Playoff hopefuls are far too familiar
Among college football’s many time-honored selling points, one of its most revered is the illusion of opportunity. Just about every university in the nation fields a team, and all of the players are amateurs, so theoretically everybody has a chance to win.
Lots of people love to pretend this is true, even though most of us realize that’s not the way it works. And if we needed any reminders, all we had to do was look at this season’s debut edition of the College Football Playoff rankings on Tuesday night.
Did the teams at the top look familiar?
Of course they did.
Were people surprised? Of course they weren’t. And if anyone ever repeats the hand-wringing talking point about how allowing players to earn a little money will mean that only a few programs have a chance to win?
It’s OK to laugh out loud. The truth is, no major sport in this country is more elitist than college football. There is no greater link between money, resources and winning than there has been in every version of the postseason from the Bowl Alliance to the Bowl Championship Series to the College Football Playoff.
Everybody aims for a trophy, but only about a dozen bluebloods have any real hope of holding one. That’s the way it’s been for decades. And no matter what doomsday scenarios are concocted by those who want to hold back the inevitable tide of players capitalizing on their own names, images and likenesses, it’s virtually impossible for college football’s rich to get richer than they already are.
Does anyone truly believe the College Football Playoff is open to everyone? As of this season, 130 schools play in the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision. One can make a compelling argument that only 10 percent of those teams have any realistic chance of competing for a championship any time soon.
Over the past decade, there have been 30 spots available in BCS title games and College Football Playoff semifinals. Those 30 spots were filled by a grand total of 13 schools. And in the past 10 years, only 10 different colleges have played in a championship game.
By way of comparison, the NFL has had 14 different franchises make the Super Bowl in the last 10 years, and that league features only 32 total teams. Even in an age when the Patriots refuse to go away, the NFL has seen vastly more parity than college football has.
Sure, there will be the occasional party crasher. But as Tuesday’s new rankings show, the regulars always will outnumber the upstarts.
Remember those 13 schools that have filled all of the BCS and College Football Playoff spots this decade? In Tuesday’s Top 10, only three outsiders (Penn State, Utah, Florida) were listed.
There’s a good chance that this year’s semifinals will be completely filled with repeat guests, and this makes sense. Programs like Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State boast huge advantages in resources and infrastructure, and when the right staff is in charge, those machines can become unstoppable.
But here is the thing about the changes involving name,
image and likeness that the NCAA now has acknowledged it will have to make:
It won’t be just Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State who benefit from this. Each of those programs already gets every recruit it wants. Each of those programs can play only one star quarterback. Each of those programs has only 22 starting jobs to divvy up, and only 85 scholarships to award.
They’ll be good, no matter what. But what if wealthy alumni at a place like SMU decide to get involved, only out in the open this time? Even when the Mustangs began this season 8-0, they had no hope of cracking the playoff barrier, because they were on a different playing field. Reforms involving name, image and likeness could help them compete in recruiting the way they (legally) couldn’t before.
Programs like Texas and Texas A&M will continue to spend, just like they always have, but those two schools in particular have proven that throwing money around doesn’t guarantee anything. If college football moves closer to something resembling free agency, it won’t spell doom for the sport. Instead, some teams will benefit from wise investments, and some will pay for poor ones, just like in professional baseball or basketball.
There will be, in a word, opportunity.
And not just the illusion of it.