BCS Meetings: Fans Should Still Have Concerns with Playoff

As the four-team playoff is now squarely in the cross-hairs for college football, there comes much rejoicing from fans and media. Self-aggrandizing for tearing down the tyranny of the BCS. Dancing in the streets because, as we all know, a playoff fixes everything.

Except it doesn't. While Ted Miller of ESPN looks at the behind-the-scenes controversy in creating the four-team event, the real issues with this playoff lay in the public arena—the same public arena that turned their back on the BCS.

There are two comments that can sum up the anti-BCS rhetoric: "It's not fair," and, "How do we know?" That's it folks; that's the anti-BCS arguments.

"It's not fair" encompasses the financial arguments as well as the "my team got left out" arguments. "How do we know?" is a great catch all for the Alabama over Oklahoma State or Oklahoma over Auburn or Utah argument.

Those two questions are the tent poles of the anti-BCS faction that has grown rabid and quite entitled in their bold push to get the playoff that they feel they deserve.

With a four-team playoff coming, the saddest part about the "playoff fixes everything" mentality is that it fails to actually address the problems. If non-BCS teams thought it was not fair before, good luck getting into a major bowl game now that there is no clause to force the Rose, Sugar, Orange or Fiesta to select your team.

We're going to be staring at huge revenue windfalls for four-team participants; that is not going to close the wealth gap or raise all conferences to a level playing field.

As for the "how do we know?" question, we've traded out one hell for another. Instead of people whining about No. 2 versus No. 3, we now have whining over No. 4 versus No. 5. It's not better; it might well be worse.

When you're talking about the fourth-best team, there are legitimately three or four teams that can make a claim to be No. 4. That's more than the two or three that can make the No. 2 spot claim.

While Dink and Dunk were arguing that "anything is better than the BCS," they missed the part about why the BCS didn't work for them. The BCS became so hated that people failed to see what they actually disliked about it: the mechanisms for decision making.

Those same mechanisms are in play now. In fact, the new system is open to problems just like the BCS. Good luck closing the revenue gap. Good luck getting into a bowl game when the bowls are no longer forced to select you.

I'm sure that the No. 5 team in 2014 will smile, accept their Orange Bowl bid and say, "Well, them's the breaks." You know, the same way every No. 3 team in the BCS did.