Big Ten's College Football Playoff Idea: Why It Works, Why It Doesn't

According to the Chicago Tribune, Big Ten officials are reportedly in the process of formulating a four-team playoff plan that would alter college football's current system for determining a national champion.

The full details of the plan are unknown as of yet, but according to today's article by Teddy Greenstein, the plan would call for the four top-ranked teams to be seeded and then they would proceed to battle it out in a Final-Four style scenario on the home fields of the higher ranked teams. The winners would move on to the championship game, which would be played at a neutral site.

This certainly isn't the first time the idea of a four-team playoff has been brought up in college football, but the Big Ten's plan is definitely an interesting concept.

Like any other proposed playoff system, though, this one has its strengths as well as its flaws.

Here's a look at the five reasons why the Big Ten's playoff plan would work, and five reasons why it wouldn't.

A Change Is Needed

After this year's dismal BCS Championship Game, one that drew heavy criticism before it was even played, it's obvious that a change is needed to the system.

Many college football fans have been calling for a playoff for over a decade, and after watching two SEC teams that already competed earlier in the season end up in the championship game this year, that outcry has only now grown louder.

Something has to be done, and changes have to be made, or else college football runs the risk of alienating some of its most loyal fans, who won't continue to tolerate a system that can be and should be corrected as soon as possible.

Sports Fans Enjoy Playoffs

Every major sport in America besides college football features some sort of playoff format to determine a true championship, and it's that feeling of finality that leaves fans fulfilled every year.

Fulfilled isn't a word that you can use to describe how many college football fans have felt in recent years, though.

The idea of a playoff has been ingrained in the minds of sports fans for decades, and when there's a system that tries to buck that trend and settle things a different way, fans are often left with a hollow feeling.

Ratings

This year's championship game disaster between Alabama and LSU was one of the lowest rated championship games of the BCS era, as many fans simply didn't feel the need to see a rematch of a game they saw back in November.

Thankfully, that should serve as a wake up call to the sport's higher-ups, who value television ratings as much as just about anything else. 

Even if it's just comprised of four teams, a college football playoff would help boost and increase ratings for the sport, as it would add a new, fresh intriguing element that sports fans would be interested in.

Revenue

Considering that it's now a multi-billion dollar a year industry, it's not exactly as if these are dark times for college football. In this day and age, the absolute most important thing in the sport is obviously revenue.

Revenue trumps tradition and it drives every move made within the sport. If there's a way to produce more of it, you better believe that those in charge are going to be interested.

With an increase in ratings and interest logically comes an increase in revenue, which is why a playoff system could help college football, not hurt it.

Growth of the Game

With the landscape of the sport continuing to shift, we're seemingly at the dawning of a new era of college football. It seems like it's now time to implement some drastic changes to the sport, and adding a new playoff system appears to be the right decision going forward.

College football is only continuing to grow, and as we move into this new era, a playoff system could help to send the popularity of the sport through the roof.

Traditional Bowls Lose Value

There are a few reasons why the Big Ten's four-team playoff could hurt the sport, though, and one of the main ones is that it could really devalue current big BCS bowls like the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Orange Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl.

Without the four marquee teams of the season involved every year, the bowls would feature predominantly second-tier teams. Though after this past season, when lower ranked teams like Virginia Tech, Michigan and West Virginia all made it in, you can make the argument that it's already happening. 

Plus, the focus would be shifted mainly on the final four teams that are playing elsewhere, and interest in the four big-name bowl games could start to wane.

Regular Season Importance

Lovers of college football have long proclaimed that the sport is so great because the regular season is so important (even though that idea proved to be false in 2011), and they've argued that a playoff could diminish the value of the regular season.

This can certainly be debated, though, as sometimes we've seen as many as four undefeated teams at the end of the regular season and sometimes we've seen none when it's all said and done.

A four-team playoff probably wouldn't diminish the importance of the regular season all that much, but there will definitely be some critics who feel it will.

Determining the Four Best Teams

Unlike college basketball, where teams play their way into the Final Four, this system would simply pick teams based off a rankings systems similar to the one we currently see with the BCS.

The question is: How can you really determine the true four best overall teams in college football?

Will there ever be a system that can perfectly compare the second-best team in the SEC to the best team in the Pac-12? Or an undefeated Big Ten champion to an undefeated Big 12 champion?

No, so there will always be some level of subjectivity involved in picking the final four teams, and because of that, there will always be a few fans who end up disagreeing with the final four teams picked.

Someone Will Always Be Left out

Changing to a four-team playoff would likely calm some of the outrage that inevitably breaks out every year, but it will also just defer the argument to the fourth-team bubble. The fifth-ranked team that ends up getting left out will always likely have a bone to pick and an argument to make about why they deserved to get in.

Usually, most of the time there's not a very wide gap between the fourth and the fifth best team in college football, and with this proposed system, there will likely be seasons when the fifth-, sixth- and possibly even seventh-ranked teams in the country are just as deserving of getting a shot at the playoffs as the fourth-ranked school.

“Student” Athletes

Another factor that has to be remembered when adding possibly even more games to a schedule that already runs for the duration of an entire college semester is that the student athletes are first and foremost students.

Adding another week to prepare for an additional game during a time when many schools are going through a final exam period could complicate matters for the players involved, which is why some school presidents who value academics over athletics could be turned off by the idea.