NCAA Football

College Football Is Officially Switching To A Cash Cow Model

University presidents approved the BCS commissioners’ plan to begin a four-team playoff in two years. Gone is the single pairing of the 1st and 2nd ranked team — now, the 3rd and 4th ranked teams get to play, too. This Final Four format guarantees that the major conferences will just be rolling in it until at least 2025.

Two semi-final games will be played in a rotating set of the current bowl games (such as the Fiesta, Sugar, Orange, Rose), and cities can bid on hosting the neutral-site title game. There will be no automatic qualifiers, which guarantees some diminishing returns for conferences like the Big East and Mountain West. And it sets up big (profit) expectations for a more “decisive” finale.

Charles Steger, the president of Virginia Tech, spelled out why the presidents approved the death of their beloved Championship Series in favor of this method:

“It’s a best-of-both-worlds result.” said [Steger] “It captures the excitement of a playoff while protecting the best regular season in sports, and also the tradition of the bowls.” –NY Times

“A four team playoff doesn’t go too far,” [Steger] said. “It goes just the right amount.” –CBS

Just the right amount is a good way of putting it. It was just enough to stave off opponents of the BCS system while keeping in place most of what the university presidents liked about the BCS: the big money from television rights. CBS estimated the new TV package could be worth “$350 or $400 million each and every year.” The majority of that money will go to the power conferences, who will increasingly schedule incestuously with other power conferences and not give shots to the smaller guys. The Boise States and Pittsburghs (an alum can dream) of the world will be lucky to get a regular season game with one of these Big-Something conferences, let alone a shot at a top-four ranking and that money. And round and round it will go.

Great teams often come out of the SEC and Big-12, and it will be fun to watch them battle for supremacy. But its clear that more than wanting to decide who was the best team in the country, these guys were thinking about one thing:

When asked how the revenue system might change, Ed Ray, the Oregon State president, had a succinct but honest prediction.

“Up,” he said, smiling and pointing skyward.

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