Okay, here it is.
Jerry Maguire once wrote a mission statement -- "it's not a memo" -- and his career derailed as a result. But that was a movie, and this is real life.
I woke up (before my alarm) at 6am on Friday morning so that I could get into a rental car in my in-laws' driveway in the glorious (and frigid) Berkshires of Massachusetts, get lost, and then eventually find my way to the airport in Albany, New York. From there, I flew to Charlotte, spent four hours on a layover, wrote my scripts for the Sun Sports pregame show prior to the UF-FSU game, and then hopped a puddle-jumper to rainy Tallahassee. Now, I'm in a hotel room, about to crash after several days of non-sleep, having seen the hottest team in college football wipe out the Seminoles on the road, after which I ate some barbecue and enjoyed a hellaciously good Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game on TV.
Seriously. This is my life, in a nutshell. Still think it's glamorous? Meh.
So here's the point: no matter what happens tonight, or this season, our prospects of determining a true national champion in D-I college football -- via a playoff -- are not good. And it's partially your fault. Not entirely your fault, but partially.
Stick with me.
Rather than start from the beginning, which, like strikeouts, is boring and fascist, let's start at the end -- how important is it to you, really, to crown a true national champion in D-I football?
Take a moment, please, and ponder that question without bias or predisposition. What are the costs and benefits? Put another way: what are you willing to give up to get there?
Consider this a negotiation, and here's where I'm coming from: I'm in a hotel about two minutes off the interstate in otherwise sleepy Tallahassee, and every room is booked for the entire weekend. The TGI Fridays next door was a zoo on Friday night. We're in the middle of nowhere -- and this might as well be Stillwater, or Austin, or Lubbock, or Gainesville -- and the place is packed. All for a regular-season college football game that meant absolutely nothing to either team in terms of conference play.
So why are we here?
Because it was UF-FSU. It's a big damn deal. For bragging rights, and conversations at the bar, and fun. For hype. For chatter. But not for any national title, unless you count Florida's chances of reaching the BCS title game.
Because it's a rivalry game. It's the kind of game that moneyed alumni savor. It's the kind of game that compels a group of well-heeled attorneys and mediators to spend God-knows-how-much on tickets, hire a private plane, and fly from Orlando to Tallahassee to sit in a parking lot and wait for the rain to stop, which it never did. But they were thrilled to be here. By the way, I just described my parents.
And that notion -- spread out to Stillwater, or Austin, or Lubbock, or Gainesville -- is the reason why we'll never see a playoff in our lifetimes.
Now, most of us will never travel to a game in that fashion. Most of us (who aren't working at the game, as I did today) will scrimp and save and reserve our weekends just to make it back to campus for one special regular-season game, so that we might enjoy the spirited atmosphere of a home college football weekend. We'll e-mail our friends and ask if we might see them there; we'll come home with tall tales about who we saw, and what the noise was like, and how great it was to see the X's beat the hell out of the Y's. We relish these opportunities to create memories.
But those moneyed boosters? The ones who, sorry to say, really drive college football? The ones who get their names on buildings, roads, and stadiums? They REALLY love these weekends. It's the center of their social and business lives. They glad-hand with the AD's, and get swooped and dived upon, and sit in spacious suites and feel a connection to these young student-athletes who have little idea who they are. Doesn't matter -- it's special. It's emotional. It's visceral.
Now: what if, instead of playing for a conference championship or a bowl berth -- two antiquated notions that nonetheless appeal to the old money that makes college football the most truly passionate sport in America -- what if these teams were duking it out for a berth in a 16-team ladder? Would these weekends have the same appeal?
If you're reading this, you're probably not T. Boone Pickens or Bill Heavener, so let me ask it another way -- would you spend your entire year planning ahead for UF-FSU if you knew that the outcome had little effect on either team's chances at winning a national championship, positively or negatively? If the goal was not a perfect season, or a berth in the SEC or ACC Championship game, would you care as much?
If you're being honest with yourself, the answer is unequivocally "no." And the university athletic associations, AD's, and television networks who profit dramatically from conference title games and bowl games know it. The sports talk radio hosts who drive our conversation know it. The buildup, the hype, the "what if" that precedes every big college football weekend is incredibly powerful. It's the essence of college football today. The result of the game is almost immaterial -- the hours of chatter that precede the game are what define the game as we know it. And a playoff, though it would produce a true national champion and end the arguments about "who would beat who" definitively, would render all of that irrelevant.
And that, friends, is why we'll never see a playoff in our lifetimes. Ever.
Money, as always, talks. True, a playoff ladder would produce incredible TV ratings, but not at the level of what regular season games, conference title games, and bowl games can produce. And that's why the playoff talk is just talk.
Unless.
Unless you're willing to vote with your pocketbook. If you really think that the endgame of college football should be a true, unanimous national champion, you must be willing to give up some of the warm-fuzzy feeling that college football's regular season produces every weekend. If you're willing to donate those memories, a playoff is a real possibility.
So: are you ready? Do you really want it? Enough to render bowl trips irrelevant? Enough to make regular-season games, like tonight's OU-OSU thriller, a mere rest stop on the highway to a true national championship game? Are you willing to refuse to book airline travel, hotel, dinner reservations, and tickets to the Whatever Bowl in mid-December in an effort to throw your support to a playoff?
Are you ready? Is that what you want? Or do you enjoy the experience of college football too much?
I think I know the answer. The concept that there's a 'demand' for a playoff is a myth, as long as regular-season games continue to sell out and wealthy boosters keep putting their names on buildings. They ain't naming stuff for playoff teams; they're naming stuff for wins over rivals, conference championships, and bowl wins. They're naming stuff for memories and sentiment.
Television networks draw weeks upon weeks of eyeballs and sponsorship dollars through building up regular-season meetings that may or may not end a team's mythical national championship hopes. Money, as always, talks.
And the money is in regular-season games, conference championship games, and bowl trips. Those opportunities are far more inclusive than any playoff ladder, no matter how many teams get in. One hundred and nineteen D-I football programs; sixteen, eight, or four playoff teams. Which concept wins?
Be careful what you wish for. And enjoy your weekend in Atlanta, or Tampa, or somewhere. As long as you continue to relish those experiences, a playoff moves farther and farther away.
Labels: college football
