Do you really want a college football playoff?

The Game Room
1

I don’t.

College football is a unique sport. While you do play a certain number of conference games, you also get to set your own schedule. Part of what makes college football unique is all the arguing about what team could beat another team.

I don’t think that Ohio State and LSU were the best two teams in college football last year. But, which team was?

The bowl system was not set up to decide a college football champion. They were set up to increase tourism to warm weather climates in December and January.

I detest the BCS Championship game and the whole BCS system. What made the bowl system good was wrapping things up on January 1. Now, you drag it out. Ugh, I’m back at work. I’m having to turn the bowl game off and go to bed because work calls early the next morning.

2

I agree. Not only that, but the kids are there for school, not to play football (which is debatable for some of thest athlete-students).

3

This has zero credibility as an argument against a playoff format. There are (I think) four different NCAA divisions for college football. All of them have a playoff format except one. The only one that doesn’t is the one with all the football factories that rubber-stamp diplomas.

The schools with serious scholar athletes, who are there for education first and football a distant second? They have playoffs.

4

Meh. No playoffs. The kids also aren’t getting paid for their time. We’re entering another debate, then.

5

From where I’m looking, I don’t really see any rationale in this post that is specifically arguing against the implementation of a playoff system in Division 1-A college football.

Personally, I really can’t see any reason NOT to have a playoff in D1-A other than a desire to maintain the status quo. I suspect the NCAA (or at least the power conference officials) are reluctant to move away from the bowl system because there is guaranteed good money for conferences/schools who make it to the top bowls. IIRC, schools who make the basketball tourney get a per-game-played bonus, so if your team drops out in the early rounds, tough. If your football team makes a BCS bowl, OTOH, right up front there’s a decent payout for just one game. That, coupled with the potential for lucrative corporate sponsorship of said bowls, can be very persuasive elements indeed.

I really hate the “well, the whole season is a playoff!” argument. To me that’s crap. I don’t want BCS bowl implications being debated and sweated over in WEEK ONE, because by December I am either going to be sick of it, or the situation will have resolved itself already and the BCS “Championship Game” will long have been rendered anti-climactic. Unless your team is an absolute rip-roaring dynamo all year AND is in a power conference, you can kiss your Championship game hopes goodbye. With playoffs, even if a team gets a low seeding, there’s always the potential for a post-season spurt and some surprises in the final rounds. I believe Appalachian State was seeded 5th or so in the D1-AA playoffs this year, and they still won it. And the fact that this year was the first in which all four #1 seeds made it to the men’s Final Four should tell something about how often the predicted best teams end up where they “should” (not often).

I don’t like the BCS system, either, but that’s mainly because I find it to be a Band-Aid compromise to the masses clamoring for a real playoff system in Division 1-A. I’d much rather have a computer decide on a field of potential “best teams in the country” as opposed to just two. And there’s no reason why exciting matchups couldn’t be a part of a playoff system: surely basketball brackets are set up in anticipation of potential matchups to a certain degree, why not football as well?

6

What’s so unique about college fotball? The bowls themselves? Sorry, but that’s bullshit.
The only place to decide which team can beat another is on the field, nowhere else.

I could accept a bowl system if no “national champion” was selected in any way whatsoever. The current BCS is worse than the old bowl system because it pretends to choose a champion on its own, but the method of choosing the teams playing for the championship is a total joke. As it stands, a team is selected as a champion by proving itself against a grand total of one other team.

I’ve also heard the argument the extra games qould deprive student-atheletes of class time. This is also a joke. Many football players take cupcake classes anyway, and tournaments for other sports* take away much more time from those players already than would football.

*: Every single other sport, including football at lower levels, uses a tournament to end the season. It’s 100% about money.

7

Agreed that the logic of “they are there to be students, not play football” merits nothing more than a “meh.”

I take no position on any other points of the debate. It’s just that one – and the rank hypocrisy of it – that drives me up a wall.

8

If you’re using tourism rates as one of your factors in deciding on whether or not to have playoffs, there’s automatically bound to be problems with your argument, IMHO.

9

I dunno, maybe the fact that it is the only sport in existance where each game carries an enormous amount of importance. That might have just a tiny bit to do with it’s popularity.

10

In other swords, who cares about crowning the best team. Let’s see who can win a 4-game tournament at the end of the season.

11

That’s just hilarious.

12

So you’re saying that because the schools that have the scholar-athletes have playoffs that the schools with the athlete-scholars should have playoffs, because if they can do it, why can’t the big boys do it?

The answer is school. It goes both ways. No playoffs in NCAA football, period.

13

Really, I could care less either way. Things are fine the way they are. It’s got its warts and I’d prefer to either let the compter do it or ignore rankings altogether.

14

What makes you think we’re crowning the best team now? The way the system is set up now, having an easy schedule is more important than having an elite team. (As long as you are in a “power” conference of course, if not you can forget about it.) I think most of people who want to keep the system the way it is are Ohio State fans.

15

You mean no playoffs in NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivison (formerly Division I-A). There are playoffs in the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (Formerly Division I-AA), Division II, and Division III.

16

College football has the most broken and idiotic system of any sport that receives even a minute of television coverage. That anyone can support such a cheating and broken system is beyond me. Figure skating has more legitimacy and fairness.

This is moronic. You aren’t crowning the best team now because you can’t even decide which team is the best team (emphasis on the word “decide,” since the games played on the field have little to no relevance to which team is considered best). You can hardly even decide which two teams are the best teams. Here, I’ll fix your statement for you…

“In other swords, who cares about crowning the best team, let’s see who can win a single game between an arbitrary, cherry-picked set of opponents from among a fraction of the available teams.”

Right, much better.

This is absolutely untrue, and not only so, but it is an oft-repeated talking point without any real meaning.

Of all the games played in division I college football, only a fraction of them have any importance at all. Here’s why.

Start of the season. If you aren’t in the top two or three conferences, you already lose. Thanks for (not) playing, better luck next year (or not, you’ll never have a chance, but that’s okay. “Working as intended”)! It doesn’t matter if these teams win or lose their first game, because there is no possibility these teams can even attempt to compete for the championship, even if they win all their games. None of their games have any importance.

After the first week of games, all teams who lost a game are eliminated (so their remaining games have zero importance)… unless you’re from a power conference or have a traditionally powerful program. Then it’s okay if you lose, because the early games have no importance for you either (are you following along? so far the only games that actually matter are those played by teams in power conferences WITHOUT traditionally powerful programs, that’s like twenty schools total). As everyone knows, it’s okay to lose a game at a power program, so long as you lose early. Because that’s not arbitrary…

So, now you’re left with about a dozen teams each year, after only a week of games, who are still playing meaningful games. And even then, if you’re a school like LSU or USC, your games aren’t even that important because apparently, sometimes it’s okay to even lose a second game and still get to play for the national championship, even if the rest of the Top 25 has only lost one game or none at all.

College football should just stop lying to the fans.

17

Tell that to LSU.

18

I’m a Georgia fan. The system did us no favors this year, or in years past.

19

Two or three? Do you even live in the US?

Bullshit. All they have to do is add some difficult OOC games. Penn State & FSU did it, so can everyone else.

Talk about moronic. Tell that to LSU, or OSU, or Florida, or Miami… this is boring…

Oh look, another qualifier. See the above point re OOC scheduling.

Cite? LSU didn’t have much of problem with late losses this year.

The rest of the paragraph makes no sense.
But whatever. Let’s do things the way every other college sport (the regular seasons of which nobody watches) does it. That way, we can water down the games & screw up a great sport, but we’ll have a National Champion that makes the NFL fans happy, by god.

Personally, I could give a shit.

20

I never said it was single elimination.