We now have a college football playoff to determine a national champion. We have to wait two years but we have one.
The BCS Presidential Oversight Committee agreed to in their terms, “to launch a new four-team, seeded post-season playoff to determine the national collegiate champion.”
In a joint statement the 12 members of the committee said the new four team playoff will make the college football season better, “..while protecting the regular season and bowl experience.”
The regular season is fine, bowl experience?
With the new playoff format the bowls have begun to die a slow and painful death. Now the BBVA Compass Bowl or the New Mexico Bowl have no meaning other than fill programming for ESPN.
Heck the bowls might become college football’s version of the NIT or the CBI. Can you tell me who won the CBI last year?
The playoff genie for major college football is out of the bottle. Once it starts in two years it will doom the bowl system.
As college football’s final four gains popularity there will soon be cries for expanding the playoff to eight or possibly 16 teams.
The NFL jumped on the popularity of their playoffs by adding Wild Card rounds. College football will feel that pressure to.
That in turn will deem bowl games even more irrelevant than they are now, especially if the playoff format expands to all conference champions.
Now there’s a concept worth exploring.
Of course with 11 conferences and independents (see Notre Dame & BYU) the term “at-large” berth will find itself in the college football vocabulary.
In the meantime enjoy the corporate sponsored bowl games while the last.
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