special guest post by Dano “Coastal Duck” Dunn
[Editor’s note: College football fans from the President of the United States on down have weighed in for a playoff in Division One football, but the sport’s fat cats have resisted. This year, Duck fans, faced with the prospect of beign shut out of the big prize despite one loss on the road at the beginning of the season to a top-rated team, are particularly motivated to join the groundswell: end the SEC’s grip on BCS positioning; let’s settle this on the field.But there are problems with a playoff, and “Coastal Duck” does a good job of raising some of the critical unanswered questions here.
Mr. Dunn is an avid Duck fan and frequent contributor to The Duck Stops in the Livefyre comments section.]
(photo left) King of the hill, top of the heap: Les Miles doesn’t see anything wrong with the current playoff system, at least not yet. But around the country, fans of a dozen different schools think they deserve a crack at The Hat and his Tigers.
Let’s explore the playoff – WAY too many questions to be answered first.
What format? – Plus one? Start with 8? 16?
What of the Bowl system in place currently? Does a loser in the playoff still get to go to a Bowl?
Lower divisional playoffs begin in late November of December and are done by the first of the year – they also typically play only 10 regular season games – do you ask a BCS program to scale back to 10 games and lose critical revenue generated by those two lost games, especially if you don’t get a home game during the playoffs? How about the teams that don’t make the playoffs – do they still only get 10 games?
How is home field determined? By highest seed? There is a scenario that plays out that if you are a lower-seeded team, (given a 16-team bracket) where, say, you would play and win your away game —
Now that you are a low seed, you get to go on the road again. Maybe you win again. Now, in the round of 4, you have to travel again – 3 weeks in a row to get to the championship game through various times zones, losing a day of practice to travel before the game and after the game – is that fair?
What of the wear and tear on the athletes? What about classroom/exam issues? Does semester vs. quarter system come into play? These are STUDENT-athletes, after all.
How about this from the voyeur entourage – As an avid fan and supporter of your team, can you afford to take off work three weeks in a row? What about travel accommodations? Physical wear-and-tear? Luggage (don’t go there)? The playoffs SHOULD facilitate each team’s respective season ticket holders, the meat-and-potatoes of team support, should they not?
MOST people can’t go out of town 3 weeks in a row. And these are the same people who provide the over-the-top atmosphere in their respective stadiums.
So, doesn’t this make the well-heeled supporters the only people capable of traveling with their teams – think about the time off work for the average guy (and team fanatic) – does he hope his team makes it to the NC game and not go to any of the preliminary games? Does he cop an attitude that his team is likely one-and-done and splurge on the first game only?
I have a theory and it says that the decibel level generated by any individual game-goer is inversely proportional to the size of one’s bank account. Ergo, the more games your team continues to win, the quieter your rooting section becomes.
More questions –
What about the distribution of talent – do we reduce the number of scholarships from 85 to say 70, so that teams such as Wazzu, Vandy, SMU and other have-nots get a chance to compete on a level playing field or do you just cede the playoffs to the same good ol’ boys network that has been in place forever?
If you don’t reduce skollies, why not just create a super conference of say USC and UCLA from the west, Ohio St. and Michigan from the midwest, Texas and Oklahoma from the southwest and Florida and LSU from the southeast to play among themselves for the NC and screw everybody else who attempts to crash the party?
No – a playoff, without further scholarship limitations, merely creates a caste system where all the five-star and four-star guys would gravitate to a school sure to be included in the playoff system.
Which brings up, “Where do you think Oregon and Oregon State would be right now if scholarships were still at 105 and the Nebraskas of the college football world were just stockpiling talent?”
Tacitly unfair.
(Breath)
What are some of my other concerns – why not a playoff?
Basketball has often been linked to a “real” National Champion. They have 65 teams; winners stay, losers go home.
Consider that College Football is far more physical than Basketball and requires a week between games for some R&R. Basketball can get two games in, in a weekend. Playoffs take only three weekends to complete.
Okay, what about injuries? These young men are elite athletes that have “Sunday” written all over them. These guys are ALL willing to play as many games as it takes to declare themselves “champ.” What may be in the back of their minds is “Four more games (in a 16-teamer) against the nation’s best teams – 330-pounders and all – I hope I don’t get hurt and blow a $multi-million payday.”
Or suppose, at the end of Game 1 (your erstwhile Bowl Game), what happens when your star QB or RB or DT goes down – what are your chances you can continue to roll without those stars (depth doesn’t cover the psychological issues of being without your leaders and producers)?
After a Bowl Game, the season is over. Injured players have a few months to rehab before getting back into actions. Not so if you are in a playoff. Your hopes for a shot at the NC are pretty much danglin’ loose and to the left.
There is a scenario that has the visiting team winning and traveling again the next week and the week after that, through various times zones, losing a day to travel before the game – is that fair? What of the wear and tear on the athletes? What about classroom/exam issues? These are STUDENT-athletes, after all.
How about motel and travel accommodations that have to be arranged? If you can’t get in on a package deal through your university, this can become an ordeal rather than a leisurely 4-day vacation.
And of the Athletic Department’s attempt to put together 3 travel packages in 3 weeks – how strapped and overworked (read “possible screwup of arrangements due to fatigue”) is the staff going to be?
If a home team lucks out and gets, say, 3 home games in 3 weeks, how is a grass field (the Swamp, et al.) going to hold up if you are predominately a running team chewing up turf at a time of year when grass doesn’t come back to life like it does in September?
A “Plus One” platform might work but first-round games would have to be played on the same day with the NC game played two weeks later.
What happens to the wildly popular Bowl system? Now you have 32 (?) happy teams going into the off-season.
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Bottom line is that there remains WAY too many questions before a playoff becomes a reality – and a playoff wouldn’t be for the players – it would only be for those with money who need an ego massage.
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