U of F President Trying To Push For Playoffs

The University of Florida President Bernie Machen is pushing for a college football playoff system before Fox seeks to seal a deal to extend its current BCS contract beyond 2010.

The proposal is apparently in the rough draft stages and Machen has been talking with an “upper echelon NCAA official who he won't name” and according to Machen also, he says that the chairman of the NCAA Executive Committee, Walt Harrison, “is totally with me”.

“I think it's still a long shot but we have had two interim meetings -- one in October and one in March. At that (March) meeting I tried to make the point that this is something that if we don't deal with it, we're going to be locked into the BCS for another eight to 10 years.

Fox is pushing to renew right now. They want to renew what we have even though the deal has four more years (actually three) to run. Normally you would start the negotiation a year, 18 months from now.

There is some interest in Fox in signing us up for long (term), which would just kill it. They just want to lock up the property.

I made the pitch that if you're ever going to think about it now is the time to think about it. I can't tell you how many votes I got or anything. My pitch is simple. This is in the best interests of college football. There is a lot of money that is not on the table that could be on the table.

We need to get some serious thinking. I've talked to several of the bowls. If we're going to do it we need to give the bowls a chance to be a part of it. To be honest, the only entities to be stuck about it are the Big Ten and the Pac-10. They like their sweetheart deal with the Rose Bowl…

If the rest of us decide to go this way we'll see what they have to do. They've actually got a better deal than the rest of us with the Rose Bowl …

When I started talking about it on the floor of the stadium (at the SEC title game), I was lamenting the fact that we just won the SEC and I don't even know if we're going to the (gosh darn) BCS. It seemed ludicrous…

I'm going to meet with the NCAA because they're officially against it. I'm not going to tell you who, but I'm going to meet with the power structure before June.

SPLN: How would your playoff work?

Dr. M: Because of the baggage the NCAA has, it might hurt us to push it through the NCAA. But you could set up your own LLC (limited liability company). You could have an entity that is not part of the NCAA that would run it, but would run it with the kind of principles the NCAA uses to run the basketball thing.”

I am all for a college playoff system. In fact, AOL fav Sportz has already come up with a system I think could work using the Bowl games are part of the playoff.

Do you know what college football is missing in the post season? It's missing excitement (as well as a consistent, honest way of crowning national champs). Look at the NCAA Tourney in March, it has the excitement because every team in it has a chance, albeit for some teams a very tiny, slim chance, but they have a chance. It's not a given that if you cruise your way through your regular season schedule and conference tourney that you'll win the national championship (recent exception: Florida, ugh-yuk!), but Florida did have to work for the repeat, and regardless, the excitement was there, the hope was there - come on, don't tell me that half the people in the U.S. weren't holding on to a glimmer of hope that Florida would be ousted early.

You know why the NFL Playoffs are so kickin'? Because a freakin' wildcard team can squeeze their 8 or 9 regular season win into the playoffs and become world champs (see New England). No matter what happens in the regular season, you have to bring it to the playoffs, if you don't then your 13-3, 12-4, or 11-5 season was worthless - especially if the hype surrounded you all regular season long. There ain't nothing like the excitement of an upset (or the possibility of) putting a power-house club in its place in the post season. That's why playoffs are great and exciting.

You know why the current bowl system sucks? Because its run by rankings which is done mostly by mathematical equations which is freakin' BORING. And the bowls have become boring too, well unless your a Kentucky Wildcat fan who enjoyed the heck out of watching them upset Clemson!. Know why they're boring aside from that though? Because it's no news to anyone now that these bowls generate their “hype” in part by their sponsors now. You know what the most disgusting thing is about the bowl games now days? It's the flood of sponsorship that must be adorned every freakin' where on the field, in the commercials, on your t-shirts, on your hats, subliminalized into your heads. The excitement is hardly about the championship game anymore. I remember when the Orange Bowl was the Orange Bowl, and it was played for the national championship, and it had always had two of the best competitive teams in the nation playing for the title. No argument from me because it was always a great game. Now it's like you can't even mention the Orange Bowl without fear of being sued if you don't mention FedEx, or Tostitos in the Fiesta Bowl. The lustrous shine bowl games once had when I was growing up watching has now dulled out majorly because of corporate dollars. And honestly that's exactly what's happened. There's no more excitement in it. When I hear Sugar Bowl, I'm like, yeah, it's the Sugar Bowl, whereas when I was growing up watching it, I couldn't wait for the game to kickoff, I made a party out of it. I don't anymore. It's just another bowl game to me, and the BCS has ruined it for me. I mean if college football doesn't want a playoff system to crown our national champs, then at least lets rid of the BCS system and go back to rotating the Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta Bowls as the national championship games and it being the only final and just game to crown the champion based on the AP rankings. I liked it better that way. The current state of the NCAA football post season desperately needs some excitement built into it.

But back to Bernie Machen, it sounds like his push for a playoff system has reached an obstacle because it sounds like the BCS commissioners don't have it marked as a priority as they will primarily deal with maintenance issues with the current system in this week's meetings, but there might be some discussion of it.

The NCAA should set aside the numbers for the mathematicians, let these kids settle the national championship on the field. It's more exciting that way!

LIVEBLUE