Did the College Football Playoff work?

The first College Football Playoff wrapped up Monday night with the national championship going to Ohio State. So did the system work?

The Ohio State Buckeyes are the new national champions, having beaten the Oregon Ducks Monday night 42-20 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, to conclude the first season in which the Football Bowl Subdivision season ended with a four-team playoff.

We had controversy, in the form of the omission of a Big 12 representative—the one Power Five conference that doesn’t play a championship game. Instead, the Big 12 had a one-loss Baylor team, a one-loss TCU team and no seat at the CFP table.

Contrary to what some might think, the powers that be love controversy. Why? Because it fans interest in the event itself. Talking heads went on for days about whether Florida State, Ohio State, Baylor or TCU deserved the final two spots behind the top two seeds everyone agreed on—Alabama and Oregon.

It is interesting to go back and see what the powers-that-be were saying a little more than four years ago about a playoff in the FBS, however.

Tina Kunzer-Murphy, who in 2010 was chair of the Football Bowl Association and the executive director of what was then called the Maaco Las Vegas Bowl, was convinced a playoff would kill the bowls as we knew them.

“A playoff would put an end to the Maaco Las Vegas Bowl,” Kunzer-Murphy said on the Bowl Championship Series website in 2010. “Playoff games will be 24-hour visits by teams to a city where a game is played.”

Victorious Utah players hold the Las Vegas Bowl trophy. Contrary to a prediction from the game’s executive director in 2010, a playoff system didn’t kill the Las Vegas Bowl. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports /

So how would the Oregon and Ohio State players who spent the last several days in North Texas would feel about that statement?

And the bowls aren’t dead. This season, the first in which there was a playoff, featured 38 bowl games—the most in history.

Seventy-six teams went to bowl games. Two of them went to the national championship after playing in a bowl.

That doesn’t sound like the death knell of the bowl games.

Rick Baker was president of the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic in 2010.

“A playoff system would ruin the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic,” Baker said. “Add a playoff and the Classic experience becomes nothing more than a short business trip. The Cotton Bowl prides itself on creating life-long memories for the student athlete.”

The Cotton Bowl is a major bowl again, thanks to a playoff system, and will host a semifinal game next season. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports /

The Cotton Bowl is now part of the New Year’s Six bowls—it was not a major bowl in the BCS system—and will host a semifinal game on New Year’s Day 2016 and every three years afterward.

This year, the Cotton Bowl featured Michigan State and Baylor—a pretty nice, high-profile consolation prize.

Perhaps the best prediction of doom and gloom in 2010 came from Scott McKibben, executive director of the Rose Bowl Game.

“Without a bowl system and structure in place, college football loses its unique appeal and stories traditions,” McKibben said. “In its place a corporate sporting environment of a playoff would destroy the experience for all those involved: athletes, host communities and fans alike.”

And the argument about how a playoff would kill the regular season?

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The drama in November and December this season was as real as any previous season I can recall, maybe more so because every move was being compared to the weekly rankings issued by the CFP selection committee over the second half of the year.

The playoff will eventually grow, despite what Ohio State coach Urban Meyer has said about four being the right number.

Meyer said on The Dan Patrick Show last week that an eight-team playoff isn’t possible. (H/T Business Insider)

Of course the playoff will expand. Over the course of less than 20 years, college football evolved from the system it had in place for the better part of a century—bowl games and a mythical national champion chosen by pollsters—to a two-team playoff to a four-team playoff.

That growth curve will continue.

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament started as an eight-team event. Mandatory Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports /

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament—to which a college football playoff is most often, if clumsily, compared—began with eight teams in 1939 and played 12 seasons with that format.

It expanded to 16 teams in 1951 and by 1953 entered a two-decade period where the number of teams varied from 22 to 25.

The field grew to 32 teams in 1975, 40 in 1979, 48 in 1980, 52 with four play-in games in 1983, 53 with five play-in games in 1984, 64 teams in 1985, 65 teams in 2001 and 68 teams—its current format—in 2011.

To eliminate the silly argument right away, no one thinks the College Football Playoff will be a 68-team event.

There are currently 120 FBS programs. There are 351 Division I basketball programs. The scale is very different.

But, despite Meyer’s protests, it’s not hard to see an eight-team system that could include the five Power five champions and three at-large teams.

Or, maybe in a pipe dream, five champions, two at-large teams and the top-ranked team from the Group of Five conferences—the American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mid-American Conference, Mountain West Conference and Sun Belt Conference.

College football has never been a sport to embrace the underdog. Remember the howls about the inclusion of programs such as Boise State, Hawaii, TCU and Utah to BCS games in years past.

But perhaps the biggest reason the playoff will expand. ESPN has paid $7.3 billion for the broadcast rights to the CFP and the demand has been overwhelming.

That is, in any economic system known to mankind, a recipe for future growth.

But make no mistake—the College Football Playoff worked … like a charm.

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