"Another wise person said, 'If isn't broken don't fix it,'" attributed to Notre Dame AD, Kevin White.
"A seeded model looked like a playoff to us. We don't think a playoff is in the best interests of college football." attributed to Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese.
This is what these five people think. Keep that in mind - FIVE people decided this thing. To them, the gravy train is chugging along and there's no sense in upsetting the known cash cow for some unknown potential.
Really? A playoff is an unknown as far as money is concerned? Really?!? Either these guys are incredibly short-sighted (a playoff system would rake in ratings-driven media revenue well beyond what the BCS is currently making) or something else is going on.
I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that these five guys are not short-sighted idiots. In fact, I'll concede, without having met any one of them, that these are smart people who, through those smarts and life experience, each earned his way to a BCS-conference commissioner's post.
So what is going on here? The true interest being served by these BCS commissioners is the exclusivity of their club. They don't want to risk a playoff, even if it were to mean more overall revenue, if it also meant having to share that revenue more fully across all Division 1-A schools. As it stands now, BCS schools can keep the lion's share (and we're talking in the 95% range) of all the revenue earned through this crazy system. I would almost appreciate hearing one of them come out and say the truth - "we're protecting a system that let's us keep most of the money." This is really what White means when he says "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." It ain't broke for BCS schools.
Reading Tranghese quoted saying "We don't think a playoff is in the best interests of college football" is insulting in a way that belies his insulated arrogance. Substitute any other major professional or collegiate team sport for "college football" in that quote to see how haughtily ludicrous the statement is. For that matter, substitute "Division 1-AA college football". And arrogance is the right word; Tranghese also said: "I know that's what a lot of fans don't want to hear, but they're not responsible for crafting what we have in college football".
Wow. Let that sink in for a minute. How many fans is he talking about? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? Compare that to the number that fancy themselves as the ones responsible for crafting what we have in college football - five people. Just five.
I thought tens of thousands of hard-working coaches and players crafted what we have in college football. I thought the devotion of tens of millions of fans, reflected through their donations, ticket purchases, and television viewership crafted what we have in college football.
Nope. Not according to Tranghese.
And as for the decision to maintain the BCS status quo? It's about the money. It's about who's keeping it all for themselves.
It's about five guys.
