Over the past few months the talk of a college football playoff has taken a decidedly different turn. Suddenly, head coaches, conference commissioners and university administrators who had previously reacted to the mention of a new postseason format much as they would to a face full of skunk juice are openly throwing out their ideas for a post-BCS world.
Mike Leach said Wednesday that he'd like to see a 16-team playoff in college football -- and maybe even a 64-team model.
They range from tiny to ginormous. There's Big Ten commish Jim "I don't care as long I get to go to the Rose Bowl" Delany's pitch of a four-team format with semifinals at the home stadiums of the higher seeds. And on Wednesday, Washington State coach Mike Leach told Lisa Horne of Fox Sports that there should be a minimum of 16 teams, but here in the midst of March Madness he confesses that he'd really like to see 64.
The one group that has been very quiet during this surge in playoff talk also happens to be the segment of the college football community that would seemingly stand to lose the most if the college game were to graduate to brackets: the men and women who are in the college bowl business. It is a 35-game, billion-dollar industry and, fairly or unfairly, it is seen as the primary force behind the anti-playoff movement.
So what are they thinking as they read and hear the playoff comments? Are they confident about the future? Terrified? Indifferent?
"We are absolutely watching what's going on. Always have been," says Rick Catlett, president of the Gator Bowl Association. "But I also think that anyone in this business knows that there's not a whole lot we can do about it. We are in constant contact with the conference commissioners, the people who will ultimately make the decisions about the future of the game. But honestly, we don't have a lot of influence."
The 16-year leader of college football's sixth-oldest bowl game doesn't say this with a tone of fear or foreboding. Neither did the other half-dozen bowl executives I chatted with this week (on and off the record). No one mentioned extinction. Instead, they concede a curiosity as to where and how they will fit in to whatever format is adopted.
"There's not a lot of sense in worrying about what might or might not happen until it actually does," says Steve Hogan, CEO of Florida Citrus Sports, operator of the Capital One and Champs Sports Bowls. "I think right now if you asked six conference commissioners what might happen you might get six totally different answers. It's too early to even speculate. But I think it's no secret that something different is coming."
He's right. The BCS system as we know it is a dead plan walking. In 2014 it will be replaced by whatever the leaders that Catlett referred to decide on. The good news for bowl executives, and no doubt the reason for their confidence, is that nearly every one of those proposed playoff scenarios still leaves room for bowls, though certainly with some adjustments.
A plus-one or four-team bracket wouldn't really change anything for the bowls, certainly not across the top tiers. Expanded formats would also allow for stand-alone bowls, as would the popular 16-team tournament proposed by the authors of Death To The BCS.
In that plan, as with most, the bowls would continue to be played as complementary games to the playoffs. The demand for winter football will still be there, as it is now. And that means the opportunities for revenue, TV coverage and local economic impact would also still be there. The only difference is that the pool of teams those games would be selecting from would be a little thinner. Ultimately -- and multiple bowl executives brought this up -- that might serve the greater good, because fewer teams to choose from would eliminate the lower-tier bowl games that currently serve no real purpose other than to fuel anti-bowl sentiment.
Some expanded format designs have suggested that bowls could actually serve as the hosts for early round playoff games, as opposed to the best-record home team model. Both Catlett and Hogan, heads of large bowls that would appear to be perfect additions to that kind of format, say they have thought about the possibility and have had conversations on the topic, but don't expect it. "Would neutral-site games work for something like that?" Hogan wonders aloud. "It sure feels like it would put a lot of financial stress on teams and fans." Instead, their focus remains on the possibility of operating largely as business as usual, only fit around a playoff model.
For those larger games, much of the fan and media anger has centered on the bowl business model, whether it's high salaried executives or schools that return home having had to spend much more money than they received from the game payout. Nearly all of the executives I spoke with pointed to a new system -- any new system -- as a chance to improve the image of the system as a whole, whether it's trimming the bottom part of the bowl schedule or continuing the image overhaul that began with the cleaning up of the Fiesta Bowl after its embarrassing scandal.
Nearly all of the bowl executives admitted to wishing the current system would stay in place, referring to the standard arguments of diluting the regular season, no system being large enough to ensure that no worthy team is left out, and the BCS' championship consistency versus the old poll-based model. They also, as a group, were encouraged by talk that a new playoff system will be a longer agreement than the four-year BCS cycles. Said one: "We badly need some lengthy stability, like six years, to establish a foundation and quiet all the noise."
But all remained confident that, no matter what happens and what model wins out, there will be a place for their games going forward.
"There will always be a demand for what bowl games can do," says Catlett. "There's still a chance to create matchups you don't usually see in the regular season. There's still an opportunity to give kids a great experience to end their playing careers with. And there's still a chance for local communities to have an event that they can be proud of. No matter what happens with the postseason, that's not going to change."
"Bowl games have been around for 100 years now," adds Hogan. "The only constant has been change. The bowls have always had a place and have always found a way to survive. I'm confident that they will again going forward."
