By Jonathan Elias
Sports Contributor
Of the 16 years I’ve been alive, I’ve been following sports closely for about ten of them. I don’t think I can recall anything that upsets sports fans quite as much as seeing their alma mater being cheated out of a big bowl game.
For decades, deserving alma maters have been left out of key bowl games, and with the rising competition within college football, teams being cheated out became even more prevalent.
Outraged fans cry and complain about how their 10-2 team, playing in a much more difficult conference, could be snubbed for a team with less wins and less talent simply because that team played in a conference that was given a guaranteed spot in a top bowl game.
Truth be told, there is no fair way to tell which teams deserve which bowl and which teams do not. But the old system, which guaranteed one team in each of the Power Five conferences (the ACC, the Big-10, the Big-12, the SEC and the Pac-12) a spot in one of the five major bowl games, no matter the difficulty of their conference, was hilariously outdated and sure as hell did not fairly place teams in their deserving bowl games.
Recognizing the system needed to change, and change quickly, the NCAA implemented the long desired playoff system, which has been used in every other collegiate sport except football, in the beginning of the 2014 college football season. And thank god.
The new system promises a champion that has to earn, rather than be given, their spot in the national championship game.
Now of course there will be drawbacks to the new system. For instance, one opposition commonly thrown against the new system is, “well what about the one or two teams that were left out? Won’t it be unfair leaving them out?” Yes. Yes it will be unfair to the fifth and maybe sixth place teams in the country.
But having one or two teams left out of the playoffs is overwhelmingly more fair than simply choosing two teams to play.
Baylor and TCU were, as some would say, cheated out of their spot in the top four this season. However, as I, and many other around the country see it, Baylor and TCU were simply not as deserving of one of the top four spots, which were given in order to Alabama, Oregon, Florida State, and Ohio State.
The beautiful part of the new system is that it accounts for almost all aspects of a team’s season: wins, strength of schedule, head-to-head games, home-field advantage and more. It can then compare a team’s season resumé to every other team in the nation.
This comparative aspect truly allows for the four most deserving teams to compete in January for college football’s coveted prize.
The four team playoff promises to produce more competition as the top four teams in the country will battle it out tournament style to determine who has EARNED the right to be called the best team in college football.
