Playing favorites

I haven't followed college football very closely for a few years, but since joining friends to see the Oregon/Stanford game a few weeks back, I have been paying more attention. On Friday night I watched the Boise State Broncos bring the hammer down on Fresno State, 51 - 0.  The all-orange uniforms and blue turf might be a little intimidating to a visiting opponent, but from what I've heard, Fresno State is a decent team.  In addition to some great stories, like that of Boise State, I have unfortunately found that the reason I stopped caring about college football a while back still persists: no playoffs.

College football is in a different situation than, say, Major League Baseball.  MLB has a 162-game season before the playoffs, so you have a pretty good idea of the quality of each team.  In college football, you have the opposite: 160+ schools and only an 11 or 12 game season to sort out relative quality before the bowl games begin.  To address this, college football ranks its teams by polling coaches, media members and through a computer formula.  This is understandable, as they need some way to differentiate teams.  However, college football also decided that this hierarchy should be biased in favor of certain teams- those from the largest schools with the largest media markets.  And we accept it. Would fans tolerate an NFL game where the referees would only call penalties on the visiting team?  What about a MLB game where one team used aluminum bats and the other wood?  (Yes, we have the DH rule, but that's for another rant)  We've all heard sportscasters say "that's why they play the game"- the idea that, at the start of the game, each team has an equal chance of winning.  You don't know what's going to happen on the field.  How can fans place any credibility in a sport that slants the rules against certain teams? 

A playoff system would not completely solve college football's credibility problem.  With so many teams, you would still need a ranking system to figure out which teams participate in the playoff games, and there would always be an argument about who gets in and who's left out.   But whether you have a four or eight team playoff, the best clubs in the country would match up on the field, not in a formula- and I think that's all we need. A coach should be able to stand in front of his team at the beginning of the season and tell them "Win all your games and you'll have the chance to play for the title."  Chris Petersen, the coach of the Boise State Broncos, can't do that.  Until he can, I don't know how I could bring myself to care about college football again*.

* I might make an exception if the Huskies someday field a great team again.