COMMENTARY: Obama's First Big Move?

The morning after Barack Obama was elected, a national sports columnist suggested that one of the president’s first acts after he takes office should be to fix big-time college football.

And how might Obama do that? By ordering the NCAA to drop the sham that is the Bowl Championship Series and institute a playoff. It is, the columnist wrote, what fans have been demanding for years.

The first assumption, of course, is that Obama is a college football fan, which he might or might not be, considering neither of his home state schools traditionally is talked about in championship terms.

The second assumption – which is a much greater reach – is that this issue would ever seriously come to the attention of the chief executive. Obama has more important things about which to concern himself – the economy and the war in Iraq, to name two – than to worry whether a deserving team got left out of the BCS title game.

But the point, however, is well-taken: The BCS does, indeed, need to be scrapped. It is long past time for the NCAA to institute a playoff for Division I-A, just as it has for the other three classifications.

College presidents argue that a playoff isn’t in the best interest of their athletes, because it cut too much into class time.

It’s a hollow argument, considering that players from Appalachian State and Grand Valley State (Mich.) have been dealing just fine for years with the rigors of a playoff. If the student-athletes at those schools can handle it, why can’t their counterparts at an Alabama or a Texas Tech do the same?

The truth is, big-time college football doesn’t want to mess with a bowl arrangement that benefits many teams – competitively and financially – rather than a few.

How do we know this? Because for years – whether it was the bowl Alliance, Coalition or Championship Series – the biggest college football programs have been content to crown their “mythical” national champion within the framework of the bowl system.

The folks who bring us the BCS will contend there’s nothing “mythical” about the champion they crown at the end of each season, because the matter is settled on the field.

That would be true if – and that is a HUGE if – the premise on which the selection process is based wasn’t utterly flawed: The BCS assumes that, after the regular season plays itself out, there will be two clear-cut teams left standing to play for the championship.

How often does that happen? Maybe once a decade, when the BCS gets lucky.

The BCS appears to be courting disaster again this season: Heading into this weekend’s action, the nation’s top three teams were undefeated. If nothing were to change, one of those teams won’t make the BCS title game. It’s happened before – remember, an unbeaten Auburn team was left out in 2004 – and it is certain to happen again.

And what happens if, instead of three unbeatens, there are a bunch of one-loss teams to be considered?

And that discussion doesn’t take into account mid-majors Boise State, Utah and Ball State. What if, at the end of the regular season, those are the only three unbeaten teams left in the country?

Why not consider an eight-team playoff that would both maintain and be incorporated into the current bowl system?

It would take the champions of the six current BCS conferences and two at-large teams. That would put meaning back into the conference races, while giving mid-major programs a chance to get into the mix.

Teams would be seeded and matched up using a combination of polls and computer rankings. Opening-round games could be played at campus sites, but could also be played in the bowls. The semifinals and finals would be rotated among the current BCS bowl games.

Right now, the BCS title game completely overshadows the other bowl games, even the ones that are in the series. A playoff would give meaning to each of those other games, because the winner advances.

Meanwhile, there’s no reason not to continue the other bowl games. Those games could continue to give teams other than the conference champions something for which to shoot.
And they would have no less meaning than they do already.

Big-time college football should have a playoff, just as other college team sports do. If it can work for Appalachian State, it can work for Alabama.

And it shouldn’t take an order from the new president to make it happen.

JIM CNOCKAERT is sports editor of the Bristol Herald Courier. He can be reached at jcnockaert@bristolnews.com and at (276) 645-2572.