In Search of Good Times

Thank you, Mountain West Conference. For the first time, one of the bodies outside of college football’s Big Six has brought forward a working proposal for a playoff system in college football.

At the same time, MWC, good luck getting anything accomplished.

It is true to anyone who looks at the situation objectively that the only way to crown a true champion in college football is through a playoff on the field – the same way they do in every other division of college football, and the same way they do throughout the rest of collegiate athletics. You would be hard pressed to find a better example of this than this year’s Utah Utes. Despite going through the regular season undefeated (and being the only team in the nation to do so), the Utes had no realistic chance of finishing in one of the top two spots in last year’s BCS. After crushing SEC runner-up Alabama in the Sugar Bowl (practically an Alabama home game, by the way), they still finished second in both polls.

That led to this proposal from the MWC, one that would give schools like Utah the same kinds of opportunites that Florida and Oklahoma, the two teams that played in this year’s title game, get on a yearly basis. To any sane person, this makes perfect sense – who wouldn’t be interested in seeing a level-playing field for everyone in the sport? Unfortunately for fans of college football, university presidents, by and large, don’t tend to act like sane people.

So we find ourselves in this current situation, where roughly half the teams in college football’s top division control seemingly 95 percent of the power and revenues. This, of course, prevents the other half of the sport from ever getting close to them – a perfect spot for the haves and an untenable spot for the have-nots.

The galling thing about the situation is the potential benefits for everyone involved if a playoff format was instituted in college football. By having the first round of an eight-team playofff spread over New Year’s Day and Jan. 2, college football could have New Year’s Day games that truly matter once again – something many of the sport’s purists complain about now that the national championship game is played a week later. For the bowls themselves, which currently get one game a year, a playoff system would give them an opportunity to host multiple games and, in the process, rake in tons of money. Finally, and most importantly to the member schools themselves, they would each make a great deal more money. As big as the BCS has become, the money generated by a college football playoff would be astronomic.

But, in the end, as it has been for some time now, the real reason this isn’t going to happen is because of three factors, the same three factors that always seem to limit progress in college football: the Rose Bowl, the Big Ten and the Pac-10.

For years, these three groups have inexplicably dominated the college football landscape. To the detriment of the other four conferences – and the other three bowl games – these three have run roughshod over everyone else. The Rose Bowl gets the best time-slot each year, mid-afternoon on New Year’s Day, and the Big Ten and Pac-10, more often than not, find their ways into the game, even when they don’t deserve to be there (for example, Illinois in 2008).

Until the other bowls and conferences within the BCS structure stand up to these three and force them to work in the best interest of all parties involved, there is no chance that same group is going to help anyone currently on the outside looking in – like the MWC, and the other non-BCS conferences.

Hopefully that day comes soon. In the meantime, I won’t be holding my breath.