On College Football Playoffs

The Sports Economist on college football playoffs. I'm not really that keen on a playoff system. Yes, the whole bowl thing is broken. It's obviously brokered to maximize TV revenue. It results in these long 6, 7, 8 week gaps between games for teams, which I think is a big cause of all the one-sided games we've seen in the last few years. Bowls are screwy. Conceded.

But I don't see how playoffs would make any of the problems of the bowl games that much better. You'd have all the same arguments about who's seeded where, and scheduled to play whom and where, and who the at-large selections are, and whether conference championship or overall record should matter more. It would end up being put together in the same profit maximizing, back room deals that everyone claims to hate. You'd get the same arguments at the bars and on the talk shows. Even after the games played out you'd have disputes about whether the team that won the title game was really the best, most deserving team. I mean, it's only a matter of time before some 10-3 team gets a streak of 2 or 3 lucky games in the playoffs and knocks off that heretofore undefeated team that had been #1 all year long, and you're forced to crown a three loss team champion over a team with one loss.