Now that we have considered several angles of the bowl vs. playoff question, there are some other things to consider. That is, of course, the general fairness of the playoffs themselves.
There is a general idea that playoffs are the only way to prove that a team is the best. It is the transitive property that A beat B and B beat C, so A is better than C. This, in the world of college football, a fallacy to the point of being just plain wrong. If you don't believe me, give the College Football Victory Chain Linker a try and see what I mean. I managed to find out that, in 2003, Colgate was better than the eventual AP national champion, Southern Cal.
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The problem here is that playoffs are hard. They grind on teams and they cause injuries and they only prove which team can go on a winning streak of arbitrary length.
Let us say that USC was the best team in the country last year. Not exactly a bold statement, I will admit, but I will go out on that limb. That means that they should win every time that they play a game. Now let us assume that they are playing a 16-team bracket and they are way better than their opponents in the first two rounds. Let us say that they will beat either of them 95% of the time (i.e. They would win a matchup between the two teams 19 out of 20 times). Now let us say that they would beat their second-round team 9 out of 10 times for a 90% likelihood of winning. And let's say that Oklahoma gets to the title game and USC would beat them 80% of the time. Statistically speaking, the likelihood of USC winning a national title as the team that is clearly the best in the country is only about a 2/3rds chance (.95 x .95 x .90 x .80 = .6498 -- or 64.98%). Thus, there is a 1 in 3 chance that a team that does not deserve to win a title will actually with the title. Compare that with a 4 out of 5 chance if USC just goes ahead and plays Oklahoma in a bowl game.
The odds get even worse if you consider a team that is not as overwhelmingly superior to the teams that it plays. Let's say that you have a team like Tennessee in 1998. They played through a tough schedule and they had their ups and downs but always got the job done in the end. However, they still managed to beat the teams they played and they showed that they were the best team in the country by ending the season as they only undefeated team in the country. They survived 12 weeks of crunch time and now they have to go in and prove it all over again in four straight weeks of games. With the same idea in mind, they play a team they beat 95% of the time in round 1, 90% in round 2, 80% in round 3, and 75% in the finals. That's pretty good when you can play any given team 4 times and beat them 3 times. In fact, 3-1 is considered a pretty sound victory in the first round of the NBA or MLB playoffs. However, that leaves Tennessee with just about a 50-50 chance of getting a national championship out of their season, despite the fact that they are the best team in the country (.95 x .90 x .80 x .75 = 51.3%).
Or let us take a counter-example. Let us say that the 2001 Miami Hurricanes had a 100% probability of winning against anybody in the country (which actually may have been true). Now then, what is the point in forcing them to go through 4 games of playoffs rather than allowing them to just get it over with by kicking the crap out of Nebraska in the Rose Bowl? Why would we want to subject Middle Tennessee or North Texas to obliteration and probable injury against a team that is going to beat them into submission for 60 minutes? And why would you want to risk ruining easily the best team in the country by risking injuries for three meaningless weeks of football before the title game. Some defensive end from Illinois could have rolled up Ken Dorsey's leg and torn a lot of ligaments that he was going to use in the rest of the playoffs. Then they are without their quarterback for the next two weeks and may end up losing the title they deserve. One game is tough enough in college. Four games is taking a lot of risks when they are against good football teams.
Now let us take the example of 2003. LSU and USC split the title that year and everyone was up in arms about the fact that these teams did not get the chance to play each other on the field to prove which team is the best in the country. This is a problem that is, in fact, one of the beauties of college football.
What is neither LSU nor USC was the best in the country? If they played 10 times, they might have split the games 5-5. And either team could have lost if they played someone different in their bowl games. Michigan played USC very tight and Oklahoma played LSU very tight. If the teams had swapped opponents, either one could have lost. Both teams were deserving, so why not give them each a national title? So what if they never met, they both achieved the necessary qualifications for a national titlist, so let them split the thing.
"But," you are probably saying to your computer screen, "you are missing the point. There should be a clear winner in a playoff series that proves once and for all who the best team in the country is. If college football doesn't have a playoff series, we will never know who the best team in the entire country truly is unless they actually go through a playoff system. That is the only way to truly prove it."
Let us assume that you have somehow forgotten to read the rest of this abysmally long article -- nee, magnum opus -- and you are still under the impression that playoffs are the only way to go. And let us say that you still believe that a 5-6 North Texas team deserves as much of a shot at the national title as anyone else because they won the Sun Belt Conference. And let us say that 11 and soon to be 12 games of regular season play does not actually say much about which teams deserve to be called the best in the country. And, in fact, let us assume that the transitive property of victories is true and that playoffs are truly the only possible way of ever coming up with a true national champion that is absolutely and positively the one and only best team in the entire country, bar none, with no exceptions ever possible, thanks to the fact that, should playoffs be instituted, they will work perfectly, they will be perfectly fair, and no one will ever gripe, complain or whine about anything that ever happens in them.
I have a response for that which you may not entirely understand. It is a thoroughly studied and altogether intellectual idea that may leave your head reeling. So you may want to sit down, ponder this for several days, months, years, what have you. Are you ready. The answer is...
Are you sure you're sitting down? Because I don't want to stress you out too much. After all, college football hangs in the balance and you wouldn't want to see things continue along with a system that has worked effectively for almost 100 years. Okay, well, here we go. Once again, assuming that playoffs are the only way to crown a true national champion, I would proffer the following response:
And...???
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