The Case Against The College Football Playoff

Alabama running back Derrick Henry celebrates with teammates and reporters after the College Football Playoff national championship game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Clemson Tigers earlier this year.
Alabama running back Derrick Henry celebrates with teammates and reporters after the College Football Playoff national championship game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Clemson Tigers earlier this year. Icon Sports Wire/Corbis via Getty Images
Alabama running back Derrick Henry celebrates with teammates and reporters after the College Football Playoff national championship game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Clemson Tigers earlier this year.
Alabama running back Derrick Henry celebrates with teammates and reporters after the College Football Playoff national championship game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Clemson Tigers earlier this year. Icon Sports Wire/Corbis via Getty Images

The Case Against The College Football Playoff

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For years, the NCAA longed to build a football playoff system for one simple reason: money.

Unlike basketball’s March Madness, which generated a record $1 billion in advertising revenue alone in 2013, the NCAA didn’t make a dime off the bowl system that year. Who did? TV networks, the bowl organizers and the coaches.

Well, enough of that. When NCAA president Mark Emmert announced the new four-team football playoff would start in 2014, the TV rights alone would be worth almost half a billion dollars for just three games.

So what if college football survived just fine without a playoff for 145 years — since Rutgers and Princeton played the first football game back in 1869. Year by year, they added game after game.

First, they quadrupled the number of bowl games, from 11 to 41, which require 82 teams to fill them. Now just about any team with a winning record gets to go.

Then they tacked on a 12th regular-season game, when schools play “tomato cans” like McNeese State, Norfolk State and Bethune-Cookman, all just to grab another payday.

Then they piled on conference title games, too, increasing the total games a team can play from 11 to 14 — just two shy of an NFL season.

But we need a playoff now, they told us, to determine who’s best on the field. How? Instead of picking two teams based on polls, strength of schedule and computerized rankings, now they pick four teams — based on polls, strength of schedule and computerized rankings. Problem solved. Instead of the third-ranked team complaining that it got screwed, now the fifth-place team does all the whining. Another problem solved.

Who wins? The coaches, whose compensation can actually double if they win the national title. How many coaches, faced with a star receiver who got caught plagiarizing, or a quarterback with a concussion, would have the integrity to bench those players and forfeit a $5 million payday?

I suspect very few.

And then there’s the TV ratings, the one thing everybody agreed would improve. Turns out they actually dropped dramatically in the playoffs’ second year. One reason: they stubbornly insist on scheduling the first round for New Year’s Eve. Guess what? On New Year’s Eve, even football fans have better things to do.

Sure, it’s always easier to say the old way was better. But it’s even easier when you’ve got the data to back it up.

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