Over the last few years, I've heard several excuses for why a playoff system either can't work, or can't happen in FBS. I find all of those excuses to be weak, and explain why.
Excuse #1: Student-atlethes need time to study for exams.
Really? We're concerned about this now? This is an excuse I've heard from university presidents and other high ranking officials. Regardless of a football player's classload, this excuse seems incredibly hypocritical in light of what else we see go on in the world of college sports.
Exhibit A: The FCS. I would dare say the schools down in that subdivision are a little more concerned about academics than schools in the FBS. Or at least, it might be safer to say that football and sports has less emphasis at those schools. Yet, FCS teams that make the playoffs play all through December. I believe their championship is usually the weekend before Christmas. Bowl games are usually just starting that weekend, with most of the major ones during the Christmas break.
In summary, FCS playoffs are going on the entirety of exam weeks, while FBS bowls usually start after school is out for the holidays.
Exhibit B: The NCAA Basketball Tournament, which a lot of people like to argue is the greatest playoff system ever. Those players pretty much have to miss the entire month of March to play in those games. I know that's not exam time, but it's still a significant chunk of classtime. And what about all of these mini-tournaments going on right now in Maui and other island locations? Just because it's not during exam time doesn't mean it's not important class time. After all, exams are usually testing students on stuff they learned all semester.
Exhibit C: Thursday Night Football. These games affect the entire campus when a teams plays a home game on Thursday night. I doubt any of the football players get close to a classroom on Thursday when it's a game day. Many classes are cancelled on late Thursday, and if they're not, most students skip it anyway. But I don't see a school turning down the money that a Thursday night game generates.
I'm not saying that the fundamental statement that student-athletes need to study for exams is a bad excuse, and I don't say that we need to eliminate any of the items I presented in the Exhibits above. I just disagree that a player's exam study time is such a major concern of the people in charge.
Excuse #2: Playoffs would go on too long.
This one sounds like another hypocritical excuse to me.
Exhibit A: The regular season was expanded from 11 games to 12 in the mid-2000s.
Exhibit B: Teams that play in a conference championship game have a 13th game. (With the possible exception of UCLA this year, both of those teams still go on to a bowl game as well.)
Exhibit C: Teams that travel to play Hawaii are given an extra home game to compensate for the travel expense. In this case, if a team that eventually plays in a conference championship plays in Hawaii and then plays in a bowl game, they have played 15 games during the season.
After all of that, what is another two or three games? Since any playoff team would be going to a bowl anyway, at most they would have 2 extra games, and that's only going to be for the final two teams left.
And if we're just talking about placing the games on the calendar, playoffs can easily fit into the current bowl schedule, as long as we don't go crazy with how many teams get in. Have the first round kick off the bowl season, and then have the rest during the time that the current BCS bowls are played.
After all, President Obama thinks that three weeks is fine: Obama's NCAA Football Idea (Look at the last question.) And that's about the only thing I agree with him on.
Excuse #3: Playoffs would make the bowls go away.
This excuse boggles the mind. The BCS is the closest thing we have to a playoff, and yet there's still 30 other bowls. They didn't go away just because we put all of the top teams in the spotlight in early January. In fact, the number of bowls keeps increasing. At least fourteen bowls have been added to the schedule since the BCS started in 1998 (not counting the rotating National Championship game).
Any non-playoff bowls would still be picking from the same pool of teams that they do now after the BCS has had it's take.
Again looking over to college basketball, we have the NIT for the teams that weren't fortunately enough to get invited to the big tournament.
Excuse #4: The season won't mean as much; the entire regular season is one giant playoff.
As I stated in an earlier post, there is no way to have enough overlap during the regular season with so many teams and so few games. So the season would still matter. We might not place such an importance on going undefeated, as odds are, most teams in a playoff would have a loss or two. Wouldn't that actually put more meaning into the games of some of those teams that got off to a rough start and lost a game or two early? As it stand now, teams that lose one seriously cripple their chances of getting in until everyone else loses, and a team with two losses is just done.
The story and development of a college football team unfolds over the entire season. Teams are not the same on Thanksgiving weekend as they were back on Labor Day. Their entire body of work should be considered. And far too often in the current system, teams are noted mostly for their losses than their wins.
If a playoff system is geared primarily towards conference champions, and most conferences play 8 or 9 conference games, then wouldn't the season have more meaning as each team tries to win its conference? Granted, that is still the goal for a lot of teams, but knowing that there could be a bigger reward for their efforts would put an extra sense of importance on each game. Plus, from a fan's point of view, that random Pac-12 or ACC game could actually have implications in the national championship or playoff picture, even though both teams have a loss or two.
A college playoff would not be like pro sport playoffs. In pro sports, you have much fewer total teams. The FBS of college football has 120 teams. A playoff of 8 teams is a very small percentage, so teams will still have to be really good to get into the playoffs.
Also, we would all probably be more open to rematches. If two teams that played in the regular season met in the title game, they would have earned those spots by beating the other teams in the playoffs. It just seems that we currently only have one chance of getting teams into the title game, and we don't want to waste it on a rematch.
(Of course, I'm mostly referring to the potential LSU-Alabama rematch brewing this year. Since LSU has 14 games this season, and Alabama has 13, why waste the last one on a divisional rematch?)
Ultimately, though, the reason that the entire season matters now is because there's only 12 games for each team.
Excuse #5: But the system works now.
The system only works best when there's only two undefeated teams. But then again, that's just common sense. Whenever there are more than two undefeated teams, or only one undefeated team and several one-loss teams, there is still debate and no clear determination on who really deserves to be in the top two.
And I think the only people using this excuse is the BCS itself.
In Conclusion:
I'm still waiting to hear a legitimate excuse that would actually prevent a playoff system from being implemented.
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