Rece Davis of ESPN has it right. Right now college football has the most meaningful, most talked about regular season in sports. The interest each week in key games across the country is electric. The tension is riveting. Major League baseball just completed the playoffs and World Series, and no one watched.
Right now each game of the regular season means something, and teams that are 5-4 still have something to play for, a bowl invite, an opportunity to be rewarded and build their program. Longtime Oregon fans will remember how those first invitations to those minor bowls help build Oregon's success. They climbed a ladder with those first bowls, extra exposure, more time to develop players. Winning the Sun Bowl led to a Holiday which led to a Fiesta, and last year to a Rose. Making the first round of the playoffs doesn't have the same impact. The Blazers have been making the first round of the playoffs for years. It's a pretty boring deal.
College football already has a playoff. It's 14 weeks long, draws record ratings, sparks intense debate, and engages the whole nation in regional rivalries and the most passionate fan interest in sports. A playoff just makes the FBS a mini version of the NFL, where no one really pays attention until the Super Bowl except to check on their fantasy team and the point spreads, and teams rest their starters the last two weeks of the season.
This week Sports Illustrated has joined the clamor for a playoff, and LaMichael James is on the cover with TCU's Andy Dalton and Cam Newton. We'll hope the cover jinx falls on the other two, and it's starting to look like it's closing in on Newton already.
I like the bowl system with all its flaws. The computers and the BCS are crazy, but like it or not, the craziness has created the most closely-followed, hotly-debated regular season imaginable. Playoffs would dilute it. How do you get fanbases to those first and second-round games?
Plus, I take delight in the fact that the final will probably be Oregon versus TCU, and Boise State may wind up in the Humanitarian Bowl. Serves them right for playing Idaho in week 10.
Ultimately, money will decide this, and at some point a TV package will surface that will probably create a 8-team final. But it's hard to imagine it would be a more intense and exciting ride than this has been. Were a playoff system in place, the Ducks would be playing out the string right now, angling for a playoff, nursing a two-game lead. But under the current system, everything is riding on every game, and we can't wait to see what happens on Saturday.
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