Should College Football conferences be abolished?
By J.P. Scott
With what essentially amounts to a 12-person jury selecting the four teams who participate in the College Football Playoff, football conferences have been rendered meaningless.
I wasn’t completely sold on the idea or the outcome, but most of you were. By all accounts, the first ever College Football Playoff was a resounding success. The deserving teams played for a championship on the field. We ended up with one, undisputed champion. All is right in the world and nobody has anything to complain about.
Well, except maybe Texas Christian University.
As much as we all wanted this season to be perfect, when the confetti rained down over Ohio State and the Buckeyes dawned the “Undisputed Champion” t-shirts, it still didn’t feel right. As I’ve said before, I’m a Big Ten guy and I was rooting for Ohio State on that night. Still, something was off.
I think it was the word Undisputed. Merriam-Webster defines undisputed as “definitely true: not doubted or questioned” and “accepted by everyone.”
And there it is.
There is doubt. There is question. There were still conference champions — good ones — who never got a chance to prove their mettle on the field. Texas Christian, by way of an elementary school kickball-like do-over of the rules, was one of those champions. So was Boise State. So was Marshall.
The old guard and the College Football Playoff loyalists shrug their shoulders at the plight of Texas Christian and roll their eyes at Boise State and Marshall. Why?
Conferences.
Texas Christian was essentially left out of the four-team playoff because their conference did not have a title game. Boise State and Marshall were left out because their conferences are perceived as weak.
In college football, you are measured in the court of public opinion by the conference you play in. Your fate is then decided behind closed doors by 12 people who’ve never met you and know nothing about you outside of what they perceive and the national narrative. Schools like Texas Christian, Boise State and Marshall never had a shot. They were out of the hunt on Day 1 — all because of conferences.
You can’t argue, either. As I said, the not-so-silent majority is just fine with using a figure skating-like method of choosing a champion. We always have been, really. College football at the highest level has never given much thought or concern to making sure teams are properly rewarded for winning their conference.
College football fans, at the end of the day, care about two things: beating their rival and winning a national championship. Ask Michigan. Ask Auburn. Ask Oklahoma. Ask any fan of any team with a hated rival what two things they would like to have out of these three: A win over their rival, a conference title, or a national championship.
You know most of them would choose beating the rival and winning the national title. The conference championship is the consolation prize if it doesn’t lead to bigger things.
So why not get rid of conferences in college football? It’s the only major team sport where winning your conference or division doesn’t automatically qualify you to play for the overall championship. Why do we need them? Why not have 128 independent football teams who are free to schedule the opponents of their choice?
Think about it — without conferences, Texas could fill a schedule with quality opponents without ever going more than one state outside its borders. Ohio State could do the same. So could all of the Florida and California schools.
You’d still have high-profile match-ups that draw national interest. For the less prestigious programs — like those currently in the MAC — they would still be able to fill their schedules with competitive opponents who would be within driving range.
Everyone would save money. An already regional sport would become even more so while still providing games that draw national interest and preserve old rivals. Your trophy games would survive. Your border wars would live on. All that would die would be the imaginary bond of a conference that supposedly unites a group of schools while realistically hindering many who belong to them.
Without conferences, those 12 people in that hotel in Dallas couldn’t take the easy way out. They’d have to watch a lot more games, as they wouldn’t have the luxury of simply judging a team by the conference it belonged to. Without conferences, Ohio State might not have been the undisputed champion. Maybe it would have been Texas Christian or Boise State or even Marshall.
We’ll never know. All we know now is that most of us are comfortable having a group of strangers tell us who deserves to play for a championship and who doesn’t. College football fans push back against the idea of expanding the playoffs and awarding automatic bids to conference champions.
I guess you could say that we like our undisputed champion to be disputed. And if that is indeed the case — I ask again — why not just get rid of college football conferences?