Holiday Bowling with a Splash of CFP

I hear Andy Williams singing in the background. “It’s the Holiday Season.” Besides the obvious signs of Christmas, it also brings to mind the excitement of the college football bowl season – and now, the CFP. “So, whoop-de-do, and dickory dock. Don’t forget to hang up your sock…” Andy’s crooning echoes my whoop-de-do sentiment. Will there be anything to put in my sock?

Who knows what will happen? Will your holiday wishes come true, and your stocking filled with glad playoff tidings? Is the college playoff worth the media hype? I’m not sure I care all that much about the new 12 team playoff format. I’m taking a wait and see approach.

It’s a completely different atmosphere than the traditional bowl season, where games were largely viewed as rewards for good teams and a couple extra weeks of practice was sprinkled with fun touristy events for those young, impressionable football types. It was as much carnival fun as it was serious football. For those 12 CFP teams at least, I doubt there’ll be any fun, touristy stuff going on in the foreseeable future. This is all serious business. Which also makes me wonder how much all this NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) income and any other monetary incentives figure into player motivations.

We’re talking serious money here. Some of these players, besides getting free ride scholarships, can reportedly gross up to $15 million in their college careers! What the hell? I’m not even out of college yet for Christ sakes! How motivated am I really to continue any kind of career after that? Good advice or not, am I going to start telling people where they can get off? After all, I’m special! Am I going to turn into ‘that guy’ – the one nobody can stand being around because I’m so arrogant, rich and full-of-myself? As a friend of mine used to say, “Yeah, he’s arrogant as hell over nothin’.”

You know, I like the lower division college football playoffs, but even they sort of get ridiculous. Fourteen or fifteen games is a lot of football for the body to absorb. D II and D III have little alternative, so for them it’s a 32-team playoff format or nothing. Ten game regular season and, if you’re lucky, you qualify. At least for FBS division teams there are another 35 or so bowl games. That makes for about 80 schools that get to play in at least one more game, which for most, is a fun multi-week bowl experience.

So which do you prefer? I’m guessing at least 90% of you are going to say a national playoff. There are national championships played in every other sport and all of them involve head-to-head competition. No guessing, no arguing. To the winner belongs the spoils. Why should this be any different? It’s a good argument and one hard to refute. It’s logical and it’s consistent with how every other sport is decided. Still, the alure of a bowl game for more teams is a great tradition that spreads the fun, the camaraderie and the competition around. I like them, and I like the idea.

But I also like the idea of the ultimate showdown, and in the year’s my team has been in the hunt for a national title, there were several times I wished we had the opportunity to go mano-e-mano. As a dedicated Husky, in those years I think we would have won more often than not. It’s true we have a complex in these parts for not getting our due; we often feel disrespected. We’re just the yokels up here in lumberjack country, walking around in the rain without umbrellas, getting our woolies and our flannel shirts all wet. Duh, yup, yup, a-huh.

This first year of the twelve team playoff will be interesting. I like still having the other bowl games as an adjunct to the CFP. I hope it continues. But with all the NIL and other money flying around, plus the easy transfer portal, there’s a dangerous environment for huge instability and significant changes, and not all of them, maybe none of them, will be good. You might get what you want and still lose. What fun would that be?

Andy assures us there’ll be, “…lots of goodies for you and for me, so leave a peppermint stick for old St. Nick…” But he makes me wonder if there’ll be any bowl candy left worth keeping. Cuz, ready or not, “just exactly at twelve o’clock, he’ll be comin’ down the chimney, comin’ down the chimney, down!”

Keep your woolies crossed, but don’t get your knickers in a knot.