College Football Playoff Doesn’t Create the Have/Have Not Gap
If you listen to certain ex-CBS hosts over the years, and many other people in and out of the media as well, one of the major weaknesses of the slain BCS was that its not inclusive. Even today a writer for ESPN.com is trying to push that original football sin onto the new college playoff system.
Andrea Adelson uses Boise State as the poster child of the small school from a non-Power 5 conference that is being shut out of the playoffs. What we read is the “resume” of how well these small schools do in their limited opportunities against Power 5 schools.
We don’t hear about Georgia waxing the Rainbow Warriors. The underlying argument is about fairness. (If you want fair, then go to the UT/Oklahoma game. They have the state fair there every year.)
My question is; fairness for who?
Andrea says its about fairness for the players at these small schools. Its not fair to never have a legitimate shot at playing for a national championship. (As if players that go to Nevada or Fresno St go there because the thought they had a shot before.)
I have to be careful not to let this post slide into some pseudo-intellecutal argument about this being a metaphor for modern society (although if you hit me up on twitter, I won’t mind filling you in).
What this piece calls for is a basically, what the NCAA stood for up until the vote on autonomy. What she really advocates for is a playoff structure built on the lowest common denominator. Every conference should be thought of equally, even though they aren’t. And while she doesn’t mention it, I’m sure the author would like more emphasis placed on being a conference champion, because beating New Mexico State in the WAC championship game is the same thing as Alabama beating Georgia.
When you get right down to it, what the smaller schools want is a system that emulates the NCAA basketball tournament selection. And why not? That selection committee gets it right all the time!
Sorry, that’s just not feasible or logical, for several reasons. First, lets drop this fairness cow chip. The schools and coaches that are asking for fairness are speaking in code. The translation of that code is this:
"I want my school and my job to have more exposure. If I get on national TV and luck up enough to win a game, we can get into a big-time payout game and I might get a job offer at a real school and leave these kids like they have Ebola, Todd Graham-style."
So we really aren’t talking about fairness. We aren’t even really talking about players. This is a whining session about revenue. And if I were at a small school in a non-Power 5 conference, I would really start to worry about revenue, because the media have been talking out of both sides of their mouth for a while.
The other topic that college football writers love to use to bash Power 5 schools is weak out-of-conference scheduling. Whether its the MAC or the Sun Belt, writers love to pick at these games. They have now stirred up the fanbases to the point that they are complaining about ticket prices for “cupcakes.”
The CFB playoff selection committee has made strength-of-schedule a significant criteria. Some coaches have even advocated for only playing Power 5 Schools.
What would happen if that was implemented? All those paydays for the MAC and Sun Belt would dry up. Many of these smaller schools count on that payday. Most of the budget is contingent on those games.
And that’s not just football. Many scholarships for men and women count on those games. The college football playoff hasn’t created any gap between big/small or rich/poor schools. What it might do is just highlight the gap that is naturally there; a gap that smaller schools and this article try to obfuscate.
So smaller schools and their advocates in the media should be careful what they ask for. You to get rid of the BCS? Fine. You want Power 5 schools to schedule fewer FCS schools? Okay. In honor of Robin Williams, I’ll close with this illustration: when you rub on the lamp, and the genie grants your wish, don’t complain about the result.