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Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Sorry, Mr. President. There will not be an eight-team playoff
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So President elect Barack Obama says he wants to “throw his weight around” for the purpose of getting an eight-team playoff to determine Division I-A football’s national championship. All I can say is: Good luck, Mr. President.
That’s because the President elect is getting ready to find out something many of us in the college football business have known for a long time: Finding solutions to a bad economy, health care, and war around the world will be a snap compared to getting the college football powers that be to move toward a playoff.
Let’s set aside the issue of whether or not this should be a concern for the future president of the United States. If the President elect thinks Congress is a tough bunch to deal with, wait until he comes head to head with the BCS commissioners.
Fans have long been clamoring for some kind of playoff to replace the current BCS system. But here is the reality:
The BCS commissioners met last April in South Florida and at that time SEC commissioner Mike Slive proposed a new “Plus-One” format. It was essentially a four-team playoff where the teams would be seeded 1-4. No. 1 would play No. 4 and No. 2 would play No. 3 in two designated bowls on or about Jan. 1. The two winners would advance to the BCS national championship about a week later. Slive and ACC commissioner John Swofford supported the idea. The other commissioners did not.
The current BCS contract with Fox Sports has two more years to run. The BCS is in the final stages of signing a deal with ESPN to broadcast the games through the 2013 regular season. That means the current format will stay in place for the next six years and the next serious discussion on changing it won’t take place until four years from now.
Here is what I believe will happen. ESPN is going to pay a pretty penny, about $125 million a year, to get the BCS back from FOX for 2010-2013. At the end of that contract everybody involved in the process, including the Rose Bowl, will be looking for a new deal. That’s when change could come. Several networks will be bidding for the rights and will throw an astronomical amount of money on the table in order to get a format change.
Understand that Slive put the Plus-One model on the table last April pretty much knowing that it would be shot down. The idea was to get the idea into the public domain so that we can talk about it. Slive was just setting the table for the big negotiations which will take place four years from now. ESPN has the clout to get the format changed. But the commissioners are going to make sure they pay for it with the biggest contract in the history of college sports.
Going from what we have now to an eight-team playoff would be a radical change with all kinds of unintended consequences. Would the fans like it? I’m sure they would. But here is another reality: While the fans are a very important component of college football, they are not the only component.
The powers that be are not going to do anything that would hurt the regular season. CBS and ESPN, for example, will invest $3 billion into SEC football over the next 15 years. They are not going to do anything to hurt that investment.
College football has the healthiest regular season of any sport except the NFL. Attendance is at an all time high. Television ratings are off the charts. Schools have invested billions in stadium and facility improvements. They are not going to put that at risk.
I came out of the April BCS meetings believing that a Plus-One model was possible in 2014. I still do. But an eight-team playoff? Sorry, Mr. President. Even if you serve two terms, it won’t happen under your watch.
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