Why *wasn't* there a College Football playoff?

The Game Room
1

Okay, I get that it would be very difficult to move from the bowl structure to a playoffs. College presidents, logistics, TV money, etc. That’s not my question.

My question is: why wasn’t there a playoff to begin with?

College basketball: have playoffs
College baseball: have playoffs
College hockey: have playoffs
College volleyball: have playoffs
4/5 of college football divisions: have playoffs

Division I football: let cities invite a couple of good/popular teams to their bowl game. We don’t want to crown a champion, aside from independent newspaper polls.

Why didn’t college football decide to have a playoff? Or, conversely, why did nearly every other college sport have one and not follow college football’s model?

2

I suspect that the major bowl games predated the idea of college championships tournaments.

The Rose Bowl has been played annually since 1916; the Orange, Sugar, and Sun Bowls all started in 1935. The first NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament was in 1939 (the NIT started a year earlier). The College World Series was first held in 1947. Division II football only went to a championship tournament in 1973 (prior to that, they played four regional bowls, then used a poll to determine a champion).

3

Bear in mind that the Associated Press began naming “national champions” in college football long BEFORE there were many bowl games.

In 1936, when the AP began naming a national championship team in college football, there were only a few bowl games. The Rose Bowl had been around since 1901. The Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Sun Bowl and the Cotton Bowl were brand spanking new.

Moreover, the AP made its choice BEFORE any bowl games were played, and that didn’t change until the 1970s! The bowl games were regarded as exhibition games, not as a means of determining the national champions. Indeed, Notre Dame shunned the bowl games for decades, and won several national championships WITHOUT taking part in any bowls.

So, while it’s certainly true that the popularity and profitability of today’s bowl games are a big part of the reason that the NCAA won’t adopt a playoff system, the bowls are NOT the reason that no playoff system was ever set up decades ago.

So, why was there no playoff in the 1920s or the 1930s? Presumably because a playoff would have been time-consuming and expensive. You think cross-country travel is a pain now? Try moving football teams across the country for several weekends in a row back in the 1920s!

Suppose you had an 8 game playoff featuring, oh, Army, Notre Dame, USC, Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Georgia Tech and Colorado. YOU want to coordinate that kind of railroad travel AND add 3 more weeks to the season for players who really WERE students?

Letting voters pick a mythical champion was easier than figuring out a real playoff system.

4

Interesting replies! So it appears college football was popular too early to create a playoff? By the time the other sports started using playoffs, it was too much trouble doing it for college football?

The other sports have smaller teams and arenas and are therefore easier to travel to multiple playoffs spots (much the same argument we’re having nowadays)

I know it took a while for the NFL to catch up to college football in popularity (the first Heisman winner didn’t even bother with the NFL). But by the time the NFL got big, it was easier (travelwise, etc) to do a playoff. At that time, college ball was already set in its bowl games and it was too late to change to playoff format?

Is that the basic gist?

5

Bowl games are extremely profitable for both the organizers and the teams that play in them. The major bowl games of the BCS have much at stake in ensuring that this situation remains as is. For instance, let’s say we create a playoff. Do the bowl games go away completely or do they become the playoffs? If the latter, which ones constitute the quarterfinals and semifinals, thus taking on much less actual importance? That matters, because lesser bowl games make proportionally lesser money.

The schools like it as well, no matter what they might say publicly. Even with Auburn’s BCS win this year TCU can say that Auburn never played them and they have just as much of a claim as Auburn does since the BCS shuts out schools like theirs. Auburn can tell them tough noogies and claim the title. Neither of them won or lost against each other, so each claim has equal precedence among their supporters. Those claims go away if there is a clear-cut, unquestioned champion. TCU gets alumni and booster money, a boatload of credibility, and none of the consequences of a potential loss against a “better” team.

I could care less about a playoff, it’s the disgusting corruption and seeming game-fixing that I care about. There is no legitimate excuse for the 5 Ohio State players excused for the Sugar Bowl, for example. There are countless examples of stuff like this clearly aimed at making money, which often requires the bigger draw to play well or win outright, and the NCAA is more than happy to help with that. But I digress.

6

I feel like this nation has been collectively brainwashed by the media. The college “national championship” is a arbitrary fictional thing. The AP used it as an excuse to squeeze one more sports story and sell some Monday papers in an era when sports coverage wasn’t 24/7. It was just a gimmick that a bunch of media members trotted out. It was no more valid or important than the plethora of Top 10 lists that infest sports programming today. For about 80 years the “national championship”, something voted on by people who never saw 95% of the teams in the country play, was an afterthought to the conference titles and Bowl games. It was a much better time then, the games in November mattered above all else, Rivalry week was the end-all-be-all and it was good.

Now the media has convinced people who live off ESPN that somehow forcing the square peg of a “national championship” into the round hole of college football is of paramount importance. Since ESPN makes a boatload off of the BCS and whatever would become of a future playoff I don’t blame them. I just can believe people are so gullible not to notice.

7

The NFL broke into two divisions (or conferences, it’s not clear to me which naming convention was used), and started holding a league championship game, in 1933. It really wasn’t until the 1950s that pro football really started to rival college football in popularity.

What made it “easier”, travelwise, was that the NFL was very regional in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1933, there were two teams in New York, a team in Boston, two teams in Pennsylvania, two teams in southern Ohio (Cincinnati and Portsmouth), two teams in Chicago, and a team in Wisconsin. Nothing further west than Chicago or Green Bay, nothing further south than the Ohio River. It wasn’t until 1946 that the NFL had a team west of the Mississippi (when the Rams moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles).

8

Actually this seems not to be the case any longer. ESPN makes a fortune, the bowls make out like bandits, and athletic directors get nice bonus if their team gets in a bowl. But the schools generally get soaked. For example the papajohns.com bowl “paid out” $300,000 to the teams in 2008, and charged them $400,000 in ticket guaranties and sponsorships. Then they add mandatory hotel stays at local partners, like say a minimum of 5 night stays for 500 rooms at “list rates.” Once you look at other costs, that year NC State spent $730,000 and Rutgers spent $1.2 million to get that $300,000 payout. This year UConn lost money going to the Fiesta bowl and Virginia Tech lost money going to the Orange bowl. So not even the BCS bowls actually create a profit.

The only way a team really makes money at a bowl is if a fellow conference member goes to a bowl and you don’t. That way you get a cut of the “payout” without having to pay for any of the expenses. Go Vanderbilt?

9

As kenobi_65 said, the lower divisions didn’t have a playoff system until the 1970s. So traditionally for non-pro football “playoffs” are pretty new, given the 125 or so years of football history. I also note that on the high school level, California only recently began crowning a full state champ. Wisconsin didn’t have a state playoff system until the 1970s (my dad played on some really good teams but never played for anything other than a district trophy), but my grandfather played in the Wisconsin state high school basketball championships back in the 1920s. Not sure how other states were set up though. I guess the fact that football is so violent as compared to other school sports there was always concern about the length of the season and all that, which the BCS folks still trot out as a reason for their existence.

10

Yes, because college football was so popular, there was a feeling, dating at least to the early 1900’s, that it needed to be monitored and restricted to a greater extent than other sports.

Early concerns centered around violence and brutality; later concerns (as documented in the 1929 Carnegie Report) included aggressive recruiting, subsidization, commercialization, and excessive time demands on athletes.

Partly as a result, schedules were restricted to eight games, and some schools refused to play intersectional games. Some schools such as Notre Dame even refused to play in the 1930’s bowl games.

In that environment, adding as many as three games (for an 8-team playoff) over three weeks at the end of the season would have been too much.

College basketball didn’t become popular enough to attract the same level of concern until after WWII, and other college sports still aren’t as popular. When the NCAA created an 8-team postseason basketball tournament in 1939, it flew under the radar; teams had been playing holiday tournaments for years and it didn’t seem like that big a deal. Football would have been different.

11

If they had a playoff system at least you’d know for sure who deserved all the Tostitos!

12

The other big difference between footbal land basketball is that

a) A basketball team can play two games in one weekend.
b) You can schedule multiple basketball games to be played in the same arena on the same day.

Hence, you can whittle 64 basketball teams down to 2 faster than you could get (for the sake of argument) 16 football teams whittled down to two.

13

[quote=“Omniscient, post:6, topic:567386”]

It was no more valid or important than the plethora of Top 10 lists that infest sports programming today. For about 80 years the “national championship”, something voted on by people who never saw 95% of the teams in the country play, was an afterthought to the conference titles and Bowl games. It was a much better time then, the games in November mattered above all else, Rivalry week was the end-all-be-all and it was good.
{quote]

There’s a lot of truth to this. Another aspect … for many, many years, universities didn’t think of their football teams as part of any kind of “national” conglomeration, for lack of a better term. Conference championships and bowl berths … those were the goals. Any kind of “national championship” was more of a mythical one, concocted by sportswriters to increase interest in their publications. College football teams didn’t care, at least all that much. If you won your conference, and went to one of the few bowl games in existence, you knew you were one of the best in the nation.

This drive for a playoff, a way to “decide it on the field!”, is a relatively recent development. As noted, even the lower divisions didn’t go to a playoff until the 1970s, and by that time in Division I-A, the bowl system was firmly entrenched.

I’ve said before, I personally didn’t mind when your only number 1 team was the one in the polls, and if two polls had two different teams, that just made for more interest, more discussion and more talk about college football. All good things. This mania for a playoff or a way to “prove” who’s the best is counterproductive, I think. Just my opinion … but if TCU, say, manages to beat Auburn in a Plus-One system, that only proves TCU was better that game. It doesn’t really, definitively prove TCU is the **best **team of the year. Admittedly … neither does a poll voted on by sportswriters or coaches (or assistant ADs), but that doesn’t presume to be anything it’s not.

That said … I wouldn’t mind a Plus One that much. Gives you essentially a four-team playoff, and you don’t have to change a single thing about the bowl schedule. But my life is not ruined by not knowing “how will we know who is the best team if they don’t play each other!!!111!!” either.

14

They take on much less actual importance anyway. This year’s Rose Bowl, the Granddaddy of them all, was nowhere akin to this year’s BCS Championship game. The only intrigue the game had was answering the question if a (relatively) small Christian college from Texas could compete with a behemoth from the Big Ten.

I’m pretty sure every player, coach, and administrator at TCU would rather have played Auburn instead of pretending they are champions by default due to exclusion.

15

Really, what great tragedy do you envision if college football players played four extra games (with a 16-team playoff; and only two teams would play four extra games) from the end of November to the beginning of January? They sit and rot otherwise. 1AA and below have playoffs and the championship participants often end up playing 14-15 games. 1A could revert to an 11 game schedule (drop the meaningless, early season game against Rhode Island) and still have a manageable schedule. Classes, finals, and holiday time with the family isn’t an excuse because most other collegiate sports play during that time.

16

Omniscient, all I can say is that if the only people pushing for a playoff are “the media”, I’d love to know how ESPN influenced Joe Paterno to call for a playoff in the 1960’s.

There has been a movement for a playoff system since before you and I were born. What’s influencing it is nothing different than what influenced it in the 1960’s: a non-playoff system is great for the “haves” of the college football world, but not so great for the “have-nots”. The only thing that’s changed is the identity of the haves and the have-nots.

17

I DON’T see a “tragedy,” and I’ve long been on record as wanting a playoff.

I was simply offering one of the reasons that the NCAA and NIT basketball tournaments were established successfully in the 1940s, while no similar football playoff system was set up. PART of the reason is that basketball teams can play two games in a weekend, while football teams can’t. Another PART of the reason is that it’s possible to schedule several basketball games back-to-back in one arena on the same day. That’s not possible with football.

It’s also worth noting that a college football season USED to be a lot shorter than it is now. The University of Minnesota once won a national championship in football by going just 8-0.

When a season was just 8 games long, can you see why adding another 4 weeks of playoffs might have seemed excessive?

Today, of course, many teams play 12 game regular seasons, followed by a conference championship game and a bowl game. So, today it seems absurd when an athletic director, coach, or NCAA official says, “We can’t have a playoff- the season would be too long.” But that was a plausible argument in the Thirties and Forties.

18

I didn’t mean you specifically. It was a broad-spectrum appeal to those who oppose, seemingly without warrant, a college football–err, a 1A college football–playoff.

19

It might be a bit challenging, but I don’t think it’d be impossible. Here in Illinois, the high school football championships (for which I believe there are 8 divisions) are all held in one stadium (the University of Illinois’ stadium in Champaign) over the course of 2 days. Granted, the size of the crowds isn’t as large, but I strongly suspect you could do a big college football game at 11am or noon, and another at 7 or 8pm, in the same stadium.