Playoff system in college football the wrong way to go

CHICAGO – The Bowl Championship Series bashers had a great week, seizing on the Associated Press’ decision to yank its poll from the formula that determines who gets to play in the Orange, Rose, Fiesta and Sugar bowls.

The BCS haters simply will not be satisfied until college football mimics every other sport we care about and goes to a playoff.

How wrong they are.

College football should not go to a playoff. I don’t care if I’m the only writer or college football fan who feels that way.

Here are my arguments, and you won’t find the silly one that playoff proponents love to mock – that an eight-team tournament would force student-athletes to miss too much class time.

College basketball players already spend more time in airplanes than libraries, and that’s not about to change.

So let’s get to the real reasons:

College football is the only sport left in which the regular season is paramount. College basketball is a 15-week warm-up to the NCAA Tournament. Tell me what’s at stake when top-ranked Illinois plays Cincinnati on Friday? The answer: nothing.

Last year Stanford won its first 26 games, earned a No. 1 seed and then lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. You think players from that team are asked about winning the Pac-10 title or losing to Alabama? The regular season means diddly.

Compare that to college football, where the 11-game season is akin to a single-elimination tournament. Lose once, and most years you can forget about being No. 1.

Isn’t it nice to know that when USC played UCLA in the final weekend of the regular season, the Trojans needed to win to play in the Orange Bowl? With a postseason tournament, everyone before the game would have been asking whether USC could lose and still make the playoffs. Where’s the drama in that?

Forget about people crying that it’s unfair that 12-0 Auburn can’t play for the national title. (Hey, nobody forced Auburn to schedule Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana-Monroe and The Citadel – a Division I-AA team – but that’s another issue.)

Let’s talk about unfair. Is it unfair that the New York Yankees outspend most baseball teams 2-1? Is it unfair that the Houston Rockets got to draft Yao Ming in 2002 even though they had the NBA’s sixth-worst record? Is it unfair that Notre Dame fired Tyrone Willingham before his first full recruiting class became juniors?

Not everything in life is fair. Alex Rodriguez has the brains, the talent – and the looks. Deal with it.

Everyone howled when USC was denied the chance to play in the national champion Sugar Bowl last year. The Trojans then beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl and said they were No. 1. Is it so awful that USC and LSU shared a national title? I don’t think so.

Besides, if college football goes to a four-team playoff, the fifth- and sixth-ranked teams (this season, Cal and Utah) will protest. Go to an eight-team playoff, the Nos. 9 and 10 teams (Boise State and Louisville) will cry.

The current bowl system is good for college football. It’s understandable that people mock the EV1.net Houston Bowl and the Silicon Valley Classic.

But guess who’s playing in the Silicon Valley? Northern Illinois. You try telling a Huskies team that they should be home for the holidays – again – after winning 18 games over two seasons.

If college football goes to a playoff, the bowls that aren’t a part of it might evaporate. At the least, they’ll get even less attention than they already do.

Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese believes there’s a compromise between the public’s (and TV’s) desire for a playoff and the university presidents’ desire to maintain the bowl system. It’s the Plus One model, which would call for the two teams to meet in a final game after all the other bowls are played.

Big Ten and Pac-10 officials shot down the Plus One during the last round of BCS meetings in the spring, arguing that it’s a precursor to a playoff.

With a Plus One, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said, “You’re off to the races at that point. You can start to look at the regular-season games as seeding games.”

Delany has seen it happen before. The first Division I-AA championship in 1978 was decided by a four-team playoff. The format expanded to eight teams in 1981 and 16 in 1986.

A Plus One would bring other potential problems.

The bowls would use their traditional tie-ins to select teams, so this year USC would play in the Rose, Oklahoma would play in the Fiesta and Auburn in the Sugar. If all three undefeated teams won, who would qualify for the Plus One game?

A Plus One might have ruined the 2003 national title game between Ohio State and Miami (Fla.), the nation’s only undefeated teams. Under the BCS system, they met in the Fiesta Bowl for a memorable double-overtime contest won by the Buckeyes.

Or look at it this way: On Jan. 4, USC and Oklahoma will play the most exciting national championship game of my lifetime. Why would anyone complain about that?

Debates. An Auburn fan would wear a crimson tie before he’d admit that the Tigers are the nation’s third-best team. Oklahoma fans rave about the depth of the Big 12 while USC fans brag about Matt Leinart’s Heisman Trophy.

Hey, the Final Four is great. Everybody loves it.

College football is messy and a little chaotic. That’s the brilliance of it.