From: "Mike Holaday" <holaday115 at comcast dot net>
Subject: Playoffs, championships and all that good stuff
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 11:57:51 -0400

A question for you. It's my understanding that the colleges have
virtually unanimously resisted the idea of a playoff system for years.
Do you know whether anybody has looked into the reason(s) for that?

I have my own theories (natch).

1) Dollars and cents. If the colleges thought they'd make money with a
playoff system, we'd have a playoff system.  The fact that we don't
suggests to me that they've run the numbers and don't like how they
look. Or it may be as simple as the fact that we have a system in place
now where the rich get richer, so the rich at least have no incentive to
change, and the poor pin their hopes on snagging a minor bowl (50 teams
in bowls last year!). And there's this--if I'm wrong about the numbers,
and a playoff system would actually be more profitable for the
participating schools than the single-bowl-and-done system we have now,
it might exacerbate the rich/poor split to the point where the outcry to
do something about it could not be ignored any longer.

2) Fan support. The pool of fans available to travel around the country
to see their team play in post-season games drops drastically as the
number of those games increases. Most people simply will not have the
money or the time to keep going to those games, and the problem is
exacerbated by the fact that to follow a team that keeps winning, travel
arrangements will have to be made on short notice, during the holiday
season! From the school's point of view, the sheer logistics of moving
an allotment of, say, 30,000 tickets not just once, and with a month to
do it, but twice, or three times or more, with a week to do it after the
first time, would defeat anybody's operation. So your reward for winning
is that you're exposed to the possibility that the cameras pan the
stadium in the championship game and reveal a couple of dozen fans
huddled behind the team bench.

3) Coach support. Speaking of exposure, if I'm a coach why on earth
would I want to go 11-0, say, and then face two, three or more really
good teams before I can claim a national championship? My reward for
winning is that I have a great chance of becoming an asterisk? That's
nuts. Let me play one big game, with national attention, then declare
victory and go home to recruit. The point is, though the fans might
think a "true national championship" is the greatest thing since the
forward pass, the coaches know there is absolutely nothing in it for
them.

Those are my theories at any rate. Do you happen to know if anybody's
looked into this?

Mike Holaday