The public has been clamoring for a playoff system in college football for years. Although Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee says the sport will likely never adopt such a setup, athletic director Gene Smith fears that a growing number of the sport’s policymakers are starting to accept the idea.
“Might it get to that? Yeah, because some people have that vision in our business,” Smith said in an interview with The Lantern last month. “Some people in our business want that. I’m not one of them though.”
Recent realignment has strengthened major conferences, including the Big Ten and Pac-10. During the summer, rumors circulated that some leagues could grow to as many as 16 teams.
New NCAA President Mark Emmert told local media before last Saturday’s Ohio State–Purdue game that the organization trusts university presidents and athletic directors to continue realignment as they deem appropriate.
With the burgeoning conferences, Smith said he could see an intraleague playoff format that would help identify which teams deserve the BCS bowl nods.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever get to a playoff like the public wants. I see a lot of challenges with that on a lot of different levels,” Smith said. “But do I see playoffs within a conference that could lead to something like that on a smaller scale? Yeah. So, when you get to those 16, you get to two or four conferences with 16 teams, divisions, that type of stuff, yeah, I can see that down the road.”
That setup would resemble college basketball’s tournament trials, where teams try to make their way through a conference bracket before the NCAA Tournament selection phase takes place.
In college basketball, Smith said, too much emphasis is placed on March Madness and not enough on the regular-season schedule. That, he said, is a disparity that college presidents and athletic directors must keep away from football.
“Even when (the OSU basketball teams) go win the regular-season championship, you wake up the next morning, and our partners, the media, they cover that, that they won it,” Smith said. “But the majority of the coverage is, ‘Where are we going to be seeded in the NCAA Tournament and where are we going to go?’ And we forget that these young women and men just went through a 29-game gauntlet and we’re worried about six games, because it only takes six games to win the NCAA Championship.”
The BCS system annually sparks controversy. Teams are ranked based on human voting and computer-based formulas that include the Harris Interactive Poll, Coaches Poll and various computer rankings.
One area of constant debate has centered on comparing schools in BCS conferences to successful programs in weaker leagues, teams such as Boise State and TCU.
What factors must be considered when quantifying a team’s résumé? How much weight should be given to each component?
Some argue that numbers and rankings determine schools’ bowl destinations instead of results. Smith countered that this highlights the regular season as a de facto playoff system, with a team’s game each week serving as a potential elimination contest.
The OSU football program schedules one high-profile, non-conference BCS opponent each year. This year, the Buckeyes hosted Miami (Fla.).
Smith said he fears additional postseason games would minimize the spotlight on these regular-season marquee matchups.
“I’m worried about football,” Smith said, “that we’ll get so trapped and caught up in this playoff, be it in the division, in the conference or out of the conference, that we’ll forget the Miami game was a part of the playoff for us. The Ohio game was part of the playoff, and so on and so forth. I believe the regular season is a playoff.”
In an interview with Lantern editors in October 2009, Gee insisted that a playoff system will never be instituted.
“I’ll say it again — over my dead body,” Gee said. “Mark that down — we will not have a playoff in this era — period.”
Gee said implementing a playoff system will place emphasis on the money involved with bowl games, not the opportunities for the athletes.
“It’s all a slippery slope toward professionalization,” Gee told Lantern editors in April. “It’s all about money. It’s not about the student-athlete — period.”
The views expressed by Smith and Gee are shared by many university presidents and athletic directors. But as increasing support for an altered postseason format spreads across the country, Emmert said he will support the consensus of those in power.
“The whole question of the playoff in the structure of the BCS was created by the conferences and by the university presidents, they’re the ones who are shaping that,” Emmert said. “That’s not inside the NCAA’s purview, so my position on all of this is if, I’m underscoring ‘if,’ presidents and conferences want to go in the direction toward some other playoff model and we can be helpful in that, we’re happy to do it.
“We know how to run championships, we run 88 of them. We’re very good at it. If that’s a role that we can play, great. If they don’t want to go that direction, that’s fine too.”
