Why not eight teams? Why not 16 teams? How can you guarantee
the power conferences will not receive better treatment than the smaller
conferences? What will happen if we have a year like we did in 2010 where five
teams went undefeated in the regular season? (Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, TCU
and Boise State) Will this cause even more conference realignment? Will the SEC
be guaranteed not one, but two teams in the playoff every year?
These are all great questions to ask the commissioners who
are creating this four-team playoff. I for one am excited to see what will
happen, but am also a little skeptical about what will take place. For some
reason I believe that there will be just as much controversy over a 4-team
playoff than there will be over the current BCS system.
The greatest advocate for the BCS or 4-team playoff is that
it keeps the regular season as important as ever. The NFL is still the most
popular sport in America. Millions of viewers tune in every week to watch their
favorite teams, and twelve out of the 32 NFL teams get to go to a playoff and compete
for the Super Bowl. Why does it seem so ludicrous to think that the regular
season will be diminished when 16 out of 120+ FBS programs get to compete for a
national championship?
I did a little research and on a 16-team playoff where every
conference champion gets an automatic berth and five at-large teams are
selected. If you went by the BCS rankings at the end of the regular season
Alabama, Stanford, Arkansas, Boise State and Kansas State would be your five
at-large teams. Not one of those teams lost more than two games throughout the
regular season. A four-team playoff will
make the regular season more meaningful, but how could you argue that the BCS made
the regular season meaningful when a four-loss Connecticut team was able to
make it to a BCS game just a few years ago.
A four-team playoff is a step in the right direction. It
will definitely be more exciting to watch then the horrendous 70-35 Orange Bowl
or the two non-deserving teams that played in the Sugar Bowl last year. I was
so fed up with the BCS that I had boycotted watching any of the BCS games,
including the Alabama LSU Part II. The four-team playoff will still have its
controversies. Below is what like and what to dislike about the four-team playoff.
What to Like:
It’s a playoff! - College football is the only major sport
that does not have some sort of playoff to determine its champions. We will now
have the most deserving (sort of) teams duke it out on the field to prove who
the number-one team is.
No more polls and computer rankings – No more will we have
to here Brad Edwards tell us why Boise State’s strength of schedule weakens their
computer rankings. No more will we have corrupt coaches voting their teams
ahead of more-deserving teams just so they can play in the big bowl games. It
was a hypocritical system and we can now rely on a more reliable selection
committee to pick the four teams.
No more conference tie-ins – At least to the playoff games
anyways. While some conferences will definitely have more push/pull on getting
put into the playoffs, they will not be guaranteed a spot in the playoffs. We won’t have to worry about a Big East or ACC
champ being guaranteed big bucks for having a sub-par champion.
The championship game going to the highest bidder – About
50% of all college football fans think of this as a positive thing. I’m one of
those people. I hate the bowls and I’m glad to be able to have a more neutral
site location for the national championship. I’m sick of seeing all the bowls
being played in the southern part of the United States. No more LSU getting
virtual home games every five years in the Sugar Bowl. Now any city can host
the national championship game. What if we had a national championship game in
New York? Indianapolis? Seattle? Those would be some terrific sites that fans
of northern teams may now be willing to make the trip to visit.
What not to like:
It’s only four teams – Like I mentioned before, a 16-team
playoff seems a lot fairer, and a 16-team playoff would generate millions of
more dollars. Hopefully once the commissioners realize how much money is being
generated from this four-team playoff they will have to consider going for more
teams.
Many deserving teams will be left out – I feel bad for those
who will have to be the ones to decide who the first four in are and the last
four out are. Look at last year’s teams for example: According to the BCS
rankings, it would be LSU, Alabama, Stanford and Oklahoma State. What about
Oregon? Oregon was the Pac-12 champ and beat Stanford during the regular
season. Who do you take? What about Arkansas? Their only two losses were to LSU
and Alabama who had a combined total of one loss before the national
championship. Do they deserve to be in more than Oklahoma State, who lost to
Kansas State, who had a combined total of two losses before the bowl games?
There are many deserving teams that deserve to be in the playoff and four is
just not enough to include all of the deserving teams. What will happen to the
non-aq’s? Before they were at least guaranteed a spot in a BCS game if they
went undefeated, but now non-aq’s may go undefeated and still be left out of
the playoffs. The power conferences will continue to get more revenue, while
the non-aq’s will still be left in the dark. Revenue sharing is still broken in
college football.
The semifinals being played at neutral locations – I know I
may raise some question marks according to my stance on the location of the
title game, but I think it would be amazing to have the national semifinals at
the higher seed’s field. Can you imagine how crazy the fans would be? Or how
about the agony of those fans when their team is upset at their home field?
We’ll have to see what the next few years bring. Hopefully
it won’t take 12 years to realize the great potential of a 16-team playoff. At
least we can raise our glasses for a day and know that we will no longer have
to complain about the old BCS system, and that college football is on its way
to something big.
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