Lucas Gebhart
Sports Editor
The College Football Playoff seemed like a great idea at the time, but two years later it is apparent that it was a huge mistake.
On paper, it seemed like a great idea. Instead of having the top two teams duke it out for the national championship, have four teams instead.
Theoretically this would be more exciting and the idea was that this would go hand in hand with the New Year’s Six, meaning college football would have nine main events instead of the old BSC system which had five.
Two years later, it is clear college football messed up. Instead of the planned nine main events, the New Year’s Six plus the semifinals and national championship, there are only three main events, the college football playoff. The New Year’s Six does not mean as much as college football planned that it would.
Basically, college football traded the five bigtime bowls, Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta and the National Championship and traded it for three bowls, the two semifinals and the National Championship.
Although there is a rotation, if a bowl game is not a national semifinal, nobody cares.
The Rose Bowl no longer means what it used to, the Sugar Bowl no longer means what it used to and further more bowl games that used to be historically great bowl like the Outback Bowl, no longer hold any meaning whatsoever, not to mention bowl like the Cactus Bowl or the Belk Bowl.
Adding two more bowl games plus however many games have been added to the bowl season the last two years means there are teams that should not be in bowl games playing in bowl games.
A 5-7 North Texas team somehow made it into the Heart of Dallas Bowl. Under no circumstance should a team that won less than six game ever make it to a bowl game. As soon as that happens, you have too many bowl games. Bowl-eligible means six wins, end of story.
Before the playoff, every bowl game for every team was a big deal. Now with the playoff, the only thing that is a big deal is the playoff.
The playoff is essentially a shinier and fancier new car college football bought. It had a Lexus with the BSC system but when it inserted the playoff, it bought a Lamborghini.
The Lexus, now the New Year’s Six is still cool, but the Lambo, the College Football Playoff is cooler and the one all the schools really want to ride in.
Sure, the Lexus is still cool, but the Lambo is cooler and is now the cream of the crop, meaning that when the Rose, Sugar, Fiesta or Orange Bowls aren’t a national semifinal, they simply do not mean what they used to mean.
When Clemson won the Fiesta Bowl, it didn’t really win anything. It won a playoff game, like the AFC Championship, it is no different.
Clemson got a trophy and confetti fell on the team, but it wasn’t the one Clemson wanted. The one it wanted was in Tampa. Before the playoff, this season would have been a success because the team won the Fiesta Bowl. But it is no longer the Fiesta Bowl, it is a semifinal meaning that winning that game means less than it used to, just as winning the AFC Championship does not mean as much as winning the Super Bowl.
Instead of it being all about winning the Fiesta Bowl, or for some ridiculous reason the Peach Bowl, it is all about winning the national championship.
And since when do we all of a sudden care about the Peach Bowl? How much money did Chick-fil-A fork over to make the Peach Bowl mean something? Before this, nobody cared about the Peach Bowl. I get the Cotton Bowl being a New Year’s Six game, but the Peach Bowl? Come on now. I’m getting a little bit off topic here, but my point is the Peach Bowl didn’t mean anything before the New Year’s Six so why should it mean anything now?
While we are at it, let’s make the Meineke Car Care Bowl a national semifinal. That’s essentially what they did.
Back onto the main point now.
Auburn was 8-4 and went to the Sugar Bowl. This, people, is why the Sugar Bowl no longer means what it used to. This year’s Sugar Bowl was the lowest attended Sugar Bowl since 1939, why? Because nobody cares about it anymore. 54,000 people elbowed their way into a Mercedes-Benz Superdome that holds 76,000. Hope everybody is able find their seat without much trouble.
Before, if you lost two games you had a slim chance at a BSC bowl. But now a four-loss team getting into the Allstate Sugar Bowl? Are you kidding me? Before the playoff Auburn would have been on the bubble something like Gator Bowl and now they get a bid to the Sugar Bowl?
It is reason like that the Allstate Sugar Bowl has turned into the Pay to Participate Who Cares Bowl, no matter what Bob Stoops said about what that win meant to Oklahoma.
Whatever he said, he is lying. We all know that Stoops would have much rather gone to Atlanta so he could ride in the Lambo to play in the We’re Trying to Pretend This is a Big Deal Peach Bowl.
A loss in the semifinal is now considered a more successful season than winning the Cotton Bowl. Ask Wisconsin behind closed doors if the team would rather have won the Cotton Bowl or lost in the Fiesta Bowl.
They will probably say losing in the Fiesta Bowl because everybody knows that Lambos are cooler than Lexus.
