Bowl Championship Silliness

Okay, so I took the weekend off, and I'm back now, refreshed and ready to go. As is always the case when I don't write anything for a few days, I know my loyal readership is currently in a near suicidal state, waiting for my next outpouring of wit, wisdom, and the like. So, I won't make you suffer any longer, here it comes.

It's the Monday after the last weekend of the college football regular season, and that means one thing - the air is filled with anti-BCS furor. In a year with the most college football parity I can ever remember, a year where no major conference team went undefeated and only 2 managed to have only one blemish, the hamster wheels of the BCS have turned and determined that Ohio State will play LSU for the national championship. We'll wait about 5 months for this matchup, but it will happen. And, as always, or at least as always in a year where there aren't 2 and only 2 undefeated teams from BCS conferences, the selections have created arguments and controversy. Alongside that controversy comes the yearly cry for a playoff at the highest level of college football.

Frankly, I'm tired of it all. My preference would be for a playoff, much like occurs at every other level of college football, and in virtually every other sport the NCAA sponsors. However, if the powers that be want to continue with the current "system", it's not really any skin off of my back. I'm entertained by college football and will likely continue to be so regardless of any change. My biggest frustration with the whole debate is that every year I have to hear the flurry of defenses of the current system from the powers at be, most of which I find to be hypocritical or stupid.

Let's review a few of them. The favorite one, and I think the one that gets the best PR, is the suggestion that adding a playoff would force more teams to have their players missing class, particularly around finals time. After all, academics come first. If you've read some of my stuff in the past, you know that I think the idea that academics are a primary factor in major college athletics is a load of crap. But that's really beside the point here. There will be no D-IA football played from now until just before Christmas. Whereas in the other 3 divisions of college football, the championship semi-finals will be this coming weekend, and the finals in 2 weekends. So apparently those students, who are actual student athletes, are deemed capable of playing right up to and during finals. If that wasn't enough hypocrisy, in the last 10-15 years, the NCAA has expanded the D-IA schedule on two separate occasions - first by allowing conferences with 12 teams to play a conference championship in addition to the regular season schedule, and then by allowing everyone to play an extra regular season game. So, if you're keeping track, the powers that be who have been consistently opposed to allowing a few teams to play a couple extra games, have allowed all teams one more game, and several teams each year to play 2 more games. There's nothing here except hypocrisy and doublespeak. There is plenty of available time for a full regular season and a 4, 8, or 16 game playoff.

Another favorite justification is the tradition of the bowl games, and the fact that the bowl system allows many teams to end their season on a positive note. Again, this one sounds really nice, but it just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. There is no precedent in any other sport at any level of the NCAA for this kind of "keep them all happy" approach to ending the season. The same people that would defend the bowl system on this basis have consistently voted for systems where only one team ends the season on a winning note in every other NCAA sport. Am I really expected to believe that there are people governing major college football that are guided by a grade school "Let's give everyone a prize" mentality? Whether I am supposed to buy it or not, I certainly don't. The bottom line is that, were that really their reason, they could preserve most of the bowls and have a playoff system. Since that's not the reason they want to keep the smaller bowls in place, they wouldn't consider it.

The last reason that I hear all the time is that "the regular season is our playoff". The idea behind this one is that, by only picking 2 teams to play for the championship, it makes every game more important because there is little room for error (in most seasons, anyhow). I have to admit, this is the one they almost get me with. If you stick with this blog long enough, you'll probably see me go on in detail about how I despise using conference tournaments to determine automatic bids to the NCAA basketball tournament. You'll also find out that I dislike the NBA and NHL's setup, where 50% or more the teams make the playoffs, and that I'm adamantly opposed to adding anymore teams to the MLB playoffs. I think if you're going to bother a regular season, it should mean something, and that your system for determining a champion should be heavily tilted in favor of teams who proved themselves in the regular season. And D-IA college football clearly has the most meaningful regular season of any the of the major professional and college sports. However, the problem is that it is not fully effective as a playoff. There have been several teams in the last few years where teams have gone won all their games and not gotten to play for the championship. In 2005, for instance, there were 5 undefeated teams (3 of which were from major conferences), and obviously only 2 got to play for the title. Most often what happens is that a team from a non-BCS conference goes undefeated and is not given a spot due to their weaker schedule, as happened this year with Hawaii. If you can win all games and not get a shot to play for the championship, then all your games were in fact rendered meaningless, not more meaningful, and the regular season is clearly not a playoff. So, while I resonate with this argument to some degree, I see it more as an argument for limiting the size of a playoff, not for ruling one out altogether.

So, you may wonder, given that I've just dissected all the major reasons given for not having a playoff, why I said at the beginning that I'm not all that concerned about whether a playoff is instituted. Like I said, I'm perfectly entertained by college football at the moment, and don't see a pressing need for change. And, while I think all the reasons they give for not doing a playoff are crap, I honestly don't have a problem with the actual reason they don't have a playoff, which is money. The power conferences control all the money in the current system, and they do their best to make sure they keep it all and distribute it amongst themselves. A playoff would ultimately threaten their control of the pie, even if it would likely increase the size of the pie. Since I've long since come to conclusion that major college athletics is about money first, and pretty much everything else second (if you don't believe this, pretend that you do and then realize how many decisions that you previously thought incomprehensible actually make perfect sense), this doesn't bother me. The schools control the system, and they are free to set it up to their liking and advantage. If the powers that be would simply have the guts to come out and be straight with the public on this, you'd probably never hear a peep from me on this issue again.

Seriously guys, we can take it. Just come out and say "It's about the money, we like the way it is now, and we have no intention to change." You'd probably actually have less of a PR nightmare on your hands than you do now. We all know that's what's going on, but at least you'd be being honest about it. Since I know you'll never admit it, you can just keep throwing out your silly reasons, and me and millions others like me will keep shooting them down. Have fun with that.