By Brian Harbach

The Problem
To be completely honest, I hate the idea of a college football playoff. I hate the idea of turning Appalachian State vs. Michigan into a preseason game with no significance, I hate the fact that rivalry games will become week 17 of the NFL and I hate the fact that no one agrees with me. Since I have done my best to convince family and friends that my opinion is the right one I will now turn my attention to the masses who want a college football playoff more than Pete Carroll and Urban Meyer want to use timeouts to run up the score on Stanford and Georgia.

My biggest issue with a playoff (and when I say playoff I am talking about anything over 4 teams or the idea of a plus one in 2 different bowl sites) is that it absolutely ruins our regular season. Would it really matter if Michigan lost to Appalachian State if they got to play for a championship by winning the Big 10? Would USC use their starters against Notre Dame late in the season if they knew a couple weeks later they would be playing in a game that meant more for their National Title hopes? Of course they wouldn’t, the goal of NFL teams is to win their division and get to the playoffs, the goal of college football teams is to win all their games.

This distinction is why college football is amazing each week and why the only people who care about week 17 of the NFL are people playing fantasy football. Georgia fans, do you really want your coach answering questions on how much they are going to play your starters against Georgia Tech? Florida fans, do you want to risk Tim Tebow getting hurt against Florida State if he has to be ready to play Alabama for the right to get into a playoff? These are valid questions that NFL teams have to answer all the time because some NFL games don’t matter. If the Patriots weren’t going after history against the Giants week 17 of the 2007 season, is there any way that Brady and the other starters are in that game? No way.

I know most fans are frustrated with a system that always seems to screw a team over and seemingly makes a bad decision each year. Keep in mind that this anti-playoff sentiment is coming from an Auburn alum who witnessed the greatest BCS tragedy in 2004 when three BCS conference teams were undefeated and one of them was left out. My team was left out and I still don’t want to see a playoff in college football. The price we have to pay to get a playoff is too high and other solutions such as a BCS top 4 or top 8 will never be agreed upon by the smaller conferences because they will feel alienated.

Even the Plus-One format has some serious flaws that will make it unfair for smaller BCS conference schools and the non-BCS schools. A plus one would use two different bowl sites, for this example we will assume the Orange and the Sugar host the national semi-final games with the Sugar bowl hosting the championship game a week later. The problem with this is schools with smaller alumni bases will have a hard time filling seats and selling tickets. Teams with larger fan bases will be able to sell more tickets, bring more fans and have a home game instead of a true neutral bowl location.

Making matters worse is that even if that small school (Wake Forest) was able to sell all its tickets and have enough fans to travel to a semi-final game in Miami, what are the odds they will be able to do it a week later in New Orleans? A school with a larger fan base (Ohio State) would have no problem selling out all its tickets to any bowl game and the neutral crowd would suddenly have a scarlet and gray tint to it. A bowl game is a one shot deal for a fan base to travel to a game; even smaller schools are able to travel one time for a once in a lifetime opportunity. The plus-one format would hurt the little schools and make it more difficult for a non-traditional power to win a championship. A plus one would screw over the little guy.

The Solution
I don’t want to complain without giving any solutions and there is an actual solution to this situation. Many people argue with me that College basketball has all the same issues and they manage to find a “true” champion with the NCAA Tournament. My counters are that the arenas are smaller and easier to sell out and most of the time the better teams get to travel to regional locations that makes it easy for fan bases. The NCAA tournament is actually the solution to the BCS playoff problem, what we need is a final four, a College Football Final Four.

What I am suggesting is an exact replica of the NCAA Basketball Final Four in a BCS bowl location. Take the top four teams from the final BCS poll ( right now that would be Alabama, Texas Tech, Texas and Florida) they will compete in the BCS Final Four, for this example the host bowl site will be the Orange Bowl. All four teams will compete on the same day on the same field with the same crowd in the stands. Number 1 would play number 4 and number 2 would match up against number 3 with the winners playing a week later in the in Miami. Fans would get two amazing football games at one time and just like the NCAA Basketball Final Four and fans would stay the entire time to see who their team is going to play in the championship game.

This solution eliminates the problems of travel for smaller fan bases since they will be staying in the same location for both games and most people stay in the bowl site for about a week for vacation. The tickets would be dispersed evenly between the four fan bases and it would limit the larger fan bases from being able to buy up all the tickets and seriously outnumber the smaller fan base if there was a Wake Forest vs. Ohio State situation. Most importantly, nothing changes in the regular season of college football. Every game matters and our regular season stays untouched.

The problem with this scenario is that it still hurts the non-BCS leagues, but that can be fixed by those schools deciding to play a real schedule instead of hiding behind their soft conferences and complaining. If Boise State, Ball State or Utah wanted a shot at playing for a national title they would be forced to beef up their schedule. Since this format would still be using the BCS and take only the top 4 teams schools would still be forced to win all their games and the smaller schools would get games against the big boys. Another positive is this solution does not stop the Boise State’s and Hawaii’s from getting to a BCS game since there are still three other big time bowls that need to be played.

The Bottom Line
The most important thing is the preservation of the regular season, but how amazing an atmosphere would it be if there were four fan bases, four marching bands in one stadium with four teams playing two games on the same day? Even fans of other teams would want to witness this event and the TV audiences would be amazing. The BCS games are not being diluted any further because the same amount of teams would still be needed. If the Orange Bowl is the host site of the Championship game, four teams would travel to Miami like they do currently and the six other BCS teams would play their games in the Rose, Sugar and Fiesta bowls. We have ten BCS teams now and this solution would still give us ten BCS teams.

Of course this is extremely unlikely, if for no other reason than money. Why would college football have two games in one stadium on the same day when they could split it up and sell twice as many tickets? Why would college football give up the chance to put two games on during prime time television and settle for one marquis game in an afternoon time slot? While I would love for this scenario to work out and it is the only one I find acceptable, it is unrealistic. The bottom line is that no matter what we get out of college football in the future not everyone will be happy.

Do we need a better way to find our College Football National Champion? Yes we do, but right now there is no way to make all parties happy and we are fortunate we get a 1 vs. 2 match up because that is better than we used to get. The BCS is not the enemy, obviously it is not perfect, but it is what has made college football more popular and it has been great for college football. I hope it sticks around for a while longer because the other options are not any better.

I know everyone has their own playoff scenario, what is yours? What do you think of mine, can it be improved or is it a pipe dream? E-mail me Brian Harbach

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Harbach's Top SEC Games, July 13, 2008
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