THE “CARDINALS PROBLEM”

            Shortly before last year’s Super Bowl, respected sportswriter Stewart Mandel declared that the NFC Champion Arizona Cardinals were BCS proponents’ “savior.”[1] Mr. Mandel ticked-off the Cards’ demerits: they scored only one more point than their opponents, they lost four of their final six regular-season games, and their 9-7 record ranked in the 54th percentile among NFL teams. NFL playoffs produced a poor result, in Mr. Mandel’s mind, because: (1) an Arizona team that played poorly during the regular season still had a chance at the championship; and (2) a regular-season leader like the 13-3 Tennessee Titans to exit the season with “bupkis.” He then warned of college football playoffs dishing out similarly bad outcomes, even raising the specter of 7-5 Minnesota and Kansas teams elbowing their way into the title game. 

            Mr. Mandel’s comparison is wrongheaded.  No mainstream college playoff proposals would allow entrance to a team in a Cardinal-like, 54th-percentile position. It’s simple math. Six of 16 teams in each NFL conference reach the post-season. College football’s Football Bowl Sub-Division has 120 teams. A 16-team playoff would admit teams around the 87th percentile and an 8-team playoff would feature teams in roughly the 94th percentile. Of course, those percentile figures would be lowered modestly if a playoff were to give automatic bids to conference champions. But the point remains: a college football playoff would be a more elite competition than the NFL because berths would be scarcer.

            Furthermore, it is worth revisiting Mr. Mandel’s complaint that a playoff can cause a successful regular season team to walk away with “bupkis.”  It is true that regular season achievement does not always lead to a full-season championship under a playoff system. That can be disappointing, but it is not unjust. Playoffs afford teams an equal shot at the title. Playoffs allow teams to be eliminated by opponents, not by pundits. If a club’s championship dreams falter under a playoff system, failure can be traced to their own on-the-field acts. That can’t be said about the BCS’s bowl system.

THE “COLTS PROBLEM”

            In his December 30, 2009 online column, Mr. Mandel philosophized about the damage that a playoff would do to college football. He expressed his belief that once a college team qualified for a playoff, that team would “mail it in” during the regular season’s final weeks, a la the Indianapolis Colts. Mr. Mandel lamented: “Imagine being a Colts season-ticket holder, paying thousands of dollars a year for your seats, just to show up and watch your team not try to win. Now—imagine Alabama not trying to beat Auburn.”[2]

            Leaving aside our belief that heated late-season rivalries like Auburn-Alabama would endure anything short of nuclear winter, the numbers alone prove Mr. Mandel incorrect. 

            The Colts quit only once they had nothing else to play for—they locked up home-field advantage and the number-one seed. That type of “lock-up” simply could not occur in any college football playoff system. College football has nearly four times more teams than the NFL and would have roughly the same number of playoff spots available, leaving teams little margin for error. In any college football playoff format, a loss would result in a significantly lower seed. (Even Playoff PAC’s Mom knows that March Madness is all about the seeding; and yes, dammit, Mom has beaten us in the tourney bracket for the last 4 years, but who’s counting?) Two losses would jeopardize a playoff berth altogether. A college team could not afford to rest against good teams, as the Colts did, under a playoff system.

            If Mr. Mandel’s great fear is that elite college teams will coast during the regular season, he should open his eyes. We’re already there. The BCS system gave us countless games last season that presented a “Colts problem.” As Mr. Mandel might say, “Imagine being a Florida season-ticket holder, paying thousands of dollars a year for your seats, just to show up and watch your Gators play Florida International on November 21st.” Oh wait, that happened. Under the BCS, the regular season has eroded, as big-name teams have an overwhelming incentive to skate through to an undefeated season by avoiding tough non-conference games and scheduling “cupcake” opponents. Football Bowl Sub-Division teams played 93 games last season against Football Championship Sub-Division teams.[3] Enough said.

            A playoff would only bolster the regular season’s importance. Think about it. Think about any game, involving any team, over the course of the 2009 season. Now, ask yourself: would that game have been more or less interesting or important if the post-season format was a playoff-bowl hybrid? How about Arkansas-LSU? How about Oregon State-Oregon? How about Alabama-Florida? Would that game have lost meaning, where the two teams were fighting for the Number 1 seed, and the easiest playoff path to the championship game? Add a touch of playoff, and all of a sudden, far more games matter, including innumerable games where participants hold out hopes for one of the lower-seeded playoff spots. 

            How about every regular season game played in by TCU, Boise State, Cincinnati, and Utah? As it is now, at least in terms of determining the “national championship,” those games are of zero significance. For all those teams defined as second-class by the BCS, the regular season is a dead-end before the first snap. 

            The BCS has permitted only 12 teams to play for its championship during its 12-year existence. Championship opportunities for 12 teams. Exhibition games for everyone else. How can we be satisfied with a world where BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock and his kind run around, cleverly explaining to certain kids on the wrong side of the tracks that they cannot grow up to be doctors, because . . . well, just because? Are we truly content with Mr. Hancock offering a pat on the head and a warm explanation: “Be content, young man, not every one can be a doctor, but you can have a good life, and you may even sneak into Physician’s Assistants School”?

THE GOOGLE OF SPORTS

            Now, let’s step back and look at the full picture. Some sweet irony comes in watching the BCS criticize the NFL. The NFL is the Google of sports; the entity that runs it right. Every team gets a fair shake. Plus, every game is in demand, and every team is profitable.               

            You can’t blame the NFL for not adopting a college-style post-season comprised of exhibition games. Bowls bleed cash. Our institutions of higher learning lost $15.5 million in unsold bowl tickets last year. Ouch. In 2008, Western Michigan University lost $412,535 in unsold tickets to the Texas Bowl in Houston. Also, Virginia Tech was required last year to buy 17,500 tickets to the Orange Bowl at $125 each, sold only 3,342. That added up to an expensive $1.77 million bath for the university and its conference, which ultimately bore most of the school’s debt burden through bowl revenue sharing.[4]  

            Now might be the right time for the BCS to acknowledge an inconvenient truth: most schools lose money on their football programs under the status quo and every serious economic analysis of a playoff shows predicted additional earnings (a.k.a. “gravy”) in amounts that only Warren Buffet comprehends.

IRREPARABLE CHANGE

            In his article on the “Colts problem” Mr. Mandel made a remarkable statement: “playoff zealots refuse to acknowledge that the regular season as we know it would change irreparably in the face of a playoff.” 

            He’s right about that. The regular season would change “irreparably”—but for the better.  A playoff would deliver access and fairness. It would elevate athletes over sportswriters. It would promote competition over the computers’ start values on teams. And at the end of the season, every single team could return home with the comforting feeling that it received America’s promise of a “fair shake.”  Irreparable change is precisely what Playoff PAC seeks.

            Despite the BCS’s newly created propaganda machine, everyone knows what is going on here. The wisdom of the masses outmatches the justifications of those whose only goal is to retain their individual vested interests in a corrupt and dishonest enterprise.  Bill Hancock trumpets: “The fact is what we have right now works.”[5] The system definitely works for him. And for Ari Fleischer. But who else? Not us. Not you. Not Boise State. For that matter, not most colleges and universities. Oh, and not economically. And not culturally. But hey, it works for Mr. Hancock and others on the BCS payroll—shouldn’t that be enough?