have stronger teams in them.  The BCS conferences have stronger teams in them?  The Big East is considered a BCS conference, so that argument goes right out the window.  The "Big Least," as I like to call it, is the weakest BCS conference and ranks last in terms of strength of schedule, according to teamrankings.com's website (http://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/ranking/overall-power-ranking-by-conf), slightly ahead of non-BCS conference the Mountain West.  The highest ranked individual team from the big least is West Virginia, at 45, behind six teams from non-BCS conferences.  Facing the likes of UCONN, Rutgers, or Syracuse, is hardly murderers row. 

   And the fact that the big least is adding Boise State, Houston, SMU, UCF, Navy, and San Diego State, to "beafen" up its conference is laughable when those are non-BCS teams to begin with.  If Boise State played SMU this Saturday, that would not be considered a BCS game.  So why should it next year?  Or the following years?

   The argument that bowl games are meaningful to teams, players, and fans is also a common fallacy.  I'll admit, there are some pretty cool gift packages that come with playing in some of the more prestigious bowl games, but for the most part, it's overrated.  I've talked to a few current and former players whom have said as much.  A lot of players don't wanna be there.  They're disappointed, and it's easy to see why. 

   A team might have a really good season and win 10 or more games, but they may have slipped up a long the way.  They still had a good season though, going 10-1 or 11-1.  They're reward?  Spending their Christmas vacation away from their family, playing in such cities as Albuquerque, Boise, or Mobile, Alabama.  I mean afterall, who wouldn't want to play in the Nut bowl, or the spud bowl?  And the same goes for the fans too.  If your team has a chance to play for the national championship, and they end up in a second or third place conference bowl game, it's not as fun...trust me.  Which brings me to my next point, that the argument that a playoff system could ruin a teams entire season based on having one bad day, is false.

   Time and time again we see a team lose one game, fall back in the polls, and don't have enough time to recover.  Just this year it happened with Oklahoma State.  A loss about a month ago to Iowa State (their only loss of the year) set them back far enough in the polls, so that they didn't have enough time to make up ground, despite thrashing Oklahoma 44-10 a couple weeks later.

   An example near and dear to me came with the Oregon Ducks in 2001.  A mid season loss - one bad day - to Stanford, in which they blew a 42-28 fourth quarter lead, costed them a shot at the national championship.  They rebounded from from the loss by winning their final four games of the season, and were one of the hottest teams in the country.  However, they were denied the opportunity to play for a national championship because they fell so far back in the polls, they didn't have enough time to recover.

   The Ducks went on to crush Colorado, 38-16 in the Fiesta Bowl.

   These are the same people that will tell you under the current system, every game counts.  Which is true by the way, and that weakens their argument and proves my point:  they can't say under a playoff system a team can ruin an entire season based on one bad day, because that's how it currently is.  A playoff system would allow teams to have a bad day, and still be in it.

   Finally, to the last point that a playoff system would interfere with athletes' college studies and  could potentially lead to more injuries from playing is wrong on so many levels.  They're able to make it work on every other level of college football, so why couldn't it work at D1?  I don't have a link to the interview, but Tim Brando recently interviewed the head coach of DIII Wisconsin-Whitewater, and asked him if playing in the playoffs interfered with his players' studies, and asked if a playoff system at the D1 level would be too physical, leading to more injuries, and the coach pretty much laughed at that.  Different sport, but college basketball is also able to do it.

   And the idea that a playoff system would take away from the regular season, and ratings would go down is wrong because, for one, football is the most popular sport in America, and the most watched on television.  Also, the NFL has a playoff system (obviously) and yet people still tune in every Sunday and Monday.  In fact, it gets bigger ratings than college does.  

   I could go on all day about how the current system is flawed.  There is a counter argument to everyone of their arguments, but the bottom line is this:  I'm tired of seeing teams (my team especially) being rewarded with "jelly of the month" clubs, after deserving much more.  The current system sucks.  It's as simple as that.  D1 college football needs a playoff system.