Quote the Penn State coach last week:"To be frank with you, I don't know what the reasons are not to have a playoff," Paterno said during a speaking appearance in Pittsburgh. "You can talk about missing class and all that kind of stuff, (yet) you see basketball go on forever. You have a lot of bogus excuses.Now, far be it from me to lay into one of college football's most decorated coaches, but Joe Paterno's argument itself is bogus. First of all, he cites exactly one argument against a playoff here, that of the game becoming a two-semester event and taking student-athletes away from the classroom.
I don't personally buy into that argument either, since there are much better ones against a playoff. But it isn't "bogus". I hate to bring up that childhood example but it fits so we'll run it: if your friends go and jump off a bridge, do you jump as well? The answer is of course not. Just because college basketball's jumped off that bridge doesn't justify college football doing the same.
Furthermore, Paterno's being patently dishonest. Most of the time I see public arguments against a playoff, they have little to do with the academics. Even the conference commissioners are starting to cite other quite solid reasons besides the academics charge.
Examples? After the jump.
ESPN's Mark Schlabach recently penned a fairly honest rundown of the BCS vs. Playoff landscape.
"I think last year probably crystallized it for us," Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said. "I think if there had been a four-team playoff last year, the yelling and screaming from Georgia and Southern California would have been so outrageous that the pressure to go from four to six to eight would have just been a matter of time. Then we would have gone to 12 and 16. I've seen what's happened in Division I-AA. It started as four and went to eight and then 16. Now they want to go to 20. It's just not where we want to go. I know it's what the public wants, but as I sit here and my people sit here, we don't think it's in the best interest of college football. I know that's not what the public wants to hear."
That expansion phenomena is what Get The Picture accurately called "mission creep". From Wikipedia:
Mission Creep the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals, often after initial successes. The term often implies a certain disapproval of newly adopted goals by the user of the term. Mission creep is usually considered undesirable due to the dangerous path of each success breeding more ambitious attempts, only stopping when a final, often catastrophic, failure occurs. The term was originally applied exclusively to military operations, but has recently been applied to many different fields, mainly the growth of bureaucracies.
I remember taking a public policy class in college on a whim. Much time was spent discussing how organizations work and what some of the common errors are that derail or change an organization's mission. One of the most troubling was this mission creep concept, in how a decent idea stays decent only if contained. But as is often the case, various interests pull and tug and reshape what was once a limited idea into something hideous and grotesque and no longer responsive to what it was intended to serve.
Fear of mission creep is a legitimate concern by those advocating against a playoff in college football, as stated so well by Commissioner Tranghese.
I won't go over the laundry list of reasons against a playoff within this entry, but I'll expose one more flaw stated by proponents within Schlabach's article.
Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville, who became one of the BCS' biggest critics after his undefeated 2004 team was left out of the national championship game, said selling tickets for playoff games wouldn't be a problem.
"I think what will happen is 75 percent of the tickets would be sold to corporate America, just like the Super Bowl," Tuberville said. "Each team would get 10,000 or 15,000 seats that they'll have no problem selling. Most teams take 15,000 to 20,000 to a bowl game.
Speaking of bogus arguments ...
Do college football fans really want a fan experience like the Super Bowl? One major difference between the NFL and college football, and what makes college football resonate so well with its fans, is the fan experience. College football is a lot more like soccer with stadium-wide chants, all kinds of pageantry and oddball traditions (from Auburn's eagle flying to USC's Traveler, the marching bands, etc.). It's a fan-first experience steeped in nostalgia.
The Super Bowl is nothing if not cold and corporate. The stadium itself is usually quite quiet and far from festive unless you count all the generic pageantry unrelated to either team or its fans. I hold nothing against the fan who gets a ticket from their company or from a giveaway, but they're taking the seat of an actual fan which robs the game of atmosphere and liveliness.
Tuberville's right, most teams in an average bowl game bring 15,000-20,000 fans. But it's much different for the BCS type games that would become playoff games if a playoff is enacted. I was at this year's Rose Bowl and by my estimate I thought Illinois brought something in the rage of 30,000-35,000 fans. The atmosphere was absolutely electric even when the Illini lost control of the game. Fans flock to single bowl games that they can plan for, get airfare and hotels for and be part of the festivities. They're there to actively root for their teams as opposed to being there for a show as if the circus was in town.
When you hand out the majority of tickets to corporations, you don't get that atmosphere and the college game loses a great deal for it. The Super Bowl should absolutely not be the model to follow.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-26-2008 @ 3:20PM
LB said...
SO you are telling me the reason against a playoff is fans can't travel or deans don't have the guts to keep it at 4 teams?????? That just sounds dumb. I guess it is better to have teams dreams crushed without being allowed to play better.
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5-28-2008 @ 10:11AM
Logos said...
Joe Pa's argument may be invalid regarding whether academics is a valid reason for not having a playoff, but his argument is perfectly valid regarding whether academics is a sincere concern of university presidents.
Your arguments against a college playoff are merely procedural rather than substantive. They don't demonstrate that a college playoff is a bad idea, but rather that its execution should be carefully considered. To use your childhood bridge example, it's the equivalent of saying we shouldn't build a bridge because it may be built poorly.
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5-27-2008 @ 12:14AM
George B Vieto said...
The reason that there is no playoff system in the Division I football is who would be worthy to be in the playoffs under a four team system. Coaches will be playing politics on why their team should be in the playoff system.
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5-27-2008 @ 1:38AM
Mr.G said...
Last year,there were so many teams that could have made the NC game in the final week or 2.All they had to do was win their last game.They all fell like domino's,but that didn't stop their fans from screaming foul about which teams got in.If there is a 4 team playoff system in place,the next 4 teams left out are still gonna scream they were robbed.There is no end to it in that regard,and that truly is the real reason.
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5-27-2008 @ 1:23PM
murph207 said...
My argument against it is simply this. Who wins in a playoff system? The universities certainly don’t. the loss of revenue alone is reason for them not to want it. and why should they lose out on that. The students who want to see their teams in a big bowl game certainly don’t. don’t fool yourself, not all students can afford a ticket to one trip to cheer on their teams and even most alumni cant afford more than that. Do the athletes win? NO they get 4 or more chances to get hurt and possibly end their college or even pro careers. Do the casual fans win? They guys in bars in Miami and Tallahassee and South Bend arguing amongst themselves who should have been number one. Call me old fashioned but that’s part what makes college football so great. You want to know who wins. I will tell you, the corporate sponsors the self-righteous columnists and the ESPN’s ABC’s, NBC’s and CBS’s of the world. And to be honest that isn’t enough . keep it the way it is.
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5-28-2008 @ 12:56AM
Lee said...
Brian Grummell's comments here -- and Mike Tranghese's comments later -- remind me of my great grandmother who said, the family claims, that her oil lamps were good enough for her family all those years, and they were good enough for her.
Plus, she was to have said, being led into electricity would cost more.
Tranghese's "reason" has even less meat on it ... eight games, 12 games, 16?
"We just don't want to go there," he says so eloquently, and repeatedly.
Would there be a reason he might give us?
Sixteen teams? So what?
Sixteen teams the week before Christmas, after college finals, delivers eight in four bowls to New Year's. The final four teams the next week and the championship teams the next, exactly the same time into January that the PLUS-1 idea takes us now ... and with the overwhelming majority of universities not having begun, or barely having begun, January classes.
Paterno is, of course, correct. And Duke basketball players, too, who when questioned on CBS television about academics during an NCAA basketball tournament, laughed out loud, saying that they get far more studying done on the road in a strict hotel environment with occasional exams faxed and monitored by faculty than they ever would amidst constant on-campus distractions.
Sixteen teams in 15 bowls with the other bowls continuing to play on just as they played on on national television this past holiday season.
A playoff for college football is such a no-brtainer. Either we shame the Big Ten, PAC 10 and Rose Bowl into it, appeal to them through the good of the sport -- noting that Notre Dame finally gave up a tradition and began going to bowls, or we just leave them out, not allowing those conferences and that bowl to selfishly hold the rest of the nation hostage.
Really, it is more than absurd; it is infuriating the more you think about the arrogance of the opposition to a playoff for the only major college sport that does not have one. Either these people are not true competitors or they are afraid of competition.
I was a student at the University of Alabama during three of Bear Bryant’s six “national championships.” Do you think the Bear would have preferred those six be awarded on the votes they were or earned on the field in a playoff?
Lee Harrington
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5-29-2008 @ 6:23PM
Brian said...
Bear Bryant's championships were earned on the field, in the regular season.
A playoff is simply that, a playoff. It reflects zero of one's regular season accomplishments and only performance in a crapshoot one-and-done postseason tourney which actually cuts games from the regular season.
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7-17-2008 @ 2:42PM
Gene said...
Most college stadiums are sold out with close to or over 100,000 fans for each game. If their was a playoff. This would allow more of a teams fans to attend with more games to get tickets to.For example if Penn State were in a playoff they have enough fans that would attend three playoff games and still have more fans that would try to get tickets. So fans not being able to attend is a bogus reason for not having a playoff system.
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