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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Would a playoff hurt the regular season?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hollywood, Fla.-One of the things conference commissioners get paid to do is drill beneath the surface of ideas to find out what the real short-term and long-term impact will be. Many times what looks like a good idea on the surface is filled with unintended consequences that don’t become apparent until much later.
Such an idea is a four-team playoff for college football, which will be discussed by the BCS commissioners here on Wednesday morning.
On the surface a four-team playoff looks like a no-brainer: Pick four teams instead of the current two. Let 1 play 4 and 2 play 3 in the semifinals. A week or so later you have a national championship game. Use the current bowl structure and the current calendar. Nobody gets hurt. Everybody makes money. The fans get something new.
So what’s the problem?
Based on private conversations I’ve had with some commissioners, here is the one big problem that concerns them. If you could guarantee that a four-team playoff would never grow into eight or 16 teams, then you could probably get a consensus among the commissioners to go for it. The Big Ten and Pac-10 wouldn’t like it, but you could probably get them on board.
But you can’t make that guarantee. The playoff would grow. Remember that the NCAA men’s basketball tournament began with eight teams. Now it’s 65.
And if the playoff grows, then it becomes the focal point of college football and the regular season, which is the best of any sport, runs the risk of being diminished.
One commissioner pointed out to me that college basketball has basically become a three-week sport. It’s all about the NCAA Tournament. They see interest in the regular season literally dying on the vine. He pointed out that there is really only one marquee regular season game that is national Must-See TV game: Duke-North Carolina.
Football, however, is full of “premium” regular-season games that draw huge audiences: Ohio State-Michigan, Alabama-Auburn, Georgia-Florida, Texas-Oklahoma.
Basketball and football are just so different. When Gardner-Webb beats Kentucky in basketball in November, it is an interesting story. When Appalachian State beats Michigan in football in September, we know that it probably cost the Wolverines a chance for the national championship. In college football EVERY regular season game matters. The commissioners do not want to lose that drama because, frankly, it is worth a lot of money.
And there is not going to be a multi-level playoff in college football without cutting back on the regular season. The presidents won’t allow it. People say we can just do away with the 12th regular season game. Tell that to the athletics directors who need the money just to break even on their budgets.
Conference championship games certainly aren’t going away. The SEC championship game not only provides a $1 million to each of the league’s 12 schools, it is a great celebration at the end of the regular season.
Yes, there is a lot of money to be made in the post-season but no one wants to put the regular season at risk. A lot more schools are invested in the regular season than in the post-season.
Here is what the powers that be in college football won’t tell you. Listening to the wants and needs of the fans—many of whom want a playoff—is important. But at the end of the day fans are not the only constituency in college football who must be heard and who must be taken into consideration. Fans will complain about the lack of a playoff, which they have been doing for a long time. But they are still going to fill the stadiums and they are still going to watch. The 2007 season proved that.
That’s why there will be no change in the BCS format in the short-term.
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