College Football Foolishness Redux

In January of 2017, I wrote a post regarding the NCAA College Football Championship system.  Standing here nearly two years later, little has changed.  College football is still ruled by the NCAA Carnival of Clowns who decide, in their infinite wisdom, when a good loss is superior to a bad win.  Who decide that simply because team A defeated team B in the regular season, and all other things being relatively equal, there is nothing to prevent them from deeming team B a more deserving team as far as the college championship selection is concerned.  Additionally, and most wonderful of all, they can determine that regardless of what their respective regular season won-loss records are, certain teams deserve favorable selection treatment because they are playing their best football at the end of the regular season.  How the colleges of America can continue to allow their athletic programs to be held hostage by this power-hungry band of bungling bureaucrats is simply beyond my comprehension.  It is like watching a person witness their car burning up while holding a fire extinguisher in their hands…unused.  Just in the last couple of weeks, Washington State coach Mike (the Pirate) Leach pontificated about a college football playoff possibility.  Is there no one else thinking about the absurdity of the status quo?

Once again, under the worst case scenario, the NCAA College Football Championship should be settled from a pool of not less than eight teams selected to play in a single-elimination tournament with pairings being determined by common-sense seeding.  Under the best case scenario, the NCAA will look at Dan Wetzel’s plan (coming up below) and return the college football championship back to the people who deserve it; the schools, the players, and the fans.  Now…let’s take another look at that post from January 15, 2017…

College Football Foolishness.  Any NASCAR fan has noticed a significant happening over the last few years…the crowds are shrinking.  All professional sports are contending with the newfound competition of affordable home viewing of sporting events.  High def televisions are easily affordable and when paired up with cable or satellite packages, watching the big game from home has become (for many) preferable to the stadium experience.  Even though the game-day experience is a unique and exciting process, the fact is that it has become very expensive and logistically more challenging.  There is a reason that new stadium and arena projects are focusing more on the individual fan experience rather than the number of fans the structure can accommodate.  Consistently selling out seating capacity is far preferable to impressive, but less than capacity, crowds. 

Enter the college football post-season carnival.  What is the NCAA’s response to this new viewer challenge from the world of high tech?  In all of their wisdom, how have they decided to expand and improve their area of college athletics?  Why, of course…we will expand the college bowl landscape!  And because there will not be enough teams with winning records (such a pathetically low bar to clear) to populate the ever-increasing number of bowls, we will annually allow select teams with .500 winning percentages to complete in bowl games.  Pure genius!  And now, having created this master stroke of marketing, NCAA football is right there with NASCAR; the television cameras never show the stands because they are most times sparsely occupied.  I love college football, but post-season play should return to the traditional value of representing an award for outstanding season play; not an excuse for X number of additional practices and corporate sponsors wallowing in salary and expense excesses. 

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This brings us inevitably to the NCAA college football playoff.  Perhaps I see things far too simply in black and white shades, but I continue to be astounded at the NCAA’s refusal to conduct an expanded college football playoff that will crown an annual champion, that is determined by actual plays made on the field, that will return the true excitement of the college football games to the campus where it best exists, and will once again make a conference championship something worth obtaining.  As long as a committee, or a computer program, or a combination thereof selects who is and who is not qualified to complete for the annual college football championship, there will be injustice in the process.  We need only look at the NCAA basketball tournaments for guidance.  Undeniably one of the most exciting events in sports, the NCAA basketball tournaments showcase the best of college basketball and effectively integrate the players, the students, the fans, and the media in an effective and mesmerizing blend of broadcast coverage.  Do the big name schools from the Power Five conferences usually win the tournament?  Yes, they do; but that is no reason to discount the occasional Cinderella that goes deep into the tournament with upsets and, on that rare and truly special occasion, wins the tournament outright. 

There are many who say that NCAA college football cannot logistically accomplish a tournament similar to the basketball model.  That is bull.  Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports long ago put forth the best blueprint I have seen for NCAA football championship playoff; here is your link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/college-football-playoff-plan-132100316--ncaaf.html .  In his proposal, Wetzel shatters all of the shallow and self-serving arguments put up by the vested interests (including the NCAA) that control college athletics.  THIS is how a college football champion should be decided and crowned.  With this system in place, every single regular season game will be meaningful because it will lead to the conference championship.  With this system in place, the treasure trove of dollars that postseason college football generates will go largely back to the universities that create the game; not the corporate carpetbaggers who profit from it.  With this system in place, every NCAA school that competes in football will have a real opportunity to compete for a championship on the field of play (not be arbitrarily eliminated by a committee of “chosen” men/women).  And with this system, the excitement and participation in the NCAA college football playoff will reach levels never before dreamed of and will be well-positioned to address the evolving landscape of college athletics going into the future.

Let’s put the fans back in the stands.  Let’s put the dollars back in the university budgets.  Let’s give every team a fair chance to compete for the top prize in their sport.  And most important of all, let’s get a true champion that is determined on the field of play and not as the result of NCAA Committee wrangling, dealing, and compromise.