BOWL PLAYOFF BUNGLES FORWARD

The College Football Playoff committee needed to select 4 teams for this year's playoff. As in the past they have shown themselves to feel that they are quite important and well informed but they seem to have trouble using common sense. Their task this year appeared simple as there were 4 teams that seemed to fit the playoff selection easily. They were Michigan, Washington, Florida State, and Texas. The first 3 were all undefeated and Texas appeared most appropriate for a 1 loss team as Ohio State had lost to Michigan, Georgia had lost to Alabama and Alabama had lost to Texas. However the committee decided in their infinite wisdom that somehow Alabama deserved selection over Florida State. The committee claimed to have followed all sorts of data in making the selections, but the most repeated one seemed to be that the Seminoles first string quarterback had been injured. This wisdom is mind boggling. If the selection committee is going to start dropping teams because of their roster there is no telling what results might follow. Indeed besides injuries we now have a transfer portal and a number of players have decided to transfer in spite of the fact that their team was going to a bowl game.  I believe that on the first day that the transfer portal was open over 1000 players announced they were transferring. There have been many instances where substitute players have gone into the game and helped their team succeed. Florida State had earned the right to play for the championship and it made no sense for the committee to drop them because someone had been injured.

The problem with the Division One Football Playoff is that the committee, feeling important and informed, thinks that it should make the selection of who plays and not let the results on the field determine who goes to the game. These selections should be made from conference champions who earned the right to be in the playoff and not a team that is favored by the committee.  The committee should not select two teams which have already played each other. The winner of that game should be in the playoff and the loser should not get a chance at a repeat. Further there should not be two teams selected from 1 conference in a 4 playoff. Last season both Ohio State and Michigan were selected and they may have been 2 of the 4 best teams but there is not much interest in watching two teams from one conference play each other for a national championship. In that type of situation if the losing team wins in the playoffs they become one and one against their opponent but somehow they are declared the champion! That defies logic.

Many people have suggested that next year when there will be a 12 team selection for the playoff many of these problems will be corrected. However, it is hard to see how that is the case. There is nothing that tells us that this will be between conference champions.  Further, there is no limitation on the number of teams from one conference. I doubt there is much interest in seeing a playoff in which Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State are all in the playoff and many other teams and conferences are left out. There are ten Division One conferences and the winner of each of these conferences should be in the playoff. Some of these conferences are stronger than others but that is immaterial. If they are Division One conferences then they are in the same division and should have a chance at contending for the championship.

Further one of the most popular results throughout the country is when an underdog wins in a tournament or playoff. Florida Atlantic University had many fans cheering for it in the last NCAA basketball tournament even though most of these people had not heard of the school prior to the tournament and didn't even know where it was located. The desire is just to see if an underdog can have a chance at pulling off the victory. FAU almost did that going to the championship game in the basketball tournament. Another example is the most remembered bowl game in NCAA history when Boise State defeated Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta bowl. Oklahoma was a consistent national power in football and Boise State was considered a second rate team from a western mountain conference. Yet Boise State pulled off the victory in what has been called the greatest finish in college football bowl history. People love stories such as the “Hoosiers” from high school basketball in Indiana. The committee does not seem to want to allow anyone to have a chance to pull off that underdog victory.  Less well known football powers and schools who will need their substitutes to pull off a victory should be encouraged. That attitude emulates the spirit of college sports and the enthusiasm of its fans.

I expect the 12 team selection will have just as much controversy as the 4  team selection. If we look at the so-called ranked teams at the end of the 2023 season there are probably 20 of them that can make some type of claim to fit in the top 12 for one reason or another. Simply adding more teams to the selection does not resolve the problem if the criteria for selection are not clarified.

The final and most important issue on this topic is the problem with the conferences and NCAA constantly looking to expand money making events without any apparent concern for their student athletes. It is not clear why 12 was the number that were selected for the expanded playoff. 8  would have provided for an equal number of teams to play in each round of a playoff instead it appears that there will be 4 teams to play each other to get into the final 8 and then the 8 teams will play down to 2 for a championship game. This extended playoff ignores that these are student athletes and the NCAA is supposed to be concerned with the welfare of them as students. This playoff adds 3 weeks to the season for those 12 teams. The argument will probably be made that it can be folded into the bowl season and so there will not be 3 extra weeks of play. However that is undoubtedly errant and once again the student athletes will not be student athletes but people who are sent out onto the field to try and earn new pots of money for the NCAA and their respective schools. This attitude has prevailed over the last few decades to a troublesome extent as the finance offices of the NCAA and the universities look for more and more ways to raise revenue as they expand their seasons and the extravaganza that goes with the games to an absurd extent for college athletes.

All of these Division One schools now have approximately 100 players on their football teams many of whom don't even get into a game, they just practice all season long. Then there are also bands and cheerleaders and all sorts of other individuals that are thrown into the mix so that it is an extremely expensive operation. In the smaller bowls that exist where the payout is only one million, or perhaps less, the schools complain that they lose money by going to a bowl with such a low payout but they want the extra practice time! It is mind boggling to think that we have created a sporting system based on student athletes that cannot play a game for under $1 million without losing money! In accounting terms and chief financial officer terms that may be true but I believe the appropriate analysis tells us that it means the entire system has become too infected with the capitalist mentality of judging things only by the money produced and not the quality of the product, which in this instance is supposed to be a sporting event for student athletes. The playoff system, the transfer portal, the NIL payments to players, all suggest that the NCAA has lost its direction and needs to be restructured and refocused to support its stated purpose: promoting student sporting events.

Silence Dogood