By J-Dub
15) The College Football Play-off and the ESPN-ization of Bowl Games
There are two words to describe how we got this four-team playoff to determine the college football national champion.
- Television
- Money
Don’t even try to deny that. Sure, you can point out that we really aren’t adding any games with this play-off, which is true. But this play-off was clearly made to be a television event.
First of all, did anybody watch that reality show they made around the selection committee? I tried to watch it, and after five minutes I felt nauseous and like I needed a shower. It was so obviously contrived, such an obvious attempt to generate phony controversy. Want to know why Baylor and TCU didn’t get into the play-off? Because they were never going to…they were the pre-determined “outside looking in” teams so that we could have at least one coach come unglued over the process, which is exactly what Baylor’s Art Briles did.
But this just isn’t about the big schools and bowls. There’s a whole lot more little guys being allowed to belly up to the post-season buffet. I’m in a Bowl Pick ‘em challenge, and it took three fucking pages to print out the complete list. The Miami Beach Bowl? The Popeye’s Bahamas Bowl? The Boca Raton Bowl?
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