COMMENTARY
Former West Virginia athletics director Oliver Luck, having spent last season as a member of the much-scrutinized college football playoff committee, doesn’t entertain the cries for an expanded field.
He traded the headaches and responsibility of gatekeeping the football postseason for a job with the NCAA, which brings its own assortment of headaches and responsibilities. Before settling into his new digs, Luck offered a final opinion on the first college football playoff
“I think four is the right number,” Luck said Friday during the NCAA convention in Oxon, Md. “I think it should be hard to get into the playoff.”
TCU learned just how hard it was, tumbling from No. 3 to No. 6 on the final week of the regular season, despite walloping Iowa State 55-3. There arose the inevitable consternation from the Frogs and Baylor, but the team thatwedged them out of the playoff, Ohio State, subsequently made the committee look prescient.
Yes, an eight-team playoff would have given TCU another chance, and maybe the Frogs warranted that. It also would have opened the door to the undeserving likes of Mississippi State (which ultimately became a three-loss team) and Baylor (which apparently deserved a reward for staging three nonconference scrimmages). And where were the voices clamoring for No. 8 Michigan State to get its shot? (They were silenced by the Spartans losing to both title-game participants by an average of more than two touchdowns.)
Four is the perfect playoff size because it allows elite one-loss teams an opportunity to right themselves. An eight-team field invariably invites two-loss teams into the mix, which renders many of those drama-filled Saturdays meaningless.
That Ohio State-Michigan State on Nov. 8 would have held all the forgotten importance of a random Week 8 NFL game, seeing as how both teams advanced regardless. Alabama wouldn’t have needed its Iron Bowl comeback against Auburn to stay in the hunt. Florida State wouldn’t have had to navigate its string of fourth-quarter nailbiters.
Fans who scream for an eight- or 16-team field invariably point to NCAA March Madness as proof that expansion would work, but college basketball needs its second season because so few fans pay attention to any games played before January. College football mustn’t fight for our attention—it has us in its grips from the moment preseason mags reach the newsstands.
After Ohio State lost to Virginia Tech by 14 during Week 2, it took a dominant 11-game stretch for the Buckeyes to work themselves back into playoff position. When the Kansas basketball team lost to Kentucky by 32 in November, many fans learned of the score via text alert. Yes, by all means, let’s make college football more like its basketball brother.
And, please, stuff the counterargument that college football should mimic the NFL playoffs. I don’t know who the FBS equivalent of the Carolina Panthers are, but I know they have no business playing for a national championship.
Luck is right. Four teams is sufficient because football’s title chase matters from Day One, with only the best surviving. And a lingering debate over who the No. 4 team is? Well, that hardly qualifies as a flaw.