When people think of March a term that often comes to mind is March Madness, the extremely popular college basketball tournament to crown the nation champion. Some wonder why college football does not have a similar playoff system.
The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was created to ensure that the top two ranked teams would play each other in the BCS National Championship. However the winner of the BCS National Championship game is not guaranteed sole possession of the National Championship. The Coaches Poll and the AP Poll, which are used to rank the teams in the BCS, do not always agree on one national champion. With the popularity of College Football, there should be a decisive way to determine an undisputed National Champion.
The majority of college football fans across the nation agree that there needs to be a change to the current system of crowning a national champion. One of the most notable opposers to the current system is President Obama. Obama is in favor of a eight team playoff to crown the national champion. During a interview on 60 minutes Obama said, “It would add three extra weeks to the season…You could trim back on the regular season. I don’t know any serious fan of College football who has disagreed with me on this. So, im going to throw my weight around a little bit. I think it’s the right thing to do.”
Although many fans want the system to change there is little hope in the near future. John Swofford, coordinator of the BCS, does not like the idea of changing to a playoff system. Swofford said, “changing to a playoff system would threaten the existence of celebrated bowl games”. College Football also has a new cable TV contract that makes it impossible to change the system to a playoff until 2014.
Even though fans may not be happy about the current bowl system in College Football, people will continue watching and following the bowls on TV.
Conrad Niblack • May 6, 2010 at 3:58 am
I have been out from the loop with football to much time. I loved it as being a youngster, growing up. Being from Texas, it was always the Cowboys. In those days, the heroes were Roger Staubach and Tom Landry. Eventually, after moving to California, I found myself from time to time rooting for John Brodie of the 49ers, but it was always Cowboys when the two came head-to-head. At this point, I’m retired. The stresses of due dates, personal tasks and endless errands have reduced. And I wax nostalgically for the gridiron plus the excitement of the contest. Yes, I will be watching considerably more football. You can bet on it.