Entering the Playoff Debate

Everyone and their brother has been debating bowls vs. a playoff as of late. The latest round seems to have been a reaction to Ivan Maisel's article on ESPN.com yesterday.

The biggest fear from the bowl supporters is that a playoff will devalue the regular season. Maisel's article has two examples of how this could happen.

Example 1:

On the final weekend of the season, Washington at Hawaii received a 2.0 TV rating. An estimated 1.96 million households saw the game, even though it ended a 3:14 a.m., ET because the Warriors' victory all but assured them of an at-large berth in one of the five BCS games.

My response:

A playoff would have made this game even more attractive to viewers. As it was with the BCS, Hawaii was playing for a chance to get waxed in a BCS bowl. A BCS bowl that had they won, there was still ZERO chance they'd win the national title.

If an 8 team playoff existed, Hawaii would have been playing their way into a tournament where they would control their own destiny on a path to the national title. Now, they probably would have been waxed in the first round anyway, but we don't know that and certainly didn't know that when Hawaii beat Washington. A playoff would mean Hawaii was in the hunt for the national title in beating Washington, rather than a chance to play in a meaningless sideshow to the national championship game.

Example 2 (from Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese):

"Pitt played West Virginia in the last [Big East regular-season] game of the year [2007]. Everybody in the country watched the game. It did an incredible television rating. If we were in a full-blown playoff, who would have watched the game? West Virginia would have already won our league. What the BCS has done is, people who used to watch football in isolation -- the conference of their interest, the team of their interest -- are now watching it across the board because all those games have an effect [on the national championship]."

My response:

Who cares about the Big Least? A world where no one watches the final game of a so-called conference with no championship game is a better place in my opinion. If the Big East was a real conference, their final game on that same day would have been a conference championship game. Presumably, winning that game would earn an automatic bid into an 8 team playoff. People would watch that.

I have a whole lot more to say on this topic, but I'll leave it here for now. Feel free to disagree with me. I know a ton of people do, but I think those of you are wrong :-)