NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - No one concept in college football has more fans than the idea of a playoff system to determine a national champion. But the players who will take the field in such a playoff are probably running around elementary school playgrounds today, if they've even been born yet.
The current Bowl Championship Series system, run by the major college athletic conferences and Notre Dame, has a television contract that runs through the games in January 2006. And while the group will soon form a committee to consider a number of changes, including a possible playoff, a change in the next television contract isn't likely, said Big East Commissioner Mike Trangese, who currently oversees the BCS.
"I just don't see it happening the next time around," he told me this week. "I don't see college presidents banging on the table demanding this."
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| Miami's Thursday night victory over Pitt helped its chance of getting to a championship game, but not the chance of a college football playoff system. |
Another four-year television contract in 2006 would make January 2011 the first opportunity for a playoff. But the interests of college presidents, who are blocking a playoff, won't be going away by then, if they ever do. Trangese talks about the presidents not wanting the football players to have too much time away from classes or exams or dealing with problems that, he says, would be the unintended consequences of a playoff.
But the real force against a playoff is that teams, which know they will likely never play for a championship, feel it's in their interest to maintain the wide range of secondary bowls. There are enough bowls today that most teams with a winning record can get a bowl bid. There is a strong, probably justifiable fear that most of these lesser bowls would disappear if the BCS or National Collegiate Athletic Association were to set up a playoff system. And these second-tier football programs control the various conferences through their sheer numbers.
"A playoff would be disastrous for the (other) bowls," said Trangese. "The bowl system is not going away. It's too valuable to us."
But the bowl system shouldn't outweigh a playoff system that would likely bring in hundreds of millions of dollars of additional television rights fees, as well as give fans a chance to see more premier matchups.
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Neal Pilson, the former head of CBS Sports and an advocate of a playoff system, estimates that the additional playoff games could conservatively be expected to bring in $220 million in additional advertising revenue, and that pre-game and post-game time would increase revenue from there. He would see an eight-team playoff field, with four first-round games taking up New Year's day, two semi-final games played in prime time a week later so as not to interfere with the NFL playoffs, and a championship game, also played in prime time, likely scheduled for the bye week before the Super Bowl.
He said that despite network complaints about losses from high sports right fees, such an offering would spark a bidding competition between at least two networks. And that would mean a lot more money than the $500 million total that ABC is paying over the first eight years of the BCS system.
"I was at a network. They moan about losses. I did it myself. But they go ahead and do it anyway," he said. "A playoff would create a new major American sports event, and a lot of value for the broadcasters."
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So the schools that aren't going to compete for a championship would be far better off financially taking a slice of that much larger money pie and staying home. Going to a secondary bowl pays probably well less than $1 million and likely doesn't cover a school's travel expenses.
But the football programs that have suffered through a 6-5 or 7-4 season feel they need to have a bowl bid as a way to thank staff and players, satisfy and woo alumni, and recruit future players. These are understandable feelings, but it's doubtful that a bowl bid is worth the extra hundreds of thousands of dollars or million-plus dollars that might go to each school from a larger rights fee.
Pilson believes that the lesser bowls can survive even if there is a playoff system.
"They would be no more or less relevant than they are today," he said. "They're a community event, they provide charitable support and they're a tradition. That wouldn't change."
But if there's a playoff system, it's tough to picture there being two dozen bowl games outside the playoffs, the way there are 24 outside the four BCS bowls this year. That's a good thing, not a bad thing, however.
If college presidents are really worried about academics and time demands on players, they should be moving toward a system that has fewer bowl games and teams involved, not more. This is one time that letting the big bucks win out is also the morally right thing to do.
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