"If this was a playoff game..."

Barry Melrose just said (about a regular season hockey game), "If this was a playoff game, we'd be talking about this one as a game for the ages."

This is more than enough argument not to institute a playoff in college football. If there were a playoff, last year's 34-31 USC win over Notre Dame wouldn't have been nearly as impressive. The same thing about this year's Florida-Auburn game or Ohio State-Michigan (unless you are a particular fan of any of those teams -- I'm pretty impressed by this year's Cal-Washington game, but no one else really cares).

Best argument ever not to have a playoff in a game that only features a dozen games a year.

Better championship options

I like the soccer model for several reasons, and the FA illustrates most of them: in the FA, there are three domestic championships awarded, plus several international ones.

The first is for the best league record in the Premier League; that team has won the League Championship.

Premiership teams can also win a playoff championship against either all the teams in the country, called the FA Cup. It is single elimination, and is one of the most prestigious and exciting playoff championships in the world because it includes all teams at all levels (imagine Mount Union knocking off Florida—it happens in the FA Cup. Heck, imagine Lewis and Clark knocking off Florida). Permiership teams can also win a championship against the best teams in the country, the League Cup. This is also single elimination, but is only played against the top two leagues. This cup is, somewhat obviously, not nearly as prestigious or as impressive to win.

The best thing about the combined FA Cup and League Championship is that to win the former, you have to beat teams from all over, including non-league sides (people who really do play for fun and work a non-sports 9-5 job the rest of the time), and to win the latter, you have to be the best in your league.

Very few teams win both: it's only happened ten times in England in the history of the FA (since 1871). But winning just one is impressive enough.

Bowl games are better

Everyone is telling me I should want a playoff in college football. But I don't want a playoff. And I think playoff would make things worse, not better.

For all the people claiming that the Boise State-Oklahoma game is reason to have a playoff, I call bullshit.

No one was saying Boise State was one of the top eight teams in the country before Monday, and Boise State certainly didn't ru rampant in those stupid ESPN and SI playoff polls, either (and no one is seriously arguing for a 16 team bracket).

And with a playoff, even if Boise State beat Ohio State in a national championship game, no one is going to imagine that over the course of an entire year, Boise State is overall an obviously better team than Ohio State, subjectively or objectively.

And it turns out, I'm not the only one: Bill Plaschke, "Playoff system really isn't needed after all", and Chuck Klosterman, "No college football playoff, please

Boise St.-Oklahoma

An interesting subplot of the Fiesta Bowl, which Boise State won 43-42 in what PhantomBear called "the most exciting 3 minutes of football in 24 years": Boise State's football budget ($3.5 million) is essentially equal to Bob Stoops' annual salary.

CFR is on the march!

College Football Resource is on the campaign against a playoff; in a frankly nauseating trend, Sports Illustrated and ESPN are on the campaign for a playoff. Who says the media doesn't create the stories it reports on?

For the record, once more, I'm against a playoff. I'm mostly against the BCS.

The ideal solution would be a system wherein, in the years where there is some contention about the best team (years which in the past might have resulted in a "split championship"), it would be advisable to attempt to negotiate a game between those two teams.

But most years, this is a stupid idea. If Ohio State had played USC in a traditional Rose Bowl match-up, no matter what Florida did to whomever in they would have played in the Sugar Bowl, everyone would agree that Ohio State was the National Champion. Last year, everyone agreed that Texas should have a chance to play USC, and everyone also agreed that "it wouldn't have happened without the BCS." The former is true, the latter is complete bullshit. It might not have happened prior to the BCS, but it could have happened in any number of other ways.

Honestly, I'm more interested in the integrity of the Rose Bowl tradition in particular, which has been shafted since the introduction of the BCS (moreso in terms of a excellent West Coast team playing against an excellent East Coast, Southern, or Midwest team than in terms of the Pac-10 playing against the Big 10).

The arguments against a playoff in NCAA are so numerous that it is laughable that anyone is seriously considering it:

1) Any appeals to how a professional team does it are based on the limited numbers of professional teams available in any league (there are 32 teams in the NFL; with those numbers, 16 games allows a reasonable assumption of the relative strengths of each team), and the professional needs of the sport, which in the US require parity above all else and so need a playoff system where any team, regardless of consistent athletic excellence over the course of the season, can "win it all";

2) Any appeals to how other NCAA sports do it are based on the limited appeal of any other NCAA sport except basketball: those sports can have a championship because no one particularly cares—and certainly only publish limited column space on it—if an excellent team is left out of the tournaments;

3) Any appeals to the distress of only having won a mythical championship versus a "real" championship are sad and pathetic, and don't give enough appreciation to all the teams before the BCS who won championships, or teams in non-playoff sports, or games or sports played any other way.

4) And of course, in the present system the season is the playoff. We had our initial rounds earlier in the season: Ohio State advances over Texas, Michigan advances over Notre Dame, Florida and Auburn advance over LSU, Arkansas advances over Auburn. The semifinals were in the last weeks of the season: USC beat Notre Dame; Notre Dame is out, USC advances. A week later, Ohio State beat Michigan; Ohio State is in, Michigan is probably out depending on the results of the USC and Florida-Arkansas games. Two weeks after that, Florida beat Arkansas: Florida is in and Arkansas is out; then UCLA beat USC: USC is out.

It could not have possibly been scripted better by a playoff committee.

We don't need a playoff in college football, we need better scheduling.