PLAYOFFS??!! Don't talk to me about playoffs!

Another college football season is behind us and another torrent of BCS complaints and feeble demands for a playoff system are just beginning. Indeed, ever since the system was adopted prior to the 1998 season, such complaints from fans of Mountain West Conference teams and people who won’t admit that they prefer college basketball while pretending to follow the pigskin ensued almost as soon as the crystal football was lifted by the winning quarterback. To be sure, several of their anti-BCS grievances are spot on. The BCS isn’t perfect and no playoff system could ever pretend to be, but currently it’s the best among bad systems. Just like democracy.

One such criticism of the BCS is that it rarely determines a consensus national champion or even a national championship game everyone can agree on. Then again, neither did the Bowl Alliance, Bowl Coalition, and the anarchy that preceded it. Before the BCS was established, your only hope of getting a #1 versus #2 game was to hope that one of the contenders wasn’t contractually obligated to play in the Rose Bowl (as they were in 1994, 1996, and 1997). Prior to the Coalition, you often had to catch lightning in a bottle with perhaps an independent against a major conference tie in team. Never mind that the bowl system, with more than seventy years of established tradition, was never supposed to name a national champion in the first place. These were exhibition games held by chambers of commerce and local industries (you know, like cotton, sugar, and orange growers) to entice people to leave their cold, snowy towns for the fun and sun of California, Texas, and Florida. The national champion was usually named in advance.

Perhaps if there is one motto to the BCS it’s “Every Game Matters.” One could argue that college football already has a playoff system known to everyone else as “the regular season.” It is for all intents and purposes a double-elimination tournament, with one-loss participants being rare. Take the Ohio State-Michigan game on November 18 as an example. It was perhaps the most consequential game of the year, with #1-against-#2-winner-going-to-Glendale stakes added to what is already the most intense rivalry in the sport. The game came down to the final gun, with Ohio State edging out a 42-39 win in arguably the most thrilling game played at Ohio Stadium. Contrast that to any week seventeen match-up in the NFL, where starters are often AWOL. Already assured of home field advantage, a first round bye, a playoff spot, or a good spot in the draft, most late season NFL games are of little consequence unless you desperately need to win to see tomorrow. A trivia question I’d love to see the answer to is how many games Tom Brady or Peyton Manning started in week seventeen. NFL teams have the advantage of resting their starters in meaningless games. College teams either win their last game or make travel plans for Orlando and San Diego.

If there’s one thing playoff proponents have in common it’s that they can’t agree on what a playoff system would look like. Every professional league has a different system (and has changed their system at least once), so there’s really no telling what it would look like. Who gets in, how many teams, how long it would take, where it would take place, and what the bracket would look like are just a few unresolved questions. Keep in mind a team can only play one football game a week. Additionally, playoffs have the unintended consequence of not putting their best teams in the championship game. Just ask any AFC team from 1984 to 1996. Again, too little emphasis on the regular season results if a team can get lucky and win three games in a row. These are just a few reasons against a playoff system for Division I-A college football. I’m sure I didn’t touch on all of them, but stay tuned for next year when I’m sure I’ll get another chance.