Playoffs!?

By: John Vilanova
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As an Ohio State supporter, the 50-day waiting period between the Buckeyes 4th straight win against Michigan and their long-awaited (by me at least) return to the National Championship Game has been nothing more than a month and a half of listening to others whine about their ultimate placement. After their relatively easy 14-3 victory in the Big House, the proud Buckeyes celebrated with roses, expecting (rightly), that, as the “Big Eleven” winner, they would be going to lovely Pasadena and a New Year’s Day Rose Bowl appearance. Over the course of the next few weeks, multiple teams controlled their own destiny at one time or another to get to the National Title Game. After OSU’s victory, Oklahoma, LSU, Oregon, Kansas, West Virginia, and Missouri all lost, and Ohio State found themselves ranked #1 and heading to NOLA and a chance to redeem themselves for last season’s debacle versus Florida.

Apparently, Ohio State’s luck, coupled with the other six teams’ failures, has created a situation where people are again pining for a playoff. Thoughts of first-round match-ups like Ohio State/Hawai’i, V-Tech/USC, and countless other possibilities would give fans weeks of HUGE match-ups that would all mean a lot more to the players than the reward of playing in the Cotton Bowl at 10AM CST on New Year’s Day when a huge portion of their audiences are asleep or incoherent. As a fan, a playoff would create three weeks of ultimate sports bliss, watching non-conference wars that neither team would ever have the guts to schedule during the regular season. However, practically speaking, a playoff is, by no means, the ideal solution, for a huge slate of reasons.

1) A playoff still does not guarantee that the best two teams will play for the BCS National Title. Let’s assume the sample bracket below. I know it has a ton of problems which I’ll talk about in a little bit.


If, for example, Hawai’i beats Ohio State and V-Tech en route to a final match-up with LSU, are the top two teams playing for the title? The concept of a “best team” is very unfair. Is it the team with the most talent? Obviously not, because then USC would have been declared National Champs on the strength of their twelve tailbacks. Is it the team with the most wins? Again, obviously not, because the team with the most wins, Hawai’i was almost left out of the BCS altogether. A playoff is not the way to ensure that the “best teams” will ultimately play for a National Title because, again, this is a title that is impossible to give.

2) A playoff would STILL leave teams complaining. College Basketball went from 8 to 16 to 25 to 32 to 40 to 48 to 52 to 53 to 64 to 65 teams in their own playoff tournament, giving, conceivably, the 65th most-deserving team a shot at the national title. The sample of deserving teams is, admittedly, much smaller for football than basketball, but there would still be major problems. See the above bracket for example. Missouri and Kansas could both make major arguments for inclusion, and if we’re stretching it to 10 teams, what happens when there are even more two-loss teams who have legitimate gripes? Luckily, these represent the top 10 teams in the BCS, and all of these teams have two or fewer losses. However, I can count 5+ teams that would certainly gripe about being snubbed. Determining a “Top 10” is just as difficult as determining a “Top 2,” and the inevitable snub of a major program will cause just as many problems here.


3) I hesitate to include this one, but it really must be said. Adding 3 weeks of games to the schedule would be the last dagger in the heart of the suspension of disbelief that these student-athletes are actual students. Part of the reasoning behind the break between the end of the season and the beginning of bowl season is that the students need to take their finals. As Florida State has shown us, many of these students may not be ideal students, but I’d rather be intentionally ignorant of that fact. Having a playoff would be a slap in the face of the institutions who are trying to pretend that their student-athletes are held to any reasonable standard of academic integrity.


4) I argue that we already have an elimination playoff system in place. West Virginia’s Backyard Brawl loss to Pittsburgh in the last week of the season made a game that would be absolutely meaningless one of the major moments of the year. If there was a playoff system, West Virginia would have been resting players to prepare for their match-up with LSU or whomever they would be facing next week. This would hurt the rivalry, but, more importantly, create a meaningless game. Some of the season’s intrigue stems from the fact that every game truly matters. USC’s loss to Stanford would still be absolutely huge for the Cardinal, but if USC went on to win the National Title, the 41-point dog’s win would have just been paper success. They are directly responsible for USC not playing in the National Title Game. A playoff would take that away from them. Why give West Virginia the opportunity to lose to LSU in a playoff for the national championship if they cannot beat Pittsburgh en route to the same goal? Teams should be required to show up every week, and we can all cross our fingers that USC and LSU go 12-0 every year to avoid any more controversy.


A playoff is not the answer, but a +1 game may be. The idea of a match-up between #1 and #2 after the Bowls are all said and done would definitely help the BCS because it would cut the “deserving” field in half because half of the complainers would own another loss. There would still be problems, especially if a 13-0 Hawai’i team is overlooked for 11-2 LSU and 11-2 USC, but it would give the eventual #1 and #2 even stronger resumes and arguments for inclusion. The system now is not the answer, but neither is a playoff. Preserving the system with slight alterations, specifically one more game, would give all of us a less-imperfect solution than a hugely flawed playoff ever would be.

This post was written while listening to Live at Jittery Joe’s by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, if you care.