Six Dumb-Ass Arguments Against College Football Playoffs

The bowls are over. College football is gone for another year and so are the NFL playoffs. It’s funny we should mention playoffs. Like the delightfully annoying Jim Mora Coors Lite commercial, it seems to be a sore topic of conversation with some dyed-in-the-wool college football traditionalists. Following are the six arguments you will most often hear against college football playoffs. And yes, they all deserve the “dumb-ass” billing.

1. Rivalries Wouldn’t Mean Anything

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard blinded, unrealistic university fanboys use this one. Apparently, the allure of Oklahoma – Oklahoma State, USC – UCLA, Alabama – Auburn, or Texas – Oklahoma has gone clear to their heads and poisoned their pea-sized brains. When is the last time Colorado – Nebraska, Kansas – Kansas State, or Ohio State – Penn State ever determined a national championship?

The truth of the matter is that no champion will ever be crowned via Red River Rivalry and while these games do mean a lot of things to a lot of people, they are already pretty meaningless to the big picture. Their only real importance lies in history and school or state pride. In other words: bragging rights. This is what’s holding up a true national champion? Get over yourselves. All the drivel that drives this mistaken sense of self-importance is a roadblock to true progress and all the same crap your rivalries stand for now won’t be going any place, with or without a playoff system.

2. Seasons Would Last Too Long

Yes, seasons would last too long…or would they? That depends on your lack of foresight, really. We’re not talking about a 64-team playoff, we’re talking about condensing it down to the ones that truly deserve to be there. You’ll get much fewer arguments over a 16-team playoff system than you will the current monstrosity that is the Bowl Championship Series. There are a number of ways you can do it:

1. Restructure all 120 college football teams into eight super-conferences featuring two divisions each. Keep the conference championship games. Require eight division games and four non-conference games to match the 12-game season we have now. Play a conference championship game at the end of the regular season. Begin a tournament among the eight conference champions. Problem solved.
2. Do what Yahoo sports writer Dan Wetzel suggested and give a bye to the eleven conference champions currently out there and the five best at large teams.
3. Take the Top 16 at the end of the season and hold a single-elimination tournament. In summation, anything is better than what we’ve had the last three seasons – two or more deserving teams left standing at the end of the year.

3. Players Would Not Have Time for Academics

This is only a good argument if you assume two things:

1. Fourteen weeks of regular season play doesn’t affect their studies.
2. College football players are more than a little retarded in all but the physical sense of the word.

What the hell do you think they do during the regular season? They balance athletic motivation with academic responsibility. It’s unfair to think student athletes sleep through bowling and basket weaving classes all day until it’s time to attend practice. Give these kids some credit. Yes, there are some rock-heads suiting up on Saturdays. No amount of preparation time you give these kids is going to make them any smarter. Newsflash: if a kid has stumbled through the regular season without ever cracking open a book, he has more than finals to worry about, but the vast majority has a bright future with or without the NFL.

4. Someone Would Get Left Out

Of course! Brilliant! Because that doesn’t happen now! ::Cough:: Two years for Utah, two years for Boise State, and any two-loss team the year LSU claimed the national title as one of their brethren, ::cough, cough::. No idea how to combat this one, so let’s move on!

5. The Bowl Legacy Would be Ruined

You disappoint me, my brain-dead grasshopper. How could the bowl legacy be any less than what it is currently? As a follower of the Arkansas Razorbacks, a team that squeaked out a three-point overtime victory in the 2010 Liberty Bowl over Conference USA Champion East Carolina, I can readily admit that there was no joy or pride to be had sitting through that ass-end ugly eyesore of a football game. It only accomplished two things:

1. It revealed to me how mediocre of a team my Razorbacks really were this year.
2. It showed Conference USA for the glorified high school football regime it truly is.

And while I did enjoy the privilege of watching Eddie Money lip sync an amalgam of his greatest hits on a horse trailer for eight and a half minutes, I found little joy in freezing my ass solid, or getting taken by the Liberty Bowl front offices and the Memphis Police Department for selling me a $30 parking pass and muscling me out of my rightfully deserved spot, respectively. Some legacy.

6. Too Much Money in the Bowls

I can agree the bowls make too much money – more than deserved, anyway – but is that really a reason not to decide a true champion on the playing field? Certainly not! The worst thing about all of this is that there could be so much more money in a fair and balanced playoff system (excuse me for sounding a little Fox News-ish there). Just ask the NFL how much their playoff sponsors pay, or about their seven-figure deals for a thirty-second commercial slot.

College football could command just as much in advertising revenue, if not more. There is a reason the National Football League is the most successful and expertly run sports organization in the United States and arguably, the world. They more often than not give the fans what they want and the players what they deserve. Since anything can happen on any given Sunday (just ask the once dismal Arizona Cardinals), the NFL makes it possible for championships to be earned, legends to be born and history to be made.

The real argument of “too much money in the bowls” is that there is too much money in the bowls for a very small, very select group of schools that are terrified they will be out-recruited and outplayed. So, the fair thing to do is stifle growth and opportunity for the Utahs and Boise States of the world. Good thinking, NCAA – nothing fairer than that!

I’ve started to give up hope that college football playoffs will ever happen. It’s hard for me to care about the national title game anymore when there is a routinely deserving unbeaten team left out holding their jockstraps at the end of each year. Unfortunately, this is one subject where the old hopeful saying, “maybe next year,” will never apply.