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I was probably the only human being in the world who sulked when it was announced that College Football was getting a playoff.
I hated it.
To me, the beauty of college football is that EVERY GAME is a playoff game. In the old system, if you lost once, you’re weren’t 100 percent out the dance, but you’re pretty damned close.
If you lost twice, it’s game over – time to prepare for next year.
But I’m also a realist, and I know that now that the playoff is here, it’s never going to go away, so we might as well make the system as fair as possible for the greatest number of teams around the country.
With that said, I don’t think the system in place currently is worth its salts.
There are quite a few tweaks that could and should be made to take the sport to the next level.
Simply put, I hate that conference championships just don’t matter anymore in the sport.
Anyone who’s ever played college football will tell you that the No. 1 goal of every, single team in the country is to win a conference title.
Literally every, single team – Alabama included – eyes winning their league as the primary goal of the season. From there, the top programs piece together more ambitious goals like prized bowl games and possible bids at championships.
But the College Football Playoff committee doesn’t have the same regard for conference champs like head coaches and the fans do.
Instead, the current system actually finds a way to reward teams for not winning their league – or even their respective divisions within a league.
See also: Ohio State.
The Buckeyes are going to the playoffs again this year, thanks to an 11-win season under storied coach Urban Meyer.
There’s no question the Buckeyes are really, really good.
This isn’t intended to be a knock at Ohio State, nor its fans.
But it is what it is.
The Buckeyes didn’t win their division of the Big 10. For my dollar, that should disqualify them from making the postseason in its current, four-team format.
How can one say with a straight face that a team that the trophy-less Buckeyes deserve their playoff bid more than others who reached the pinnacle of their league, but got left out?
How can we put teams like Clemson or Washington at risk by playing a 13th game, but reward Ohio State for not earning that same right, allowing them to rest at home, while throwing them a cookie?
It’s bogus.
It’s corrupt.
It’s … exactly what I’d expect out of college football – a sport that’s allowed one, new-fangled, corrupt system after another decide how to crown its champion.
To me, this is a pretty easy fix.
There are two ways that the sport can fix itself, and they’re both pretty feasible.
To me, system one is the best one – a four-team playoff that pits the four best conference champions against one another in a four-team playoff bracket.
The benefits of this system are multi-tiered, and it’s fun for everyone who loves college football.
For starters, I love the idea of making non-conference games less important in terms of playoff seeding and positioning.
This would allow LSU and others to play several big-time, high-stakes games early in the season without fear. The games would be tune-ups before conference and would be pleasing to fans.
In the current system, games that happened on Sept. 1 hold weight in deciding the best team on January 1 – a process that eliminates 80 percent of teams from contention before October.
That’s stupid.
This system would fix that and make winning league titles significant again, which they always should have been anyway.
But, like any good negotiator, I’m willing to compromise.
In addition to the four conference champions, I’m even willing to expand to a six-team playoff that hosts the four top conference champions, in addition to two wildcards chosen from the pool of the best non-conference championship-winning teams.
In this system, it would welcome teams like Ohio State this year or Alabama in 2011 – those rare, dominant teams that don’t win their leagues, but yet are still worthy of competing in the biggest games.
Look, it’s not that I’m against those teams competing for the top prize. It happens in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament all of the time.
I’m just against those teams getting the open-door invite over teams who have championship-winning seasons.
If we can find a way to welcome them both into the fray without watering down the sanctity of the college football season, then I’d be OK with that, as well.
Whatever it is, something has to be done, because what’s in place right now smells like a fish – just like the BCS did.
And, we, the fans of the sport, deserve something that smells much, much better than that – especially when there are realistic, feasible fixes that can be made.
Follow Casey on Twitter for more.
https://twitter.com/casey_gisclair
