Yeah, I'm going to try to tackle (hah) a college football playoff system. Division 1 (and by Division 1 I'm referring to FBS) college football is the only sport I can think of that crowns its champion based on opinion, and not strictly on performance. The major professional sports all have playoff systems. So do all levels of college sports - March Madness, the Frozen Four, FCS, DII, and DIII football, soccer. They all have a postseason tournament (or event, in the case of swimming, track, etc.) that allows athletes and teams to prove themselves on the field (or diamond, or pool). All of them except perhaps the most high-profile sport, football, in which we repeatedly endure a season-long discussion on who's the best, who should be ranked number one, who should play for the national championship. Things get ugly when we have to watch teams who should be given a shot denied that chance based on strength of schedule, expectations, or any other number of factors that aren't controlled by the team itself.
Sports are competitive. They are also meant to be played on a fair level, everyone playing by the same set of rules, so that we can determine who the best teams or athletes are. That is why the most popular format of a lengthy regular season followed by a tournament has become so ubiquitous. After a long stretch of games, we have an idea who the best teams are, but the tournaments after the regular season show us who's the best when it counts the most. And in the end, this is what we value highest in our sports-loving society. There's a reason that people like Michael Jordan, Mariano Rivera, Tom Brady, Mark Messier, and others like them are celebrated, while others with similar skills and accomplishments but lacking those championships or rings are forgotten or leave us feeling as if their careers are incomplete. We value winners, but we also consider what they won. You win a title when you win the postseason tournament, not when you finish the regular season with the best record. That's just how we evaluate sports and the athletes and teams who play them.
Without this level field though, without the teams themselves determining on the field who is the best, we are left in a place without what many would call a "true champion," in a place with a team or athlete who wins a title without going through the steps we expect and want to see. This is very much the place we find ourselves at with Division 1 college football. At the end of a regular season, which is shorter than almost any regular season in any other popular sport, we pick two teams to faceoff in a championship game. These teams don't arrive at the championship game by defeating all in their path in a tournament. It's almost as if the college football season is a combination regular-post-season, as the teams play a predetermined schedule, but unless they are almost perfect, they cannot make it to the championship. In some cases, teams that ARE perfect don't even get that chance.
This needs to be addressed, it needs to be rectified. There is no logical reason for the NCAA to continue to award championships to teams in the current format. If we are to take D1 college football seriously, and give it the time it deserves, we need to know that we are watching a sport that rewards its best team with a title. We don't know that now. The solution is, of course, a playoff system.
The main argument against a playoff (besides that it will hamper the athlete's in-class performance which I shouldn't have to but will address) is that it will diminish the importance of the regular season. This is not necessarily true. Yes, you may be able to win a championship with a less-than-stellar record if a playoff were implemented. But in no other sport does the regular season champ get a free pass to the finals. And in my playoff format, performance in the regular season will be highly important in terms of playoff berths and seeding.
March Madness is a gigantic event in the world of sports every year, and I'd love to see football take a lot of its ideas and implement them in order to have a fun, entertaining, and effective tournament of their own. Here's the basic rundown of how I'd like to see this work out. The playoff tournament would have 16 teams. All conference champions get an automatic bid into the playoff, just like in March Madness. This rewards teams for playing well within their conference, and adds importance to Conference Championship games. This also means every single school has a shot to get in, which also means they have a shot, regardless of how unlikely, to win the championship. Right now, teams like Buffalo, FAU, Utah State, can't realistically enter a season with championship aspirations. And though their talent level may suggest that even with a playoff they shouldn't be able to win, they could sneak into the playoffs as an unlikely conference champion, and put together a run to get them closer than they'd even have a shot at in the current system.
This gives us, as of this posting, 11 entries into the playoff. That leaves us with five more spots for at-large teams who did not win their conference. This allows room for the big-name programs in highly competitive conferences to gain entry into the tournament as well. While that may seem like a small number, it's much better than the current opportunity given to those teams: be perfect or you're out.
So we have 16 teams, 11 auto-qualifiers and five at-large bids. These five teams can be determined by a selection committee as in the college basketball playoffs. The committee could also be given the task of seeding the teams appropriately. Once we have our matchups, we then can determine where they would play.
Many of the playoff pleas I've read incorporate the current bowl games in the formula, holding each playoff game at a different Bowl venue through the tournament. I can see why this would be desirable, as it may ease the transition to a playoff system, but I don't agree it would be the best option we have.
There's not much like being at a college football stadium on gameday. The tailgating, revelry, alumni, students, fans, band. It's a great experience, and it's one of the things that makes college football so great. This should be embraced and harnessed, not ignored. The current bowl format places teams from all over the country in strange, unfamiliar locations in front of a crowd that a) probably has no real rooting interest in either team, b) probably has never seen them play before, and c) most likely got their tickets from their company or on business in some way. Rarely do we see an overwhelming contingent of fans filling a stadium 2,000 miles from their campus to root on their favorite teams, and this is most glaring during the non-BCS bowl games. It's a shame, really, and there's a really easy way to fix this problem in a playoff.
The top eight seeds in the playoffs are awarded home field advantage, and the higher seed in each matchup continues to have home field advantage throughout the playoffs. Seeing teams like Michigan, Texas, USC playing a playoff game at their own stadium would be quite the event, and surely would add to the excitement and feel of the game itself. Much better than the current system, from both the team and fan perspective. This would almost guarantee sellouts for postseason games. Imagine seeing Auburn or LSU trot out in The Big House, or Happy Valley, sliding all over the place in the snow in December or January. Now that's home-field advantage, and that's what you play for. We can even split the gate between teams so the smaller schools who get in and have to travel to SEC or Big 10 stadiums still have a financial incentive for making the postseason tournament, as they do for making bowl games now. We wouldn't even have to eliminate the bowl games entirely. They could continue to exist as a source of revenue and competition for schools who didn't qualify for the postseason tournament, acting similarly to the NIT in college basketball.
For the championship game, there's a couple ways we could go. We could have the higher seed host, or play it at a neutral site. We could even rotate the host as they do now, and as they do for the Super Bowl. Fans will travel to see their team win a title, this we know, and they will especially do so if it's in a fun city. For this reason, I would say we should host it in the warm weather, rotating between Southern California, Dallas, New Orleans, and Miami, or something similar to that. Those areas know how to host a party, and have proven they can do it well with championship sports. There's no reason not to allow them to do the same with college football.
So my proposed plan would be a 16-team tournament that includes the 11 conference champions and five at-large teams chosen by a Selection Committee, who would seed the field as well. All games would be played at the home field of the higher seed (or their desired field, such as a nearby NFL stadium), except for the championship, which will be played at a neutral site to be chosen from a rotation. The two best parts of this plan would be that the championship is decided on the field, and small-conference teams with stellar records would no longer be left out of the competition. I don't see any reason why something like this isn't in place now, and why it couldn't be implemented. We need a college football playoff to determine our true champion. Let's get it done, NCAA.
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