Hi, allow me to introduce myself. My name is college football, and I’m the only major American sport that doesn’t feature a playoff system. After a successful round of voting this past week in Hollywood, Fla., I’m proud to say I will be serving you the current “Bowl Championship Series” format until 2014. Don’t panic ““ there are bona fide reasons for maintaining the status quo.
1. I loathe playoffs. They are awful. Playoffs yield only one winner. One! Everyone else goes home a heart-broken loser. I can’t bear to witness such shortcomings of a tournament. Remember what happened to UCLA basketball last month? Instead of losing for a third straight year at the Final Four, UCLA could have celebrated its third consecutive West Regional Championship! Everyone could have gone home happy; but no, they had to have a single champion. By contrast, I’m able to send 64 of my 120 teams to the postseason, and ultimately crown 32 bowl game champions. What other sport boasts such egalitarian results?
2. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I’ve had the same successful format since Teddy Roosevelt was president. While I’ve preserved a time-tested system, every other major sport has been organizing and consolidating to form a league or system to determine a unified champion. These are the types of dangerous minds that need not tinker with my beloved and proven format. I was content with a group of media members watching a handful of games and selecting my best team in 1901, and I’m content with a group of media members watching a handful of games and selecting my two best teams today. It’s only been a decade since we added this “championship game” to appease a certain group of competition-hungry folks, so let’s slow down with this playoff talk. Thank you.
3. Money is the root of all evil. I currently rake in a cool $80 million annually in TV revenue from my BCS contract with Fox. It’s enough to pay the bills, but it keeps me modest too. There is no sense in losing my head and generating over $500 million to showcase some tournament like my little brother college basketball.
I’ve been informed that, given how much money my father, the NFL, makes from TV ($3.7 billion per year), I could generate even more than collegiate hoops. I refuse to let such blatant capitalistic materialism compromise my principles. The purity of college sports shall not be tainted!
4. My regular season is sacred. Because I don’t have a playoff, I am privileged to have the most important regular season of any sport. So what if the schedules are completely unbalanced and UCLA plays Tennessee, USC dukes it out with Ohio State and Oklahoma plays milquetoast North Texas? Mine is the only regular season that matters ““ if you lose once, that’s it, you’re out. Well OK, you can lose once and still win that BCS Crystal, but if you lose twice, there is no way you can win. Well OK, BCS winner LSU lost twice just last season, but that doesn’t count. Enough arithmetic already!
5. Polls lie. An ESPN.com poll this week revealed only 7 percent of roughly 40,000 voters wanted to keep my BCS system. Who do they think they are? Hey, the leader of the free world ignores polls, and so do I. I can’t waste my time trying to cater to what random fans want. What other sport offers 32 postseason championships? Look at it this way: Even unranked UCLA can end its season as a champion. Would you rather lose at the Final Four or wind up champions of the Las Vegas Bowl?
You can thank me later.
Yours truly,
College Football
E-mail College Football or Ben Taylor at btaylor@media.ucla.edu.