The four-team college football playoff has saved my favorite
sport and I could not be happier to admit my folly.
As the playoff approached, I predicted
doom. There was no way this compromise was going to work. I believed we
were on our way to a 16-team playoff. I thought the four-team playoff would
ruin the bowls, diminish the regular season and create
even more controversy. Wrong, wrong, and wrong again.
While many foolishly credited
the BCS with making college football a less regional sport, the four-team
playoff cemented the sport’s place on the national landscape.
The problem for the BCS and college football for a
quarter-century was that most seasons ended with three deserving teams battling
for two spots in a championship game. Many fans can list the aggrieved parties
from memory: Miami in 2000, Oregon in 2001, USC in 2003, Auburn in 2004, etc.
etc.
I assumed this would similarly be a problem for the college
football playoff, except there would be more teams complaining about getting
left out. But the beauty of four teams is that the fifth team has no one but
themselves to blame. Think about BCS fiascoes, as Miami in 2000 beat a Florida
State playing for the title, Auburn in 2004 didn’t lose a game and Oklahoma
State in 2011 never got a chance so Alabama could have a second.
In 2014, TCU and Baylor were both left out but there was a
clear sense the committee ultimately got it right. Neither team challenged
itself out of conference. TCU blew a huge lead to Baylor. Baylor laid an egg on
the road to West Virginia. And if Ohio State had been the odd team out, we
would have said, “They should’ve beat Virginia Tech.”
The 2015 season went so smoothly that college football fans
had to find new things to complain about, which was delivered in spades thanks
to the insane decision to air the playoff games on
New Year’s Eve. Let’s hope they
fix that, and soon.
But there was no complaining about the four teams involved.
There are no complaints about Alabama and Clemson playing for the championship.
Everything has been proven on the field.
Most importantly, the four-team playoff pulled off the magic
trick of improving college football’s regular season, already the best in
sports. The last four weeks of the college football season has turned into a
high stakes game of demolition derby. Who will survive?
The BCS era presented a false notion that every game
mattered. The Playoff era presents a true belief that every game matters.
On Championship Saturday in 2012, only one
game mattered: the Alabama/Georgia game to determine who would play Notre
Dame in the title game.
On Championship Saturday in 2015, each major conference’s
title game had playoff implications. Alabama and Clemson locked up spots. North
Carolina did not. Michigan State and Iowa played a quarterfinal game. Stanford
made a statement if someone slipped up. Throw in Houston playing Temple for a
Peach Bowl spot and it was a truly insanely, ridiculously awesome day of
football.
That is why the four-team playoff has been a revelation. The
possibilities feel endless, because they are. Did anyone peg Ohio State as the
national champion in October 2014? Was anyone betting on Oklahoma to make the
playoffs after Texas smoked them?
Even the notion that the bowls would be diminished feels
misguided. I mean, there are 40 of them now. While TV ratings were destroyed by
poor scheduling, attendance at the big bowls has been greatly helped. One thing
noticeably missing from this year’s New Year’s Six was empty seats as only the
Peach Bowl, which drew 70,000+, was not an official sellout. There were no
20,000 empty seats, which had become par for the course for mid-week Orange
Bowl games and uninteresting Sugar
Bowls.
Of course, college football fans can never be happy, so
there has been grumblings about the creation of an 8-team playoff. For years, I
have been pushing a
16-team playoff* to give the Group of Five teams a chance.
I was wrong about the four-team playoff before, so let me be
right now: the playoff needs to stay at four teams for the foreseeable future.
For the first time in my life, I know college football will
crown an undisputed national champion before the year starts. I cannot properly
express how great it feels to know that.
For years, college football and its media peddled the
ridiculous idea that “controversy
sells” and that’s what made the sport so special. I cannot properly express
how great it feels to know that bullshit has been exposed.
*If the playoff expands, it has to go to 16, as I laid out
for the 2013
and 2014 seasons. For fun, here’s what the bracket would have looked like in
2015 with all 10 conferences getting an automatic bid:
#16 Arkansas State at #1 Clemson
#9 Florida State at #8 Notre Dame
I wonder if anyone
would watch an FSU/Notre Dame playoff game from Notre Dame Stadium In December?
#13 Western Kentucky at #4 Oklahoma
#12 Houston at #5 Iowa
I’m pretty sure
Houston would be a semifinal team
#14 San Diego State at #3 Michigan State
#11 TCU at #6 Stanford
With Boykin playing,
TCU/Stanford would be insane
#15 Bowling Green at #2 Alabama
#10 North Carolina at #7 Ohio State
If Ohio State had to
travel to Alabama for a playoff game, ESPN would set a new cable ratings
record. Assuming it’s not played on New Year’s Eve.
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