The Folly of a College Football Champion

We’re at the end of another college football regular season and predictably the call for some kind of playoff to determine the national championship is being advocated by most of those who have easy access to sports columns or microphones. The complaint this year is that the two teams most likely to play in the championship game this year – LSU and Alabama – are from the same division of the same conference and have already played each other (LSU beat Alabama). Curiously, virtually everyone agrees that these are the two best teams in college football, but paradoxically there apparently is still a “need” for a playoff – Why? To somehow confirm what everyone agrees to? To give a chance for a lesser team to pull an upset of the better team? Isn’t the assumption and claim of a “national champion” that of the best team in the country? This contradiction is admitted (albeit unwittingly) by those desirous of a playoff. Inevitably, at some point in the discussion, one or more of the proponents of a playoff will point out, without hint of self-awareness, that “anyone can beat anyone else on any one day.” If that’s so – and it is, we see it every week throughout the season – then all a playoff (with four or eight teams) yields is the team who played the best (or beat a team who played the worst) on a particular day or two or three. Which brings me to my primary discomfort with the drumbeat for a playoff – Why do we need a “national champion” in the first place? The whole “best of” concept eludes me. That’s why I favor the bowl system (preferably the one from at least three decades ago, before there were 40 games spread out over a month). It admits that there are a certain number of teams that have been better through the year than most of the other teams and rewards those certain teams by sending them (and their fans) to warm-weather climes for laudatory games.

I write here of a romantic ideal, realizing of course that the driving force in determining a college football champion is TV and the piles of money that filters through it. Whatever makes the most money for the TV networks (playoff) and the NCAA (bowls) will ultimately win out. Probably some compromise of both systems. And that will compromise the whole mess. But it’s no doubt too late to hope for anything better. TV and its money long ago corrupted college sports.