After watching the College Football Playoff Selection Show and their glaring omission of Florida State, a school that I hate with a passion but without a doubt got absolutely jobbed by the selection committee, it has become plainly obvious that college football needs a true playoff system to determine its national champion. Unfortunately, the people that run the bowl system control what goes on in college football’s “post season”.
Now I know in many locations I’ve called the NCAA one of the most corrupt sports organizations on the planet, but compared to the cabal that runs the bowl system the NCAA looks like a totally legitimate operation. The bowl cabal is not inclined to have a real playoff system and has only been forced to have a four-team playoff by public opinion. It’s time for the NCAA to get involved and just set one up. The TV money will most certainly be more than what teams currently get from the bowl cabal.
The fallacy that a playoff system would get in the way of academics is laughable. Most of these football playoff games would take place while the players on break from school. March Madness takes place while school is in session, and no one says a word. Even funnier, each of the lesser divisions of college football have a championship playoff system. I guess it’s OK for the actual football “student athletes” to miss school, which they don’t really, but not for FBS schools. It’s to the point of ludicrously the reasoning behind not having a 16-team playoff.
It’s even more laughable when someone says it doesn’t matter how many teams you pick because the first team that didn’t make it would be complaining, noting that when 36 at-large teams are picked for March Madness there are “experts” that list the three or four schools that should have made it but didn’t. Really? If you’re not one of the top 36 at large schools how about winning more often so you’re not #37? The same holds true when picking 16 teams for a true college football playoff. Yeah, the 17th ranked team might get a little angry about it, but now they’ll get a prime bowl game to play in as a consolation prize.
Choosing the 16 teams to play could be pretty easy. Just use the system currently in place that picks the top 4. It lists down to #25, so just take the top 16 and go from there. This year we would have had first round games that look like this, at the higher seed:
#16 Notre Dame @ #1 Michigan
#15 Louisville @ #2 Washington
#14 Arizona @ #3 Texas
#13 LSU @ #4 Alabama
#12 Oklahoma @ #5 Florida State
#11 Mississippi @ #6 Georgia
#10 Penn State @ #7 Ohio State
#9 Missouri @ #8 Oregon
That’s a pretty impressive slate of games. The problem lies with the human factor. People decide what school is ranked where, and you know they would manipulate those matchups to avoid LSU playing Alabama again, or Penn State taking on Ohio State.
The only way to guarantee the best 16 teams make the playoffs, and play against the schools they’re supposed to play based on pure rankings, is to take the human element out. There’s already a system in place that does this, and the NCAA uses it in other sports. It’s RPI. So, using RPI, let’s look at what a real, legitimate NCAA FBS playoff would look like.
#16 Tulane @ #1 Michigan
#15 Liberty @ #2 Washington
#14 LSU @ #3 Georgia
#13 Louisville @ #4 Alabama
#12 Oklahoma @ #5 Florida State
#11 Mississippi @ #6 Ohio State
#10 Penn State @ #7 Texas
#9 Missouri @ #8 Oregon
Using that system Arizona and Notre Dame are out, Tulane and Liberty are in. Would either of the schools that are out beat the two that are in. Probably. But that’s the way it works when you don’t use human intervention to manipulate the rankings.
But no one needs to worry. They’ll never use RPI or the NCAA Evaluation Tool, known as NET, because they want the human intervention. They want Notre Dame in the mix because of the money they bring in, with schools like Tulane and Liberty out because they don’t bring in the big bucks. No matter how you slice it, it’s all about greed.
And the NCAA knows you’re going to watch no matter who the teams are.
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