Bcs vs Playoff

Greed is Good: The College Football Playoff vs. The BCS

Robert Vincent

Colorado Technical University Online

ESPN, the “power five” conferences, and GREED are the true winners of the inaugural college football playoff, with ESPN netting over $300 million (“This Changes Everything”, 2012, p.21). The truth of the matter, there was never an interest in crowning a true number one team, the bottom line was money, bling, cold hard cash. Why else would a major university like Ohio State, with a horrible home loss to Virginia Tech on its resume, ever surpass TCU and Baylor, two smaller private universities without the national recognition? Despite the obvious glitches the new playoff appears to have, it can succeed as long as changes are made. There must be a way to take what worked in the BCS and merge it with what works in the current format, combine the human element with the computer polls. This would provide for a fair and accurate top four teams to battle for the national championship.

The entire reason the playoff format was finally adopted was because the college football fan base wanted to find a true champion. The BCS format had long been ridiculed for overlooking smaller schools, less revenue generating programs, in favor of the larger, more profit friendly, programs to battle for the championship. This debate raged for nearly two decades, how do we find a true champion, how do we find a system that works? There was finally an idea that most agreed upon, place a thirteen member committee in charge of selecting the top four teams that would determine a national champion. These representatives would not be former coaches, athletes, or administrators, they could be figures from outside the world of college football. The bowl games would stay in place, but, there would now be a true national championship game to be played. The BCS was considered so bad that this concept actually looked good?

The BCS had been developed to pick the top two teams at the end...