Argument: Playoffs Offer More Suspense

Within the playoff system every game during the playoffs is a knockout. As such, every single game in the playoffs carries the potential risk of excluding the losing team from the remainder of that season’s games. This works incredibly well to build up tension, because favourites have lost to teams that were believed to be a lot worse. With history supporting this idea all players and fans are likely to feel tension during the playoff games which directly contributes to the enjoyment of a game. Further, given the prevalence of late game comebacks in American football, due the ever present threat of an interception, it means that fans are still likely to enjoy games even when their team is likely to lose going into the later quarters.

Further, the playoff system still significantly incentivises good work during the regular season. The top ranked team would face the lowest ranked team in the first round and gain home field advantage for being the higher seed. It is beneficial for both sides because under BCS, the second team has no guarantee that it would even be included and the former team would not be guaranteed home field advantage. [1]

[1] “Wetzel’s playoff plan.” Yahoo Sports. 7/12/2009 http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=dw-ncaafplayoff120709

Candidate 1: "Playoffs Would Earn Less money

BCS makes consistent money for the Universities and colleges that partake in the system. The issue is that, should a playoff system be implemented, it is likely that these institutions would seek to undermine it in order to simply revert back to the old system. Should they withdraw their teams, the overall skill ceiling of college football would lower significantly.

The fact that playoffs would occur during the Christmas period also means that owing to the cold weather at the time, the number of fans that would be drawn to the stadiums to pay money would be significantly lower than in regular season. The “Bowls” system makes sense because the only one near the Christmas period is the national championship which is considered high profile enough to draw a crowd. [1]

[1] Purdy Mark. “College football playoff sounds great but is a bad idea.” Mercury news. 8/01/2010 http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&amp;orgId=574&amp;topicId=100021407&amp;docId=l:1106674787&amp;start=23"
Candidate 2: "Under the BCS, every single game is important as losing the BCS is often catastrophic when it comes to qualification for any of the subsequent Bowls. As such, the playoffs mean that regular season games become less relevant as winning and losing only has an effect on seed and qualification becomes a lot easier. Further, BCS builds up the need for an undefeated season for certain teams to be able to qualify.

As such teams are more likely to give everything to every single match during the regular season under BCS, unlike in some leagues where a clear winner will emerge very early on and not have to play nearly at 100% capacity in order to win the conference overall. [1]

[1] Klosterman, Chuck. “No college football playoff, please.” ESPN. 01/02/2007 http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=klosterman/070103"
Candidate 3: "The practice of having multiple “Bowls” creates a system where more teams “Win” at the end of the season. Whilst college football is serious, it is understood that college teams’ players participate in collegiate events in order to gain the skills and experience that will enable them to join NFL teams. As such, the participation of talented youngsters in college football is dependent on collegiate tournaments being seen as fair, impartial and meritocratic tests of players’ and teams’ skill. Confidence in the meritocratic nature of the system is not enough to guarantee the interest of the best players, however. Returns on the investment of time and effort and opportunity that players engage in must be high. The odds of gaining recognition as a good player within the collegiate system must outweigh the risk of losing out on the chance to participate in high profile games.

In a situation where playoffs are introduced, only one team stands victorious at the end, the others lose and are inevitably forgotten about. This is incredibly discouraging for those players who do lose, and might cause them to drop out of football in the future, which significantly harms the NFL’s pool later on, impacting significantly on the national pastime. Deterred by the risk of sinking into obscurity, junior players may avoid participating in college teams altogether.

Further, the concept of playoffs often results in weaker teams defeating ones who have had a much better regular season. Ultimately this is less fair, as the side which consistently performs well should be awarded more accolades than a side that gets lucky during a game which happens to have been assigned a greater weighting within the BCS’s algorithms. Again, when there is an upset, the harm to the losing team is often greater than the benefit to a winning team that is likely to lose in the next round of the contest. [1]

[1] Davis, Michael. Kane, Time. “Would a college football playoff be fair?” Real Clear Politics. 12/11/2009 http://www.realclearsports.com/articles/2009/11/12/would_a_college_football_playoff_be_fair_96533.html"
Candidate 4: "Playoffs Result in More Injuries and Hurt Academics

The toll on the bodies of players in American football is much greater than that of other sports, primarily due to the high frequency of physical impacts in the sport. To be able to get through a season, players often need to play through more minor injuries and thus need fairly long rest periods between games. However, playoffs would all be run within a small window of time, meaning the accumulation of injuries would be greater and thus players would be more likely to risk much more serious injuries just to be in the championship game.

The quality of the championship game would suffer significantly because of this, but also players might riddle themselves with long term injuries that they could come to forget in the future.

Alternatively, players with an interest in their long-term careers would be likely to pull out of the bowl system altogether.

Further, football players often have to take a lot of time away from classes in order to play football games under the status quo. A lot of the time players catch this work back up in the holiday. However, this would be impossible under the new system as the entire Christmas holiday would be potentially lost to playoffs. [1]

[1] Scripps Howard News Service. “Florida president to push playoff plan at SEC meetings.” ESPN. 29/05/2007 http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=2885646"
Candidate 5: "The Bowl system results in a few incredibly important matches for players. As such, offensive coordinators for teams bring out every single trick that they have in the book to win them.

Every player involved in the Bowl system goes all out to win these events because they are the only televised matches that most players will ever see. Given that that is true, Bowls have a reputation for being some of the most exciting and spectacular matches of the year. The viewing audience for Bowls is disproportionately high because of this.

As such, the exposure for teams participating in Bowls is significantly higher and would be lowered if the resolution were to pass, the inevitable result of lower viewing figures for the individual matchups. [1]

[1] Klosterman, Chuck. “No college football playoff, please.” ESPN. 01/02/2007 http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=klosterman/070103"
Candidate 6: "Playoffs Would Not Benefit Fans

College football fans tend to have lower budgets than those of NFL fans. Specifically because there are many more colleges and owing to the lower number of fans per game, there usually aren’t deals on travel. As such travel between grounds is expensive. Given that playoffs result in more games being played it is apparent that supporters of the various teams will incur more cost. Further, if their team loses where they might have instead won a lesser competition, the supporters will likely be less happy than they are now. As well as this, when a team does win in the playoffs, the people watching that team face a very high burst of costs should they want to continue to support that team.

Further, if the fans do have to stay at home they will as a result be subjected to watching a game with a half filled stadium with no real atmosphere. [1]

[1] Purdy Mark. “College football playoff sounds great but is a bad idea.” Mercury news. 8/01/2010 http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&amp;orgId=574&amp;topicId=100021407&amp;docId=l:1106674787&amp;start=23"

Under the BCS, every single game is important as losing the BCS is often catastrophic when it comes to qualification for any of the subsequent Bowls. As such, the playoffs mean that regular season games become less relevant as winning and losing only has an effect on seed and qualification becomes a lot easier. Further, BCS builds up the need for an undefeated season for certain teams to be able to qualify.

As such teams are more likely to give everything to every single match during the regular season under BCS, unlike in some leagues where a clear winner will emerge very early on and not have to play nearly at 100% capacity in order to win the conference overall. [1]

[1] Klosterman, Chuck. “No college football playoff, please.” ESPN. 01/02/2007 http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=klosterman/070103
