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My Division 1-A Playoff Soapbox

By Coach P | December 4, 2007

With the announcing of the bowl schedule for 2007-08, it’s time again for me to get on my playoff soapbox. The powers that be irritate the fire out of me by blocking a division 1-A playoff. To my knowledge, there is no other sport at any level of any sport that decides its champion in this asinine way. Here are some of the excuses against a playoff that I’ve heard. The ironic thing is that for a couple of excuses I’ve heard that supposedly makes a playoff not work, the powers that be have implemented something that contradicts its position.

It forces the players to play too many games. THEN WHY DID THEY ADD A 12^th GAME?! This year every team that played in a conference championship will play 14 games. If you went back to 11 game seasons and had an eight team playoff, even with conference championships figured in, the MOST a team would have to play is 15 and that’s only if a team came from a conference with a championship game AND made it to the national title game. Otherwise, they would play, at most, the same number they are playing now.

It forces the players to miss too much class. Stop it! First off, this means one of two things, either the 1-A guys are much more studious than the college football players at every other level or they just aren’t as smart and need more time in class because every other level HAS A PLAYOFF.

It diminishes the importance of the other bowls. Let’s start with this…there has ALWAYS been a bowl hierarchy. Even when the bowls had conference tie-ins there were always consolation bowls. Again after making that argument, they created the BS…I mean, BCS…and further diminished the consolation bowls. Then they created a championship game and diminished the other BCS bowls. With the scenario I will put in my next blog the BCS bowls and the 2^nd tier Jan. 1^st games would be made MORE important than they are now. I won’t get into my opionion of why we have 197 bowl games, but as far as the lower tier bowls are concerned, here’s a trivia question for you…who played in last year’s San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl?

Fans won’t travel to see their team play two or three weeks in a row. Yeah right! Let’s say some of them won’t. If 35-40,000 Ohio State fans were to go and watch

Ohio

State play in the 1^st round…brace yourself now…there are more

Ohio

State fans than that! Maybe different fans go to different games.

Well, that’s my soapbox for this year. Look for my next entry to see how I would integrate the bowls into a playoff.

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