College Football: Dissension in the Ranks

Copyright © 1998 by John P. Monahan. All rights reserved.

At the conclusion of last year's college football season, two Division-I schools could say "We're #1!" That's because the championship is decided by taking polls, and the two major groups polled (sportswriters and coaches) came to different conclusions about the top rankings. Since both teams were undefeated, there's no objective way to say which was better. A coalition of bowl games was formed a few years ago in order to match the top two teams, but contractual commitments foiled the coalition's plans this year. The situation improves next year; however, there is still no guarantee that the coalition will be able to identify two (and only two) teams that are clearly superior to the others.

As indicated in a previous column, I believe winning is overemphasized in amateur sports. It would be nice if university teams could play just for the joy of competition. But obviously that's not currently the case; and as long as fans clamor for a national champion, it makes sense to decide it on the field rather than in opinion polls. All other collegiate sports use a playoff or tournament system (as does football at the lower divisions). Besides, the polls tend to encourage less sportsmanlike aspects of competition, such as running up the score on an outclassed opponent just to impress a few more voters.

The main objections to a playoff come from educators and from bowl game sponsors. Especially at the Division I level, it takes at least a week to prepare for each game. Teams already play an 11 or 12 game schedule, during which football players have little time for studying. Faculty members don't want that period extended by several more weeks for a playoff. Bowl game sponsors have a more prosaic objection: they anticipate that playoff games would detract from their product, leading to lower attendance and TV ratings.

Since there are already many proposals for how to run a college football playoff, I'll add my two cents. First, to meet the educators' objections, a playoff system should replace some of the scheduled games rather than adding to them. Second, the playoffs should make use of bowls where practical, and create the possibility of interesting matchups to support the others. Here's my idea of how this might work:

• After the second weekend in November, an NCAA selection committee would choose 32 schools to be seeded into the playoffs. The first round would be held the following Saturday at the home fields of the top 16 seeded teams, preempting any games those schools had originally scheduled. (Teams left without opponents by this preemption could arrange to play each other, leading to some not-often-seen regional battles.)
• Losers of playoff games would resume their normal schedules, while the winners would advance. After three rounds there would be four teams still in contention.
• About mid-December, the four teams would play semifinal games at neutral sites. Two of the less-established bowls would be selected to host these games. If (as seems likely) there were more than two willing hosts, a rotation would be established over several years.
• On New Year's Day, two of the major bowls (again established by rotation) would host games to determine first through fourth place, matching the winners and the losers, respectively, of the mid-December games. Other bowls would have ample time to match up high-ranked teams who lost out in the earlier playoff rounds, or to reunite teams whose traditional rivalries were preempted. (For instance, if UCLA last year had won one or two playoff games, it would not have been able to play USC. A bowl in the Southwest might well have paired those two teams as a crowd-pleasing attraction.)