Beginning at the End

Any conversation about the 2014 college football season must begin at the end. For the first time in the history of the sport, the national champion will be decided in a four team playoff. Creatively named “The College Football Playoff,” the new system will provide college football fans with more exciting bowl games, and more controversy.

This is how it is going to work:

The Football Final Four will be selected by a committee of 13 that has been agreed upon by the heads of the five major conferences. You might recognize at least a few of the names of the committee. Archie Manning, Ty Willingham, Tom Osborne, and Madam College Football herself, Condoleezza Rice.

According to its own website the selection committee will chose the top four teams based on “strength of schedule, head-to-head results against common opponents, championships won and other factors.” So in essence, they will consider anything, everything, and then some other stuff.

It is obvious that there is much to be determined about how this is going to play out, but there is plenty to be excited about when it comes to the playoff.

First of all, the playoff is going to provide months of exciting debate about who deserves the four spots in the semifinals. Starting in October, the committee will periodically put out rankings that reflect how they see the teams that are in contention, but unlike past years with the BCS, there will be no true way to predict what the committee is going to do. There is also no check on the committee. If for instance, they decided to put in Vanderbilt, Wake Forrest, Indiana, and Washington State who may combine for about 6 wins this season, then those teams are in and there is not a soul in the world that can do a thing about it. There is no rule that says you have to win your conference, your division, or homecoming. This system is going to be in place for the next twelve seasons, so at some point there will be some precedence to refer to, but for this season, anything is possible.

The second reason you should be excited about the playoff is that it will restore what used to be one of the most exciting days on the sports calendar: New Year’s Day college football. Just 30 years ago New Year’s Day was filled with big time bowl games that were on either simultaneously or back to back, offering fans an entire day of great games.

In the BCS era, college football’s signature day had been diluted with games like the Outback Bowl, Gator Bowl, and the Capital One Bowl. The signature BCS bowls were scattered over the course of several days, each one starting at nearly 9 pm and not ending until the early hours of the following day.

How does this schedule sound for New Years? New Year’s Eve will feature a triple header of the Orange Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, and the Peach Bowl. For January 1^st, the Cotton Bowl will be played at 1 pm and that will lead into the two national semifinals at 4:30 pm and 8 pm. The title game will be played each year on Monday night, which means January 12^th this season.

From strictly a fan point of view, nothing could be more exciting than 6 great match ups over the course of about 36 hours.

The other fantastic aspect of the new bowl system is that the committee will be making the match ups for all six of the playoff bowls. There will no longer be any limits to the number of teams from one conference that can make a playoff bowl appearance, and only one of the teams from a smaller conference will make it into the playoff bowls. For example, in 2007 Georgia was shut out of the National Title game because they didn’t play for their conference title. USC won the Pac 10 and they were playing great at the end of the year, but they weren’t in the top two either. The BCS placed Georgia in the Sugar Bowl against Hawaii and USC in the Rose Bowl against a three loss Illinois team. Both of those games stunk. In the new system, the committee could send Georgia to the Rose, or bring USC to the Sugar, or send both teams to the Fiesta. 

The point is that no matter where the game is played, fans are going to get better match ups.

There has been a lot of talk about which conference the playoff will benefit, or if Notre Dame is going to be given an unfair path to one of the big playoff bowls each season. In reality, the fans are the ones who will win.

In any given year it is nearly impossible to project how each conference will play out, and now, having to split hairs between a one loss ACC Champion and a one loss SEC runner up is going to be out of the question. As the season plays out, hopefully the playoff picture will become clearer.

Selfishly, as a Georgia fan I’m not really excited about the idea of Georgia making the playoff. Last year, or any year since 1998 for that matter, if Georgia won the SEC there was a pretty good chance they would be one win away from winning the national title. Now, you can go undefeated in the SEC, win the Sugar Bowl over the Big 10 champion, and then have to turn around and play a team like Florida State? The road to the title just got that much more difficult for Georgia.

Over the next few days I’ll have plenty of previews about Georgia, the SEC, and ultimately my pick for the first final four in college football history. No matter how accurate my prognostications are (or aren’t), college football fans are in for what promises to be an historic season.