Unfortunately, Bowl System Here to Stay

It took one interview on Monday Night Football to show me that President Obama is an objective man. Why? Well, when he was asked about college football, he replied that the only real way to determine a champion would be to have an eight-team playoff.

He’s absolutely right. To be the best you have to BEAT the best. Neither a computer nor a coach nor a journalist can truly decide for me that Texas is better than TCU, or that Boise State would get crushed by Florida based on statistics and perceptions alone. If it were that easy to declare winners ahead of time, then Mike Tyson would’ve knocked Buster Douglas out in the first round, Al Gore would be finishing out his second term, and Enron stock would be going for $400 per share.

I have always wondered why the metropolitan areas that host the four Bowl Championship Series games (Miami, Phoenix, New Orleans, L.A.) couldn't just host a month-long, eight-team playoff where the first two cities could each handle two quarterfinal games, the third city could host both semifinals, and the final city could have a two-week buildup for the national title game like the Super Bowl.

The hype would be bigger than March Madness! Then, like they currently do with the BCS National Championship, rotate the sites the following year so that each one hosts the title game once every four years. (Did I mention they do this already?)

Or, in order to appease the bowl committees, let the bowl season run its course, and then have one final week of voting to decide which two teams deserve to play in the BCS National Title game. If you had an extra week to spare, you could even have the top four teams in the final poll comprise a college football version of the Final Four. That way, the bowl traditions remain intact, and we can crown something close to a real champion through this plus-one or plus-two playoff system.

Of course, there are holes in this argument. In a plus-one, you would be taking away two BCS spots out of the ten currently in place, which wouldn't help at-large candidates like Boise State finish #2 in the polls if they crushed a lesser team in the Poinsettia Bowl rather than an SEC powerhouse in the Sugar Bowl. Then again, I've been a proponent of having the mid-major champs play each other in order to boost their strength of schedule. For example, if Boise State and TCU had a winner-take-all game at the end of the regular season, it would give the winner a better shot to vie for that #2 BCS ranking through the computer poll. The "Bracket Buster" series in the college basketball regular season is already designed to help mid-major schools' RPI, so why not apply the same formula on the gridiron? But I digress.

Sounds logical to crown a true champion, but after thinking about it, one would have a better chance training water to stop being wet than change the current system. I could be wrong, but I really believe that you will never see a college football playoff for the same reason why nobody leaves a hot craps table: everyone’s getting a piece of the action, and no one wants to risk letting theirs go. Who is “everyone?” Let me elaborate:

1. The Cities.

Think the Hawai'i fans checked off Bourbon Street on their to-do lists?

I will bet the house that the local economies of Shreveport, Mobile, and Boise do not enjoy the same amount of tourists at any point during the year compared with the last week of December…and they’re not traveling to those places to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or New Year’s. For example, if Cal were to end up in El Paso this year for the Sun Bowl (God, please no), expect to see an unusual amount of roundtrip plane tickets purchased between OAK and ELP (I had to look that one up) right around December 31.

Now think of what tourism numbers mean to the BCS metropolitan areas. Two years ago, when Hawai'i was invited to the Sugar Bowl, tourists from all over the Aloha State swarmed the French Quarter all week long, and they pumped plenty of dollars into the post-Katrina New Orleans economy because they needed somewhere to sleep, eat, and do what tourists do for seven days.

But if you had an eight-team playoff system, even if all three rounds were held in the four BCS cities, the Devil's Advocate, as wrong as he is, vehemently argues that tourism would definitely decrease in these areas. First of all, fans would not be extending their stays in a city if the venue switched for the next round of the playoffs. Don't forget about having to invest time and money in order to travel to three different cross-country destinations.

Can you imagine the Cincinnati fan who would be faced with the prospect of buying plane tickets and hotel rooms for his family of five ahead of time in Miami, New Orleans, and Phoenix over four weeks, which he does to save money, only for his Bearcats to get shellacked 56-0 in round one?

That goes the same for the supporters of teams who are one-and-done in very expensive places like Southern California. One can only speculate that fans still bitter over last night’s loss would rather not ride the Tea Cups, but instead look online for the next flight out of Dodge and put their tickets to the remaining rounds on Craigslist.

2. The Bowl Committees.

Somehow this dapper-looking fellow gets to decide if your school gets to go to a $17 million bowl.

If you’ve been to a college football game, and one of the teams is having a good year, then you’ve probably seen random gentlemen (or ladies) rocking colored blazers with funky patches on them. Don’t be alarmed; they aren't members of a cult, but rather, representatives of a bowl committee. Each bowl has its own committee members who decide which schools they will invite if there aren’t already contractual obligations in place with a certain conference, e.g. the Big 12’s second-place team goes to the Cotton Bowl.

Besides the team’s win-loss record, they take into account the size of the fan base, geographic location, and estimates on how well the school’s fans will travel (and therefore, buy tickets). They are also in charge of finding corporate sponsors, renting out the game venue, and distributing the payouts to the two schools.

As you can see, bowl committees, with their lack of fashion sense and self-inflated aura of importance, have a lot of power over their respective city governments, as well as over the coaches whose jobs might hang in the balance based on their teams being selected for bowl berths.

With that noted, the effects of the playoff system would cheapen the value of all of the non-championship bowls. I'm sure the good people in charge of coordinating the Rose Bowl, once proclaimed by Keith Jackson as "The Granddaddy of Them All," wouldn't appreciate their time-honored 106-year-old extravaganza being reduced to no more than a first-round game to decide 6th runner-up in the country.

3. The Corporate Sponsors.

I don't think that logo has enough sponsors.

The Poulan Weed-Eater Independence Bowl. The San Diego Co. Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl. The Papajohn’s.com Bowl. The Kohler Wellworth Toilet Bowl. A shot of Jameson says that you can’t read these names with a straight face. (If you didn’t notice, the last bowl is not in the 2009 lineup--but give it time.)

The fact of the matter is that for 3-4 hours for one night a year, if your school is in one of these games, your ears will be overwhelmed by the sweet sounds of product placement—highly concentrated marketing at that. I went to the Insight Bowl a few years back, and I still don't know what Insight does or sells—but thanks to the bowl, I know the company exists.

God forbid a playoff system that would take away that beloved aspect of the bowls. (Then again, I could see the Domino’s Pizza Quarterfinals or the Hoover Vacuum Semifinals.) Because when all is said and done, nothing proves to the nation that you are a true champion quite like hoisting that Meineke Car Care Bowl trophy over your head. Woot.

4. The Administrators of BCS Conference Schools.

Nebraska AD Bill Byrne didn't complain when his school went to the national title game in 2001 without even having won its own conference.

If you took a vote, I bet that the majority of athletic directors in BCS Conferences (Pac-10, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, ACC, Big East) would be in favor of keeping the farce that is the bowl system. In what other sport could you pull the wool over alumni boosters’ eyes by convincing them that a 6-6 season is a triumph?

Unlike the NCAA Basketball Tournament, where the proceeds from gate receipts go to the NCAA itself, the Football Bowl Subdivision operates quite differently. Much to the liking of people like Tom Hansen, former commissioner of the Pac-10, the conferences themselves rake in millions upon millions of dollars in guaranteed payouts from the bowls. For instance, while Florida earned the lion’s share of payment for making the BCS Championship Game, the other members of the SEC still received a cut—for doing absolutely nothing.

For small schools, however, while bowls offer an opportunity for chancellors and university presidents to promote the school to prospective academic applicants (who have probably never heard of it until now), the numbers show that non-BCS conference schools—even the ones that make bowls—are often in the red when it comes to the football budget.

But as a display of capitalism at its finest, the shouts by the Toledos and Bowling Greens of the world (according to the Department of Education, both million-dollar budget losers) are often drowned out by the Ka-chings! of the cash registers in places like Austin, Texas, and Athens, Georgia ($34 million-dollar winners on the same ED report).

5. The Coaches.

Mike Stoops saved his job with a stellar 5th-place Pac-10 finish and a Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl victory for the ages. And yes, that was sarcastic.

Ta-daa! If you didn't think you would see coaches on this list, guess again. Contrary to what you’ve seen on ESPN, while many big names in the coaching field have denounced the BCS (and its predecessor, the Bowl Alliance), don’t you find it peculiar that it’s been around a decade, and yet, nothing has been done about it? Pete Carroll and Mack Brown usually save their Kleenex for this time of the year because they perpetually feel slighted about the selection process.

But while the coaches of Top 10 programs throw pity parties after getting snubbed for the elite bowls, remember that there are 120 total schools fighting to make 34 total bowls (and therefore 68 spots). Since no coach has ever been fired for taking his team to a BCS Bowl, take away those five bowls (and 10 spots), and that leaves 29 second and third-tier bowls (and 58 spots). The 110 remaining teams will fight for these 58 spots, and more often than not, the coaches that successfully occupy those spots will have one thing we all crave in this economy: job security.

Think about it. Making the postseason means the coach has the chance to finish the season on a high note with national television exposure as icing on the cake. In fact, if he doesn't lead his team to the BCS, he still has a 53% chance of making the postseason! That's better than half.

Even though he might not finish in the Top 25, not only is he seen in a better light by his athletic director and boosters, a title like “Purdue: Motor City Bowl Champions” sounds a lot better in a recruiting pitch to a high school senior than “Purdue: 7th Place in the Big Ten.” Let’s not forget the added bonuses in coaches’ contracts for making a bowl.

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With a playoff system and the abolishment of bowls, only one team would get the distinction of ending the postseason with a win, and a lot of coaches having mediocre seasons would be sitting on hot seats from Seattle to Tallahassee.

Of course, if you’re smarter than the average bear, you’ve discerned that all of these arguments still circle around one thing: cash. The bowl system is nothing but a big collective back-scratching money grab. If one were to get rid of it, think of all the job titles that would vanish into thin air, such as MicronPC.com Bowl Committee Chairperson or St. Petersburg Tourism Assistant. Better yet, think of the Athletic Directors and coaches who would have to find another way to spin a .500 season to alumni and the media.

Maybe the aforementioned playoff system would work if the rest of the non-BCS bowls retained their current format so almost everyone wins. However, due to the age of television contracts, the playoff programs’ slice of the pie would then be immensely bigger, and the others’ shares even smaller. Thus, because of the overall billion-dollar greed in an amateur sport (cue irony), barring a BCS boycott or serious media pressure on school administrators, I don’t think anyone will ever be brave enough to change the system, much less challenge it with any seriousness.

The bottom line is that the BCS isn’t going anywhere whether you like it or not. No matter how much I hate it though, I still want to travel to Pasadena on New Year’s Day just once and see the words “California Golden Bears” on a Rose Bowl program before I die. Just once.

The last time Cal played in a BCS bowl, there were 48 states. Yikes.