College Football Championship on Monday: A Dissenting Opinion
The college football "championship" game will be played on Monday night between Ohio State and Oregon. After years of planning, the college football playoffs debuted New Year's Day. Before, during, and after, they've been lauded to such a degree that it would seem virtually heretical to present a dissenting opinion about this latest scheme to declare a "national champion" college football team. Not only was the chatter virtually unanimous in praising this new scheme, but the post-game viewer statistics bear out the real attraction of these games, at least for the semi-final round:
Assuming that it's all that important to declare a "national" champion in college football - and we'll concede that this seems to be quite important to very many sports fans, let's remember that there's always been a method and process for arriving at a college national champion. The sports writers and coaches of the teams used to vote in two separate polls, one conducted by the AP (Associated Press) the other by UPI (United Press International). Without dragging ourselves through the details of just how the voting was conducted, suffice it to say that most years the two polls agreed, and a champion was declared. In the few instances where there was disagreement, we had that rare situation of co-champions.
So what was the problem with this system? It worked for me and I suspect many others. Indeed the system of bowl games drew a lot of viewers because the major bowls - Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Cotton - typically featured one or more teams that were competing for the writers' and coaches' votes, and so played to impress. An attractive feature of these bowls was what is now a forgotten tradition: they pitted certain conference champions against other conference champions. For example, the Rose Bowl, known as the "granddaddy" of bowl games, always pitted the winner of the Big 10 against the winner of the Pac 8 (now Pac 12) conference. The Cotton Bowl featured the Southwest Conference champion against some worthy opponent, decided somehow by some Cotton Bowl committee. The traditions added to the interest in the games.
However, rarely did one bowl game feature two teams going at it head to head. So naturally, when calls for such an encounter arose, it seemed only right that such an encounter should be the determining factor in declaring a champion rather than the old voting system. I'm not sure whence arose this clamor - writers? coaches? fans? - but once unleashed it created a storm. And that's how the first attempt at a championship game came about in the form of the "Fiesta Bowl," which served that purpose for a number of years.
The result of this initial new scheme was that the "major" bowls weren't as attractive anymore. The whole traditional rivalry thing sort of dissipated and those bowls not longer attracted viewers as they once did. It didn't help that the days and times of the games (once all played on New Year's Day) were shifted around, such that you weren't sure when they would be played. In the case of the Rose Bowl, it stopped being broadcast on a major network (NBC), so you had to have cable to view it. As a result, with traditional rivalries diminished in importance, and the day and time and source a moving target, interest in the bowls inevitably declined. Fewer people really cared who played whom in what bowl. All attention shifted to the Fiesta bowl, a relative newcomer in the history and tradition of college bowl games. But that wasn't good enough either.
You see, the sports world has become "playoff crazy" over the last few decades. Once a brief screening process to winnow down the few top teams to ultimately arrive at two worthy contenders for the championship of a particular major sport - baseball, football, basketball, hockey - playoffs took on a life of their own. It seems that viewers could be attracted in greater numbers to playoff games - at least that was the theory if not the experience in every case, witness the recent Major League Baseball playoffs and World Series. Professional sports leagues increased the number of teams qualifying for the playoffs such that over time, the regular season games have become a kind of meat grinder where teams play strictly to make the playoffs, diminishing the value of regular season contests.
And so, inevitably, college football caught "playoff fever" and seeing the revenue that could be generated by such a system, has now arrived at the initial stab at a national championship playoff system, one that will use those major bowl games as the conduits through which teams flow to arrive at the ultimate destination. This will presumably revive interest in those bowl games, especially as the playoffs expand next year and possibly expand even more after that - a virtual certainty if viewership increases.
So the whole thing will drag on and on into the New Year, and in the end we will still most likely wind up with complaints from some that the system isn't fair and has not produced a "real" national champion, as was the case this year when TCU was not chosen to be a playoff contender.
I did watch some of the Oregon - Florida State blowout. I skipped the Ohio State - Alabama game, which didn't begin until some time after 9:30 PM. For me, the whole thing seems overblown and simply based on garnering additional revenue from increased broadcasts, in addition to the obvious increase in gambling revenue that will be generated from increased playoff contests (a factor hardly discussed in the media, but one which, I suspect, greatly influenced the decision to expand the number of games played in the playoffs).
Then again, I'm clearly in the minority. And while I'm sure no one cares what I think, frankly I preferred the old bowl games, the old rivalries and the AP/UPI voting system. The thing is, you can't make as much money doing things the old way - at least that's what they say.
As for Monday night's championship game, given the fact that the new system leave me cold, it just doesn't peak my interest. Besides, the game itself starts on or after 9 PM and as someone with a job I've got to be up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed early Tuesday morning and get to work.
The inaugural College Football Playoff semifinals, shown on New Year’s Day on ESPN, were the most-watched shows in cable television history.We can only guess that the championship match, scheduled for this coming Monday, January 12th, will be at least an equal draw. So what's not to like?
Oregon’s 59-20 rout of defending-champion Florida State in the Rose Bowl two days ago averaged 28.2 million viewers, ESPN said yesterday in a release, and Ohio State’s 42-35 upset of No. 1 Alabama immediately afterward at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans averaged 28.3 million.
Assuming that it's all that important to declare a "national" champion in college football - and we'll concede that this seems to be quite important to very many sports fans, let's remember that there's always been a method and process for arriving at a college national champion. The sports writers and coaches of the teams used to vote in two separate polls, one conducted by the AP (Associated Press) the other by UPI (United Press International). Without dragging ourselves through the details of just how the voting was conducted, suffice it to say that most years the two polls agreed, and a champion was declared. In the few instances where there was disagreement, we had that rare situation of co-champions.
So what was the problem with this system? It worked for me and I suspect many others. Indeed the system of bowl games drew a lot of viewers because the major bowls - Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Cotton - typically featured one or more teams that were competing for the writers' and coaches' votes, and so played to impress. An attractive feature of these bowls was what is now a forgotten tradition: they pitted certain conference champions against other conference champions. For example, the Rose Bowl, known as the "granddaddy" of bowl games, always pitted the winner of the Big 10 against the winner of the Pac 8 (now Pac 12) conference. The Cotton Bowl featured the Southwest Conference champion against some worthy opponent, decided somehow by some Cotton Bowl committee. The traditions added to the interest in the games.
However, rarely did one bowl game feature two teams going at it head to head. So naturally, when calls for such an encounter arose, it seemed only right that such an encounter should be the determining factor in declaring a champion rather than the old voting system. I'm not sure whence arose this clamor - writers? coaches? fans? - but once unleashed it created a storm. And that's how the first attempt at a championship game came about in the form of the "Fiesta Bowl," which served that purpose for a number of years.
The result of this initial new scheme was that the "major" bowls weren't as attractive anymore. The whole traditional rivalry thing sort of dissipated and those bowls not longer attracted viewers as they once did. It didn't help that the days and times of the games (once all played on New Year's Day) were shifted around, such that you weren't sure when they would be played. In the case of the Rose Bowl, it stopped being broadcast on a major network (NBC), so you had to have cable to view it. As a result, with traditional rivalries diminished in importance, and the day and time and source a moving target, interest in the bowls inevitably declined. Fewer people really cared who played whom in what bowl. All attention shifted to the Fiesta bowl, a relative newcomer in the history and tradition of college bowl games. But that wasn't good enough either.
You see, the sports world has become "playoff crazy" over the last few decades. Once a brief screening process to winnow down the few top teams to ultimately arrive at two worthy contenders for the championship of a particular major sport - baseball, football, basketball, hockey - playoffs took on a life of their own. It seems that viewers could be attracted in greater numbers to playoff games - at least that was the theory if not the experience in every case, witness the recent Major League Baseball playoffs and World Series. Professional sports leagues increased the number of teams qualifying for the playoffs such that over time, the regular season games have become a kind of meat grinder where teams play strictly to make the playoffs, diminishing the value of regular season contests.
And so, inevitably, college football caught "playoff fever" and seeing the revenue that could be generated by such a system, has now arrived at the initial stab at a national championship playoff system, one that will use those major bowl games as the conduits through which teams flow to arrive at the ultimate destination. This will presumably revive interest in those bowl games, especially as the playoffs expand next year and possibly expand even more after that - a virtual certainty if viewership increases.
So the whole thing will drag on and on into the New Year, and in the end we will still most likely wind up with complaints from some that the system isn't fair and has not produced a "real" national champion, as was the case this year when TCU was not chosen to be a playoff contender.
I did watch some of the Oregon - Florida State blowout. I skipped the Ohio State - Alabama game, which didn't begin until some time after 9:30 PM. For me, the whole thing seems overblown and simply based on garnering additional revenue from increased broadcasts, in addition to the obvious increase in gambling revenue that will be generated from increased playoff contests (a factor hardly discussed in the media, but one which, I suspect, greatly influenced the decision to expand the number of games played in the playoffs).
Then again, I'm clearly in the minority. And while I'm sure no one cares what I think, frankly I preferred the old bowl games, the old rivalries and the AP/UPI voting system. The thing is, you can't make as much money doing things the old way - at least that's what they say.
As for Monday night's championship game, given the fact that the new system leave me cold, it just doesn't peak my interest. Besides, the game itself starts on or after 9 PM and as someone with a job I've got to be up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed early Tuesday morning and get to work.
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