Yes, College Football Needs a Playoff

In several days the University of Texas Longhorns will play the University of Alabama Crimson Tide to determine which team wears the title "National Champion" for the Football Bowl Subdivision--the big schools. The NCAA will engage in this evening of capitalistic lust knowing that they are not sure that the Longhorns are even the best team in the State of Texas. My money says Texas Christian University (TCU) is better.

If we are planning to declare one team the "National Champion" shouldn't we know if they are? The only way to declare a true national champion is by requiring them to play each other in a playoff format used in all otherNCAA sports, including the other football divisions.

The presidents of the large universities provide many excuses for not allowing a playoff but let's look at the reasons why the FBS should be the "Football Playoff Subdivision."

1. Playoffs work for the NCAA's other sports, why not the big football schools? I recently watched the Football Championship Subdivision semifinal game in Montana. It was absolutely a great football game, with the emphasis on "football". It was around zero degrees Fahrenheit, the wind was blowing hard, it was snowing and the game had the pressure of a playoff. No Football Bowl Subdivision game has the drama of the weather. No Football Bowl Subdivision game has the drama of a playoff. "Playoffs" mean a team plays its heart out to live to play again. That is drama.

2. No Picking a "Top Two". The Football Championship Subdivision uses a sixteen team playoff. Imagine if Texas, Alabama, Cincinnati, TCU, Boise State, etc were seeded and the U.S. had a major college playoff for one month. This would be football at its best. No more debate about the "top two". The only arguments and whining would be by the team rated seventeen and why they feel left out. By the second week of the playoffs, no one would remember who number seventeen was.

3. The BCS Teams Often Are NOT Deserving. Start with the 2010 National Championship. Does Texas really deserve to be in this game? No way. Even if the reader does not agree, it is a debatable proposition at best. Only a true Longhorn fan will say, "no doubt, they deserve to be there."

Look at another example. Two years ago, the Ohio State Buckeyes landed in the game against LSU due to some late upsets that threw off the BCS computers. They should not have been there. Every reader who knows college football can think of other examples. Dump the computers and bring on the playoffs.

4. Spread the Money. It's About the Money. Are you surprised? A one game championship with a month-long debate brings greater attention. Keeping the current bowl system guarantees that only the BCS conferences get the big money. That big money pays for their other sports. It is a cycle of dependency; an addiction they can not break. If we allow more teams a share of the money through a playoff system, more schools and conferences will be able to strengthen more sports. There will be high levels of cash in major college football for the foreseeable future; share it and let more schools be strengthened.

5. The BCS Guarantees that Only the Big Schools and Big Conferences Can Win and that is Not Good for College Sports. Again, look at the 2010 game. Texas beat a ho-hum Nebraska team by accident, winning the Big 12 Championship and they stumbled into the National Championship. Total joke. TCU would beat them. Maybe Florida would, too. Maybe Cincinnati, Boise State, Ohio State or Oregon.

TCU, Boise State, and Cincinnati started too far back in the polls at the beginning of the seasonto have a chance to leapfrog Texas. The polls are flawed and tilted toward the favored conferences. Every year we debate if the preseason polls should be delayed or if the initial polls should not be released until two, three or four weeks into the season. End the debate; we should delay them until well into the season, give every team the opportunity to show their worth and then do an honest ranking. The current system says a team that starts high, stays high unless they are defeated. The Cincinnati's, TCUs and Boise States will always be outside looking in unless changes come.

Of course when we begin a playoff system, polls won't matter, will they?