Last week, President-elect Barack Obama said on national television that it is about time for the NCAA to create a playoff system to determine a national football champion. A few days later, I read that Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff had suggested shortening the League Division Series to mere one-game playoffs. I liked both ideas, but if it ain't broke...
Shortening the playoffs has been an issue in all professional sports. The NBA playoffs take a full two months to finish, thanks to a system in which over half the teams qualify. In baseball, the playoffs regularly extend into November, which makes for unplayable conditions in cities like Philadelphia. And in football, there's a seemingly superfluous week off in between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. Of course, the reason that every league milks the playoffs for all they're worth is that they're worth a whole lot.
Each year there are four BCS bowl games (for which a total of about 400,000 tickets are sold) and another 27 non-BCS bowls. These bowl games often lead to arguments, as their purpose is unclear. But Obama's proposal for a national playoff system may ultimately go nowhere because so many folks have a financial stake in keeping the system as is.
For traditional football powerhouses, the bowl series is a gift that keeps on giving, even if their teams aren't strong. Many of the bowls are actually run by non-profit organizations that simply want to drive tourism to the city. Of course, we also have the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the PapaJohns.com Bowl, and who would forget the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl?
Corporate sponsorship is huge, and if the NCAA were to actually have a national championship game in football -- college football is the only sport that does not have one -- that would take away prestige and endorsements from the other bowls. The bowls also get to choose their participants, giving schools with name recognition more opportunities to play (and rake in money) than teams that are better at football. A rigid playoff structure could make for boring games that decrease fan interest.
This week, the BCS and ESPN agreed to a $125 million per year contract, which is $40 million more than the previous BCS contract with FOX. With that contract in place, instituting a new system by 2014 is all but impossible. Colleges, TV networks and the bowl cities all benefit from the current arrangement. The only dissenters are the fans.
The only sport I see changing its current playoff structure is professional football. In the NFL, the teams that make the Super Bowl actually lose money on their trips, according to The Wall Street Journal. The game is at a neutral site and all proceeds are distributed evenly to the 32 teams.
Unfortunately, media week isn't going anywhere. I have yet to find a purpose for it, but if it's stuck around this long, somebody must be profiting from it.
Some rules in sports have no rhyme or reason. Why can a base runner barrel into a catcher? Why can't a quarterback fumble when his arm is moving forward? But those rules are on the field. More often than not, off-the-field decisions are rational and are dictated by economics. I think this Obama character has some bright days ahead of him, and some of his plans just might not go awry, but I'm afraid that this particular call for change isn't going anywhere.
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Jeremy Greenhouse is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Jeremy.Greenhouse@tufts.edu.
