Congratulations, college football, you’ve killed the bowl season, a tradition that is only, oh, a hundred years old.
You didn’t just kill it, you hit it with a train.
The culprit, ironically, is the two-year-old playoff, the very thing that was supposed to save college football.
A playoff is what everyone with any common sense demands, but a four-team playoff is not enough and actually harms the postseason in several ways, as noted here previously. It will always fail to accommodate deserving teams (see Ohio State and Stanford this year) and places a higher premium on polls (the best guesses of computer geeks and committees) in the selection process. As a result, it renders the other bowl games irrelevant and uninteresting.
When you have 80 teams playing in bowl games and 76 of them have nothing to play for, you can understand the apathy, the poor attendance, the declining TV ratings. Blame it on too many bowls and too few playoff teams. Even setting aside the junk bowls, it affects interest in the major bowl games played on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
Of the eight bowls held on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1, two were playoff semifinals; the others were pointless exercises, the equivalent of soccer friendlies. The only games that matter are the playoffs. The rest are just marketing tools for local chambers of commerce and companies that sell corn chips, insurance, oil, etc.
At least eight teams should be included in a playoff and preferably 16. Not only would this ensure the inclusion of all deserving teams, it would provide meaning and importance to other bowls by co-opting them for the playoffs.
In a 16-team playoff format, the early rounds could be played throughout December, instead of shutting down college football for several weeks.
Which brings us to another point: Playing games in December might remedy another problem. Did you notice how many of the bowl games were dogs? Remarkably, all eight of the games played on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day were routs.
— Rose Bowl: Stanford 45, Iowa 16
— Fiesta Bowl: Ohio State 44, Notre Dame 28
— Citrus Bowl: Michigan 41, Florida 7
— Peach Bowl: Houston 38, Florida St. 24
— Outback Bowl: Tennessee 45, Northwestern 6
— Sugar Bowl: Mississippi St. 48, Oklahoma St. 20
— Orange Bowl (semifinals): Clemson 37, Oklahoma 17
— Cotton Bowl (semifinals): Alabama 38, Michigan St. 0
The average margin of victory was 24 points.
The closest game was decided by 14 points.
Half of the games were decided by four or more touchdowns.
It seems more than coincidental that so many teams played so poorly. Blame it on the ridiculous December layoff. The gap between the end of the regular season and the bowls is so long that it is like starting another season and it shows in the caliber of play. That’s the only way to explain how great teams such as Iowa, Florida State and Michigan State played so poorly after playing brilliantly all season.
No one could reasonably argue that the four playoff teams didn’t deserve to be there, so don’t blame the selection process. It’s an impossible task and more energy has been expended trying to come up with a selection formula than has been expended on climate change and alternative fuel sources combined. The real problem is that the four-team playoff format puts too much importance on the selection process and underscores the need to expand the playoffs to include more teams, who can then determine the champion on the field. Ohio State and Stanford should have been in the mix, and arguments could be made for other teams as well.
In the end, it added up to one thing: one uneventful, dull bowl season. To make matters worse, the powers-that-be in college football decided to schedule the two semifinal games on New Year’s Eve. That was a stroke of marketing genius, but only if their goal is to scare away customers.
TV ratings — the only numbers that matter nowadays — plummeted (as they did for other bowls, as well). ESPN tried to get the games moved, but college football officials — none too bright to begin with (remember, it took them a century to stop telling us that a playoff was a bad idea) — did not listen. After all, what does a cable TV network know about TV?
Change is needed for the postseason, but change comes glacially in the weird world of college football. As long as the money is rolling in — and it is — college football will be content with the status quo.
Doug Robinson's columns run on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Email: drob@deseretnews.com