Stewart Mandel - The Thinking Fans Guide to the College Football Playoff

Copyright 2014 Stewart Mandel
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1500102482
ISBN-13: 9781500102487

Table of Contents

A Preface: Why I Wrote This Book

W hen people imagine the life of a sportswriter, they undoubtedly gravitate to the more glamorous aspects sitting court-side for an NCAA tournament buzzer-beater, or standing on the Rose Bowl sideline as Vince Young scampers right past you for the game-winning touchdown against USC. Ive experienced both those moments and many others for which Im eternally grateful. However, Ive also spent at least a couple hundred hours of my life in hotel lobbies and hallways across America waiting for middle-aged men in suits mainly conference commissioners and athletic directors to emerge from a meeting room. Not that I expect pity. When these guys get together they generally do so at The Four Seasons in Dallas, the Langham in Pasadena, the Biltmore in Phoenix and other such luxury venues. There are worse places to kill time before returning to my room at the Courtyard by Marriott down the street.

Ill never forget the April 2008 BCS meetings, held that year at the Westin Diplomat in Hollywood, Florida. Typically, the other media members and I resort to chasing down one of the commissioners as hes racing to catch a flight home and sticking a recorder in his face, but on this rare occasion, the newsmakers came to us. Four months earlier Id written a lengthy story on SEC commissioner Mike Slives attempt to persuade his colleagues to adopt what was then called a Plus-One (essentially, a four-team playoff). He had the support of ACC counterpart John Swofford, while others said they were open to a discussion. Now, as we sat in front of our laptops around a long rectangular conference table, the commissioners entered in groups of two or three to explain why theyd just resoundingly shot down Slives proposal following what Id soon learn was a very brief conversation. The proposal was dead on arrival.

Our league is just not favorable to a playoff system at all and viewed this as a first step in that direction, said then-Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe.

The seeded model thats been discussed looked like a playoff to us, and we dont think a playoff is in the best interest of college football, said Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese. (Tranghese, now retired, is a member of the first-ever playoff selection committee. Of course.)

Slive, who first began his campaign after undefeated SEC champion Auburns exclusion from the title game in 2004, spent much of the session standing against a wall in the back of the room looking dejected.

By then the clamor to scrap the BCS for a playoff had been in full force for many years, and Id devoted many an SI.com Mailbag not to mention an entire chapter of my 2007 book, Bowls, Polls and Tattered Souls trying to explain why fans taking this position shouldnt hold their breath. But nothing I wrote could come close to conveying just how firmly entrenched the BCS was. You really had to be sitting in the room that day and watch this parade of commissioners so brusquely dismiss even entertaining a playoff proposal.

Yet four years later, again at the Westin Diplomat, the narrative had completely changed. Following three days of meetings, the commissioners had agreed to forward various four-team proposals to their conference athletic directors and presidents. Theyd even stopped hiding behind the deceptive Plus-One moniker. We have agreed to use the P-word, said Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott by which he meant playoff.

There was no turning back now.

By then the commissioners had already held three previous meetings on the subject, beginning in New Orleans the morning after a polarizing BCS championship game rematch between Alabama and LSU. Id been there to cover two of them, and Id be there for many more, first as the group formally agreed to the format (Chicago, June 20, 2012) and then, over the next two years, as they hashed out the various details.

All told, between January 2012 and May 2014, I had the privilege of camping out in the lobbies of nine different properties. What can I say? Some college football media members cant get enough of recruiting, the coaching carousel, realignment or 40 times. Im a BCS governance junkie. I have an unquenchable thirst for recusal policies, host bowls and revenue distributions. So over the course of two-plus years I gained a pretty good grasp of the ins and outs of the system that would eventually be called wait for it the College Football Playoff.

But I also realize that the vast majority of fans have not been following every minute step of the new entitys evolution, and who could blame them? They have jobs. And lives. Not to mention much of the discussion has been chronicled primarily in 140-character tidbits. Perhaps you remember seeing something at some point about the bowl selection process, but the next second someone tweeted a hilarious Photoshop of Jameis Winston holding crab legs above his head and whoops what was that about the playoff?

The fact is, for such a seemingly simple concept four teams playing a two-week tournament to determine the national champion the College Football Playoff is in fact extremely confusing, arguably even more so than the BCS. This realization first hit me when my wife and I had dinner with good friends shortly before I left to cover the January 2014 bowls. This couple were not hardcore football fans by any means, but they were aware enough to know the postseason was changing the next year. After asking a series of questions about the Rose Bowls place in the new system, the husband eventually said, You know you ought to write an e-book explaining all of this.

I thought, Huh other than the fact I have no idea how to publish an e-book, thats a good idea. I filed it away for a couple of months, but the more I interacted with readers via the Mailbag or Twitter, the more I realized how foreign the playoff remains to so much of the public. At one point I bounced the book concept by a friend in the media whom I consider to be highly knowledgeable about college football. I just get the sense there are a lot of things people dont realize yet, I said. Like the fact the selection committee is picking the teams for the other major bowls, too. There was a brief silence on the other end. Until you just said that, I had no idea myself.

Was that news to you as well? No problem. Im going to get to that. By the time youre finished reading this book, you, too, will be an expert in all aspects of the new College Football Playoff. Ill explain the rotation process by which six major bowls will take turns hosting a new semifinal doubleheader and the details of the new stand-alone national championship game. Ill discuss the trickle-down changes to the larger bowl system. Ill introduce the members and examine the process by which the first-ever FBS selection committee will conduct their momentous task. And Ill provide a glimpse into the differences in the new selection process by applying it to seasons past.

Feel free to send me retroactive hate mail for your favorite teams imaginary exclusion from the 2010 playoff field.

This being college football, you may find yourself scratching your head at various junctures. You may need to reread a certain passage a couple of times. Dont feel bad. Even the people that work in college football dont fully understand this thing yet. I hope my little book will ultimately prove helpful and educational starting with a brief history lesson.

What Took So Long?

P rinceton and Rutgers staged the first college football game on November 6, 1869. It only took 145 years for the sports highest level to adopt a four-team playoff. In the interim, generations of newspaper columnists and sports talk hosts have made a healthy living asking some variation of the following question: Why doesnt college football have a playoff like every other sport???