Everyone is clamoring about how unfair the BCS is, about the poor teams that will get cheated, and how the system is bad for college football.

However, nothing could be farther from the truth. Let’s take a closer look at the BCS and why it was created. The Bowl Coalition was developed in 1992 and later modified into the BCS in 1998 to help solve the problem of the top teams in the country being unable to play each other at the end of the year.  By examining both the history and realities of college football we can understand why the BCS, while flawed, is a system that works while a playoff could DESTROY college football as we know it.

The Bowl-Conference affiliations which began to develop in the middle of the 20th Century to ensure bowl stability and prosperity greatly limited potential matchups. Only independent teams and those champions of the traditional basketball conferences (ACC, Big East, etc) were free to play in any bowl they chose. The major conference teams were locked into specific agreements and if the best teams were from those power conferences they would be unable to play each other.

So to fill this void thus entered the Bowl Coalition. In this BCS predecessor, an agreement with between several power conferences, Notre Dame and the major bowls (except the Rose) allowed the freedom of movement between the Orange, Sugar and Fiesta Bowls. Realizing they risked being shut out of the national championship equation the Rose Bowl joined the mix and the new coalition was renamed the Bowl Championship Series or BCS. Since its inception, the number 1 and 2 teams have met in 5 of the past 8 years and if you include the Bowl Coalition years those two teams have met 8 times in 15 years. That’s the same number of time the two top ranked teams had met in the 57 years prior to the creation of the Bowl Series.

ATHLETIC BUDGETS

The first argument people make is for a playoff to be instituted, similar to the type the NCAA has in virtually every other sport (including the lesser divisions of college football). While this is a perfect theoretical solution, unfortunately it doesn’t work with the reality of modern college football. Out of 112 Division 1-A football Athletic departments only a handful actually make money. These are usually the elite programs - Texas, Florida, Ohio State, Georgia that manage to keep their revenue above their expenses but for the majority of college programs the athletic departments are a drain on the overall University’s budget.

And to make matters worse, even the elite revenue making programs are not able to overcome their tendencies to spend money whatever money they have. In the two year period from 1998-2000 the University of Michigan spent $7 million more than it earned.  It seems the more a program earns the more it spends. 

In 2004-2005 Ohio State (the largest revenue program) made $89,700,979 in revenue yet spent $89,580,305 in operating expenses for a grand total profit of . . . . $120,674. By contrast the University of Georgia generated $68,787,384 in revenue while spending $44,933,055 for a total profit of $23,854,329. And on the other side of the scale from Georgia, fellow SEC program Tennessee generated $71,295,394, spent $71,783,012 for a net LOSS of $487,618!!!

But while Ohio State currently generates revenues of almost $90 million a year, two other Big 10 Schools, Indiana and Minnesota, generated a total revenue of $37,968,912 and $53,276,843 and losses of $836,320 and $595,248 respectively. In an investigation conducted by the Indianapolis Star, writer Mark Alesia discovered that only 9% of the 164 Division one schools in the US were self-supporting. The average shortfall for the rest of the schools was almost $6 million a year. The total amount of student fees, general funds and other subsidies needed to pay these additional expenses was over a billion dollars. So as we can see, the biggest issue of college football and athletic department is simple . . . economic survival.

Hidden beneath all the gloss and glitter of big time collegiate athletics and feel good stories perpetuated by sports networks and color commentators lies an economic nightmare. In the true American ethic the better managed and larger resourced programs have pressed forward raising their revenue to a level never before seen. And since these programs cannot exist in a vacuum, a form of athletic “welfare” has developed as the more successful and larger schools supplement the budgets of other smaller programs who reside in their conference. With bowl and other media revenue being split evenly amongst conference members, even smaller programs of the major conferences have a fighting shot to, if not make money, limit the financial losses they incur.

REVENUE

So how does this financial crisis relate to a playoff and the current bowl system? Wouldn’t a playoff raise an enormous payday for college football the way the NCAA tournament does? Well yes and no. A college football playoff would indeed raise a great deal of television revenue but that is unlikely to offset the net LOSS that a college football playoff would create.

An athletic program’s operating revenue is based on shared television, radio and bowl revenues (including tournament monies) combined with the lion’s share of its revenue . . . . ticket sales. A school that can pack its stadium, like the elite programs can, is guaranteed a steady stream of income. Plus a successful season is likely to keep or boost alumni donations at a high level and this money is used as part of the general budget (athletic programs regularly budget on estimated donations even though this is not guaranteed revenue). But not all football programs enjoy the kind of support that traditional football programs receive.

Most schools do not annually sell out all of their football or basketball events.  Their attendance is normally reflective of the success a team is having in a given season. A college playoff would devalue the regular season. Currently each game counts a premium for bowl placement and any national or conference championship consideration.

For bigger, traditional schools the attendance would probably not be affected even if conference titles became of secondary importance.  However these are NOT the schools that are typically struggling financially ANYWAYS!!! Even a small drop in average attendance could add up to additional millions in losses across the collegiate landscape.

Additionally the top programs in the country have several money generating streams such as luxury boxes, mandatory “contributions” for season tickets, fundraisers, etc, etc. These revenue techniques aren’t as effective for a school like a Tulane, South Alabama, Idaho State or Memphis. Most schools don’t have stadiums with state of the art luxury suites and couldn’t afford to build them even if they had boosters interested in renting such boxes.

When you can’t sell out your games the ability to hold fans and alumni hostage with high priced tickets is greatly diminished. Like anything, tickets have a value and that value is directly related to the demand. The less the demand, the less the value that schools can get for them. Here the football factories have an astronomical advantage over 90% of the other schools they compete against. Despite this there are still some schools like Miami and Southern California that have taken huge hits in attendance during years where they were not competiting for major bowls and championships.

FEWER BOWLS

A playoff system would generate a lot of excitement and viewership for the playoff games but most experts agree it would be a death knell for many of the lesser bowls. The BCS has already shown to diminish the anticipation of once important bowls as the Sugar, Orange, Fiesta and Rose if they are not hosting the title game. Bowl ratings are directly tied to the interest in the teams playing.  Schools with larger followings (Notre Dame, Texas, Penn State, Alabama, etc) would still maintain the advantage during bowl selections.  True college football fanatics might stay up till midnight on a weekend to watch San Jose State play BYU but a general football fan won’t (unless they are betting on the game).

As the bowl system exists now, in the 2005-2006 season there were 28 teams that went into the offseason with a victory. If a playoff system steals too much of the national spotlight (and college fans and viewers are just like any other resource - limited. Football competes with other leisure activities just as any other entertainment event would) the result would be that many lesser bowls that are not as financially stable would quickly disappear. The larger bowls would likely remain (Citrus, Gator, Cotton, Peach, Outback) but expect more bowls to fail than survive (Insight, Sun, Independence, Las Vegas, MPC Computers, Fort Worth, Emerald, Motor City, Houston, etc, etc).

While these smaller bowls generate a smaller payout, each conference still sends several of its teams to the bowl and the revenue is split amongst all members. Teams do not typically MAKE money on the individual bowl because of the expenses they incur traveling to and participating in the bowl, they receive the benefit when the conferences split the bowl revenue among ALL the members. The best team in the conference gets the same share of the total as the worst team -hence the revenue distribution or “welfare” system of the conferences.

BOWL ATTENDANCE

As great as television revenues are, a large portion of what a bowl makes is based on ticket sales. Corporate tickets, tickets to the general public, tickets allocated to the individual school, parking fees, concessions, etc, etc, are all part of what makes a bowl lucrative or unprofitable. In the current system, fans often plan to travel with their team to a bowl game at the end of the year. They might even budget for it ahead of time if the program is one that regularly makes a bowl. These trips can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars in travel costs in addition to the tickets themselves. In most of the current proposals existing bowls would be turned into tiered playoff games.

Let us speculate that the Alamo bowl is a first round playoff game. While its true this would in theory keep the bowls in the black, it ignores the obvious reality of a playoff. Instead of 14 teams and their fans traveling to 7 bowl games we now have just EIGHT teams participating in these same 7 bowls. And one of these teams will in essence play THREE STRAIGHT BOWL GAMES!!! Does anyone really expect the average WVU or even Alabama fan to suddenly have the resources to travel about the country to 3 separate destinations on consecutive weekends?

And this scenario doesn’t take into account that you have no idea of knowing how far your team will get in the playoff? Perhaps the top ranked team’s fans might withhold their travel plans hoping to go to the semi-final or Championship game rather than spend it on the quarterfinal game (based on an 8 team playoff). A fan of Auburn might go to the quarterfinal game but not then be able to afford (or perhaps because of other responsibilities) be able to go the next game a week or two weeks later. Local fans DO account for a portion of ticket sales (as do corporate sponsorships) but the fans that would normally travel to these bowls would be under much greater financial hardship. And heaven help the system if a team like Rutgers, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, Miami or Florida State (et al) were to go to the final game since they do not have fans that travel well.

RESULT

A playoff system would be a great event for the fans and a windfall for the upper echelon of football. When we envision the likely result of such a system further into the future, its probable that the number of overall teams would shrink as more schools would face additional revenue shortages and decide to drop to a lower division of competition (although those programs also suffer financial losses their budgets are smaller so the shortfalls less).

The long term effect could even be the reduction of the passionate college football fan as the main revenue stream.  The main source of financing then becomes television revenue which is largely based on the casual or general sports fan. In such a scenario, a gradual decline or even instant decline (say due to a scandal) could put enormous pressure on those programs which beome even more dependent on television revenue as their other streams of income have been reduced. 

 As the television networks gain more power they can dictate their vision of how college football should be and demand changes at will.  And as we all know, a television network’s number one priority is NOT going to be the welfare of the institutions or their education mandate but simply the financial bottom line and profit margin.  The line between college and professional athletics will further blur.

Athletic departments are not well run machines. They are usually run by ex-athletes and sports figures rather than business savvy professionals who understand finances. As such, they are rarely profitable and often stained with mismanagement, greed and graft. Despite this, their power is unprecedented in the overall University structure and the roots of their power run deep within the alumni base. So those academics who believe that college athletics can be drastically redesigned and refined are largely oblivious to reality. The system may be unstable but it is also an ENORMOUS part of our national and collegiate culture.

A playoff system would be fun to watch and would probably resemble a lesser version of the NFL playoffs. However the VIABILITY of that system (without having to reduce the number of D-1A teams) is very much in doubt. Currently we have a system that works most of the time and is VASTLY SUPERIOR than the previous system. A playoff, on the other hand, MIGHT generate enough television revenue to replace the other streams of income the sport currently relies on. But it also might NOT, it might dilute the regular season, imitate too much its professional counterpart (losing longtime fans), cause a financial crisis for an unknown number of D-1A programs (many of which are needed by the larger institutions who refuse to play home and home matchups with other large successful programs) and cause a general decline in a sport that, for all we know, might already be peaking in popularity.

Most casual football fans are playoff proponents because they only identify college sports by the scores scrolling across the bottom of their ESPN Sportscenter highlight reel. But for more entrenched fans who appreciate the tradition and history of the game, the subtle differences between professional and college football, whose loyalty is to an individual school rather than just to “winning” . . . . is the REWARD of a playoff worth the RISK???  You decide.

- As always comments are welcome. If you would like to express your opinion in our mailbag segment please visit the O&B Hue Mailbag link or email me directly at kelticgator@orangeandbluehue.com with your thoughts.