In Defense of College Football and The BCS

The President-Elect has recently joined the hordes of College Football fans calling for and 8-game playoff system. The “Chosen One” announced in an interview that he doesn’t “know any serious fan of college football that disagrees with” him on the need for a new playoff structure.

Let me introduce myself Mr. President-Elect. I am a die-hard College Football fan, it is my favorite sport and in my opinion an 8-game playoff system would be both a disastrous mistake and seriously diminish what is the greatest regular season phenomenon in organized sports.

Three weeks from now the United States of America will witness one of the greatest match-ups in the history of College Football. Alabama, the number one ranked team in the country, will face off with Florida, the fourth ranked team, for the SEC Championship. Beyond being an epic match-up of highly rated perennial powerhouses, the contest will be fought for the right to participate in the BCS National Championship Game. The entire country will be watching intently. College Football fans everywhere will be glued to the spectacle.

If an 8-game playoff system were in place THIS GAME WOULD NOT MATTER! Sure, Alabama and Florida fans would tune in to see their teams do battle. SEC fans and some football fanatics would watch to enjoy what will certainly be a great competition. But the rest of the country wouldn’t bother in large numbers because the game would lack significance. One of the great match-ups of the season wouldn’t count for anything other than a largely irrelevant playoff seeding.

If Alabama loses this game they will end the season 12-1 with a loss to the fourth ranked Gators. They might fall as far as fifth in the standings but would certainly make the playoffs. Should Florida lose to The Crimson Tide they would end the season 11-2 with their latest loss coming in the SEC Championship Game to a top ranked Alabama squad. The Gators, would fall a few notches, but would certainly end up no worse than seventh or eighth. Both Alabama and Florida have already earned a theoretical playoff spot before the game has even been played. The SEC Championship would represent nothing other than a Conference Title that would be largely irrelevant.

In fact, under the proposed 8-game playoff, there would be no incentive for any Conference to have a Championship Game. The Big-10 is rightly criticized and punished by pollsters for not having a Conference Championship under the BCS structure. If the system is changed so that the goal is to end the regular season ranked in the top 8, then there would be a material disincentive to play a Conference Championship. Why would any Conference create or maintain an extra game at the end of the regular season which would by definition hand their second best team a damaging loss? Conferences would maximize their chances of getting two schools into the playoffs by eliminating Championships.

And what value would a Conference Championship really be in a world where the National Champion could be won by the runner-up?

The current BCS set-up also encourages teams to schedule quality competition during the year. Scheduling good opponents is an important way to prove to voters that you are worthy of playing in the National Championship Game. If the goal is to end up ranked 8th or better this incentive would change dramatically. The best way to make the playoffs is to avoid losses. Pad your schedule with cupcake wins. Avoid quality competition and squeak into the tournament. Boise State is currently ranked ninth in the BCS playing just such a schedule. The quality of regular season football games would suffer.

Heck, instead of good teams migrating to the premier conferences why wouldn’t we see the reverse? If Kentucky jumped to the Mid-American Conference they could reach the playoffs ever other year. Congratulations, you have your playoff system!

One of the arguments supporting the adoption of a football playoff is the success of the tournament structure within college basketball. I, like many Americans, love the NCAA Basketball Tournament. It’s great. Every game is do or die. Every shot is meaningful. A loss and you can’t become the National Champion.

If I watch one regular season College Basketball game this year it will be one more than I watched last year. I know there are plenty of hardcore basketball fans out there but I find the regular season to be completely unwatchable. The games simply don’t matter. Losses don’t count for much. All that really matters is ending up as one of the 64 teams that make the tournament. A team can make it by posting a decent regular season record or by winning their Conference tournament. Even the supposed epic regular season match-ups between ancient enemies bore me to tears. I am obviously not a REAL fan, but my take is that the regular season doesn’t matter much when the purpose of it is to make the playoffs, and a large number of teams get to participate. Can you remember which team won your Conference Championship in basketball three years ago? How about in football?

College Football remains unique in that the whole season is a tournament. A week one loss may be enough to prevent your favorite team from playing for the National Championship. Every play, every series, every game is huge, important and directly impacts the outcome of the season.

A playoff system would reduce the regular season to a prelude before the tournament. Sure, die hard fans will still road-trip, tailgate and watch games but it won’t be the same. Ask yourself whether you would watch out-of-conference games between teams in the Pac-10 or Big-10 under an 8-game playoff system? That USC-Ohio State game on September 13th would have been a novelty instead of a must-win game. USC’s loss to Oregon State wouldn’t have mattered other than to seed the Trojan’s fifth instead of second in the playoffs. Boring.

Some argue that the BCS doesn’t allow small schools that go undefeated the opportunity to compete for a National Championship. True. But who’s to say that an undefeated Ball State, currently the seventeenth ranked team in the country, will crack the top 8 at the end of the season? They won’t! I can hear the outrage now. We need a 16-game playoff system! If Ball State wants to play for a National Championship they need to join a real conference and schedule games against teams other than Akron, Kent State, Toledo and Miami of Ohio. They are certainly king of the mediocre Ohio teams but it is a joke that anyone would argue they should have a shot at a National Championship.

People presently whining that their teams deserve to be in the National Championship Game would give way to others whining that their squads deserve to be ranked eighth and participate in the playoffs. Frankly, it may be harder for the pundits to determine the worthiness of the last playoff team than it is to figure out the second BCS Championship Game participant. The pressure would ratchet up to expand the tournament, and each expansion would further degrade the importance of the regular season.

Under an 8-game playoff system the Conference Championships will be eliminated, the quality of regular season, non-conference match-ups will suffer, and the importance of and suspense associated with “big regular season games’ will largely disappear. The 8-game structure may also not end the complaints that we currently hear about the BCS system. A unique sport and a national treasure would be greatly diminished in favor of 7 compelling playoff games. In my humble opinion that is a terrible trade.

The world is a volatile place filled with plenty of problems in need of being “fixed”. College Football does not need a government sponsored bailed-out by well-intentioned but misinformed politicians. My advice to the President-Elect is to focus your efforts on socializing healthcare, diminishing American competitiveness through expanded unions and eroding the benefits of globalization by restricting free-trade. But please keep your mitts off of College Football where the path to the National Championship is determined by cut-throat competition, merit and accountability; three concepts that made America and College Football great.