My Two Cents

Tis the season

As we rapidly approach Christmas our minds become attuned to one thing . . . no, I know what you are thinking and no, that’s not it. This is a sports blog and I’m not thinking about what to get my friends and family for Christmas. I’m thinking, NFL Playoffs. What a great time of year. We’ve started preparing for this late in the summer as we set up our fantasy football leagues and researched countless hours of data in order to draft the ultimate team. We’ve sat in front of our televisions every Sunday for more hours than most people spend in the church of choice. We’ve followed our team as well as those players who happen to be on our fantasy team this year and we’ve even found ourselves cheering for hated franchises such as the Denver Broncos because Jay Cutler or Brandon Marshall happen to headline your team this year.

I look forward to the kickoff of the NFL every year. I read blogs and articles all through the off-season about this fact and that news story as it relates to the NFL. Then the playoffs come and what you’ve hung on for all season long finally arrives and brings with it a renewed dedication to the sport we all love.

Why can’t college football see the bigger picture? The BCS pundits claim that longer seasons would risk injuring players, ruin the need of the regular season, blah blah blah. The reality is that the lower division teams (high school as well) can play as many as 18 games in a season by playing all the way through the championship game. The NFL plays more. The reality is that a playoff system, similar to what lower division NCAA leagues play in would enhance the need for the regular season.

There have been many playoff formats that have been proposed for college football but I think the one I like most is a 16-team playoff. 16 teams allows for each conference (11) that competes in D-I football to field its champion in the playoff. The remaining five can be “at-large” selected by a committee as is currently done in the basketball community so that good teams, such as Texas Christian, Ohio State, and the runners-up in the SEC, Big 12, and Pac-10 conferences this year could also be rewarded for very good seasons.

To ensure the regular season continues to maintain its level of importance, the first three rounds could be played on the home field of the higher seeded team, thus rankings such as the AP, USAToday, and the BCS would maintain their validity in ranking the teams. Only the final championship game would be played on a neutral site, rotating year after year to a different site much like the Super Bowl does now. Revenues would be returned to the universities, to the NCAA; tradition and passion would return to the stadiums across the country instead of shipping teams half way across the country to a neutral stadium where most fans are not fans of the teams playing. And we all know that followers of this blog are known for their passion for sports, so this would be a welcome change to be able to see the Utes this year hosting a team of Ohio States history and caliber come to Rice-Eccles.

It is time for college football to wake up and smell the bigger picture. Most years a higher seeded team would win against a lower seeded team at home but there are years you would also see a Boise State upset an Oklahoma. Fans would tune in to watch the potential for the big upset. It is documented that viewership of the college football “postseason” increased with the introduction of the BCS model and it would increase even more with a playoff system in place.