A quick follow-up here. I was listening to a Chuck Klosterman interview today and he made a powerful connection.
He said that since the CFB went to the 12 team playoff, nobody cares anymore about which team was ultimately crowned the best team - unlike the BCS and the four team playoff. Now, it's all about just getting in, and it has morphed into - as I have pointed out here and elsewhere - a pure television show and nothing more. Nobody really cares about the ultimate winner any longer or whether the process is legitimate to that end.
He suggested the media and fan perception now is to no longer view the playoffs as a proxy for excellence, just one for entertainment value. It's why there's so much concern over the match-ups but not outcomes.
It struck me that this explains why there is sorelatively little anger over picking SMU over Alabama. The public is tired of Bama as an entertainment product, even if they agree they are a more deserving team in the 12. He also agreed that the Big 10 and SEC will form their own tournament in 4-5 years and render this one irrelevant.
Adjectives are funny things..."better." Things that make you go hmmm.
It depends on who you ask and where you sit. If you are firmly sitting on a couch with chip dip and wishing Jolt Cola were still around, maybe. Maybe watching the likes of a bunch of superfluous suboptimal programs lose in early rounds offers some faux excitement and entertainment value. A successor to the 70s ABCs' Superstars competition in cold wintry January perhaps.
Bread and circuses do have their place I suppose.
But I would use a different adjective here - perhaps "ominous." When this unsubstantiated randomness to nowhere shakes out and the coffee cups and ashtrays of the Selection Committee are being emptied, at least 3-4 Big 10 and SEC teams will be pissed - justifiably or unjustifiably. Pissed that the likes of SMU, Boise State, Miami, Clemson etc. will be creating all that supposed excitement while they watch from their couches.
How quickly will there be seething phone calls to Sankey and Petitti demanding major changes and how they need to understand who has the power in college football? See, it’s one thing to debate who is truly elite each year – one of the four best teams. It’s another thing to tell South Carolina that they aren’t one of the top 12 but Boise State is.
Uh-uh.
The next steps seem obvious. First, CFB will get rid of automatic bids and reintroduce the computer to rank the teams from 1-12 to alleviate some of the upset and likely expand the number of Big 10 and SEC teams in the mix. Perhaps they expand again. That will work for a bit - until the two conferences expand to carve up the ACC in a few years. Then, they will announce their own playoff - Big 10 v. SEC.
The current charade will remain in place for the "other" programs on the outside looking in for a while. Sorta like the NIT Tournament used to be relative to March Madness. If I were a fan of the current setup, I would be hoping hard for some big upsets this year, or I might be reaching for a different adjective in just a few years when looking back – “shortsighted” comes to mind.
To say I called this on every dimension in August on your Penn State piece would be an egregious understatement. Here is a reader comment for an Awful Announcing piece discussing these developments:
"I thought this would take a little bit longer, but apparently not. People love their playoffs, and leagues/conferences/networks love their money. All those traditions and rivalry games and regular season conference matchups that defined this sport for over 100 years - look at how many have already gone away, watch how many more will go away in the next few years, and don't be surprised at how few people will seem to care. I'll miss a lot of the ways this was a regional game."
I received a lot of push back here and elsewhere for my warning flares telling the truth about how this would play out and the consequences. People are only now starting to realize what this race to the bottom called the College Football Playoff really means and costs - meaningless regular seasons, meaningless blowout early elimination games, elimination of historic rivalries, condensing a 5-month season into 1 etc. What you grew up thinking college football was - or meant - is gone in an orgy of money and “content” for a sports media that cannot and will not provide any perspective of just how bad it all is.
It's over.
Many will soon realize that getting at best edge programs like Penn State, Boise State or SMU into the mix simply wasn’t worth the cost of what was ultimately triggered. Going beyond an 8-team playoff – at most – is pure useless diminution.
But that is the least of the worries here. As I’ve pointed out, this power move is only an interim step. When the Big 10 and the SEC carve up the ACC when the media rights buyout gets more reasonable in a few years, allowing them to move north and south, those two conferences will move to their own football tournament anyway. There will simply be too many Big 10 and SEC mouths to feed and not enough automatic bids to assuage them.
When they exit the CFB Playoffs, the money goes with them. When you now consider that all these other ACC schools who don’t find life rafts in the Big 10 or SEC (Georgia Tech?) still must pay their athletes with far less revenues, the economics get scary, fast. Monopolization is the end game here - two conferences that get all the money. The Big 10 and SEC saw this future coming with the MOU from last spring.
As I said previously - like it or not…agree with it or not – keeping teams out like South Carolina and Alabama mattered this year. It wasn’t a smooth selection process for the Committee as was believed. Not from a numbers perspective or a projections perspective or even some sort of “right thing” perspective. But from a “it really pissed a lot of powerful people off” perspective. That in turn accelerated the only perspective that really matters here - good ole-fashioned money power politics:
“…The memorandum was signed under the auspices that both the SEC and Big Ten were prepared to break away from the current structure and create its own postseason should the other conferences not capitulate.”
A quick follow-up here. I was listening to a Chuck Klosterman interview today and he made a powerful connection.
He said that since the CFB went to the 12 team playoff, nobody cares anymore about which team was ultimately crowned the best team - unlike the BCS and the four team playoff. Now, it's all about just getting in, and it has morphed into - as I have pointed out here and elsewhere - a pure television show and nothing more. Nobody really cares about the ultimate winner any longer or whether the process is legitimate to that end.
He suggested the media and fan perception now is to no longer view the playoffs as a proxy for excellence, just one for entertainment value. It's why there's so much concern over the match-ups but not outcomes.
It struck me that this explains why there is sorelatively little anger over picking SMU over Alabama. The public is tired of Bama as an entertainment product, even if they agree they are a more deserving team in the 12. He also agreed that the Big 10 and SEC will form their own tournament in 4-5 years and render this one irrelevant.
Adjectives are funny things..."better." Things that make you go hmmm.
It depends on who you ask and where you sit. If you are firmly sitting on a couch with chip dip and wishing Jolt Cola were still around, maybe. Maybe watching the likes of a bunch of superfluous suboptimal programs lose in early rounds offers some faux excitement and entertainment value. A successor to the 70s ABCs' Superstars competition in cold wintry January perhaps.
Bread and circuses do have their place I suppose.
But I would use a different adjective here - perhaps "ominous." When this unsubstantiated randomness to nowhere shakes out and the coffee cups and ashtrays of the Selection Committee are being emptied, at least 3-4 Big 10 and SEC teams will be pissed - justifiably or unjustifiably. Pissed that the likes of SMU, Boise State, Miami, Clemson etc. will be creating all that supposed excitement while they watch from their couches.
How quickly will there be seething phone calls to Sankey and Petitti demanding major changes and how they need to understand who has the power in college football? See, it’s one thing to debate who is truly elite each year – one of the four best teams. It’s another thing to tell South Carolina that they aren’t one of the top 12 but Boise State is.
Uh-uh.
The next steps seem obvious. First, CFB will get rid of automatic bids and reintroduce the computer to rank the teams from 1-12 to alleviate some of the upset and likely expand the number of Big 10 and SEC teams in the mix. Perhaps they expand again. That will work for a bit - until the two conferences expand to carve up the ACC in a few years. Then, they will announce their own playoff - Big 10 v. SEC.
The current charade will remain in place for the "other" programs on the outside looking in for a while. Sorta like the NIT Tournament used to be relative to March Madness. If I were a fan of the current setup, I would be hoping hard for some big upsets this year, or I might be reaching for a different adjective in just a few years when looking back – “shortsighted” comes to mind.
https://sports.yahoo.com/this-14-team-cfp-proposal-from-sec--big-ten-could-alter-college-football-forever--college-football-enquirer-053451997.html
To say I called this on every dimension in August on your Penn State piece would be an egregious understatement. Here is a reader comment for an Awful Announcing piece discussing these developments:
"I thought this would take a little bit longer, but apparently not. People love their playoffs, and leagues/conferences/networks love their money. All those traditions and rivalry games and regular season conference matchups that defined this sport for over 100 years - look at how many have already gone away, watch how many more will go away in the next few years, and don't be surprised at how few people will seem to care. I'll miss a lot of the ways this was a regional game."
I received a lot of push back here and elsewhere for my warning flares telling the truth about how this would play out and the consequences. People are only now starting to realize what this race to the bottom called the College Football Playoff really means and costs - meaningless regular seasons, meaningless blowout early elimination games, elimination of historic rivalries, condensing a 5-month season into 1 etc. What you grew up thinking college football was - or meant - is gone in an orgy of money and “content” for a sports media that cannot and will not provide any perspective of just how bad it all is.
It's over.
Many will soon realize that getting at best edge programs like Penn State, Boise State or SMU into the mix simply wasn’t worth the cost of what was ultimately triggered. Going beyond an 8-team playoff – at most – is pure useless diminution.
But that is the least of the worries here. As I’ve pointed out, this power move is only an interim step. When the Big 10 and the SEC carve up the ACC when the media rights buyout gets more reasonable in a few years, allowing them to move north and south, those two conferences will move to their own football tournament anyway. There will simply be too many Big 10 and SEC mouths to feed and not enough automatic bids to assuage them.
When they exit the CFB Playoffs, the money goes with them. When you now consider that all these other ACC schools who don’t find life rafts in the Big 10 or SEC (Georgia Tech?) still must pay their athletes with far less revenues, the economics get scary, fast. Monopolization is the end game here - two conferences that get all the money. The Big 10 and SEC saw this future coming with the MOU from last spring.
As I said previously - like it or not…agree with it or not – keeping teams out like South Carolina and Alabama mattered this year. It wasn’t a smooth selection process for the Committee as was believed. Not from a numbers perspective or a projections perspective or even some sort of “right thing” perspective. But from a “it really pissed a lot of powerful people off” perspective. That in turn accelerated the only perspective that really matters here - good ole-fashioned money power politics:
“…The memorandum was signed under the auspices that both the SEC and Big Ten were prepared to break away from the current structure and create its own postseason should the other conferences not capitulate.”
Sad day...