Bill Hancock figured his newest baby would be robust. “Two and a half years ago, when we turned all of our efforts toward a playoff, we knew it was going to be big — a leap into the stratosphere,” the executive director of the College Football Playoff said Saturday, speaking just before Oregon arrived for its media-day session. “But it might even be bigger than that.”
With two semifinals in the book, the inaugural playoff is being hailed as the greatest thing since Steve Jobs’ iPhone, if not Alexander Graham Bell’s basic model. The Sugar Bowl and the Rose Bowl surprised even some ESPN executives by drawing the largest audiences in the history of cable TV. (The Sugar had 28.3 million viewers, the Rose 28.2 million.) Both semis topped the ratings of the past four BCS title games, and there’s thought that Monday’s final will attract 40 million viewers.
Understand: That would still be less than half of a Super Bowl audience, but for a sport that doesn’t have a foothold in several of our biggest cities and that had, owing to the SEC’s decade of dominance, been rendered rather regional, 40 million in Year 1 of the CFP would be a flying start.
The Wall Street Journal ran a story Friday crowning ESPN “the real winner” of the playoff. Also Friday, Steve Ginsburg of Reuters quoted Randy Grant, a college professor of economics, as saying: “I could very much see them going to eight teams next year.”
In TV as in all entertainment, nothing succeeds like excess. (How many installments of “Friday the 13th” have there been?) Still, the notion of seeing the playoff double in size by Year 2 was met by incredulity here.
Said Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens: “We’ve started to move a little faster in college football, but I don’t know that we’re ready to move that fast.”
Said Hancock: “We’re not even close. The presidents and the committee have committed to 12 years and four teams. They did that for a reason: With the BCS, every four years it was time to talk about the format. That got tiresome … The contract (with ESPN) is for 12 years. There’s no talk about expansion.”
But what if the Worldwide Leader, giddy over ratings and the thought of doubling the ad revenue with a set of quarterfinals, would come to the conference commissioners and the CFP and say, “Let’s talk about breaking that contract and minting even more money”?
Hancock: “It won’t come from (ESPN).”
Even if everyone wanted a eight-team field for next season, the logistics would be a jumble. Would the four non-playoff bowls of the New Year’s Six be moved to dates before Christmas? (Can’t play quarterfinals and semis on the same two days in six different cities, at least not in this sport.) The CFP committee knew what it was doing when it decided to go with four teams. As Hancock said: “The quarterfinals would have to be on campus. Someone’s bowl trip would be a Friday night game in Norman, Okla.”
As for those who are crying for a change in a system that hasn’t yet crowned its first champion, Hancock said: “Those would fall into two groups — the people who just want more football and those who want less disappointment over being left out (of the playoff).”
Granted, we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. But the playoff has been so warmly received from sea to shining sea — it hasn’t hurt that Disney, which owns ESPN, has lent a marketing hand — that we tend to forget whence it came: Only three years ago, the national championship pairing was Alabama versus LSU, a match that delighted nobody outside the SEC.
The BCS, which admittedly was charged with trying to make a silk purse out of a smelly undershirt, could do only so much. Hancock was previously the BCS executive director, which once called for him to make the argument that a playoff wasn’t needed. Asked how he squares that stance with this, he smiled and said: “This happened when it needed to happen. Times change; people change.”
Two games in, it’s clear that change has been for the better. Said Mullens: “This is the best of both worlds. The Rose Bowl experience is still sacred to us at Oregon, and we had the added experience of the semifinal. This (championship game) feels a little less like a (college) bowl experience than the Super Bowl.”
Said Oregon linebacker Tony Washington: “It definitely feels like a playoff. When we won the Rose Bowl, we got to enjoy it for a night. Before, when you’d win the Rose Bowl, the season’s over.”
Ohio State safety Vonn Bell, who played at Ridgeland High in Rossville: “We won the first game, and the next one is even bigger. Being in the national championship will be one of the biggest games ever.”
Mullens: “We’re a part of history.”
We leave the last word to Hancock, who knows whereof he speaks. “There was such excitement with the BCS,” he said, “but not this excitement.”
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