College Football 2012: Conference Champion Requirement Is a Foolish Move

Apparently the conference commissioners all sat down Monday and really got the wheels turning on this move from the BCS to the four-team playoff in 2014.

If you're on the playoff side, that is fantastic. If not, doesn't matter, because it is coming down the chute in the very near future.

Four is a good compromise by the conferences as a way to sate the public outcry for a playoff while maintaining a lot of what makes college football unique. While expansion of the playoff is something that will arise in the near future, the current battle being waged is how to gain admittance to the playoff.

The debate over a conference title being a requirement has taken center stage, and lines are currently being drawn in the sand. The battle itself is summed up nicely here:

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"'You should have to win something,' said Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson. 'You should be a champion to get into this type of system.'

"'When you get to [limiting it to] conference champions, you're not necessarily dealing with the best teams,' said SEC commissioner Mike Slive. 'You're creating more of a tournament than playing for the national championship.'"

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Now, before you get all worked up or hoot and holler over Thompson's noble "You should have to win something" rhetoric, stop and think. To be ranked in the Top Four, as the model Slive supports would require, don't you have to win something as well—such as, a lot of football games? As in, going one-loss or undefeated?

Shouldn't that be what this is all about—getting the four best teams in the nation out on the field to play one another? Instead, through some very nice wordplay, Thompson and folks in the conference champ camp would have people believe that their way is about a team proving their worth.

It's not. It's about money—just like everything else.

This is a play by a group of people who, in much the same way the BCS used automatic qualifiers, wants to make sure they have a check coming every year (or as close to every year as possible). By barring multiple bids from one conference, they increase their odds of a bid falling into their lap, even in a down year.

Take last season, for example. The idea that LSU, Oklahoma State, Oregon and Wisconsin in a playoff is better for the game than taking the Top Four teams is just ludicrous. Skipping past Alabama and Stanford to draw Oregon into the mix, plus bypassing Arkansas, Boise State, Kansas State and South Carolina for a 10th-ranked Wisconsin team? That's the power play that conference champions-only would be in support of, and it doesn't make sense.

It isn't better for football, it is more security for their pockets. It isn't better for fans, unless your school is the Wisconsin of the group tiptoeing past teams to claim that fourth spot. Quite honestly, it isn't any different from the BCS auto-bids where teams such as Clemson and West Virginia go grab a nice little payday ahead of teams who finished better than them in the regular season. (Well, actually, it is different because Clemson and WVU just played an exhibition; Wisconsin would be looking at a chance to go from No. 10 to title in two games.)

The rhetoric surrounding it all is brilliant. Those in the conference champions-only camp are truly pushing their agenda and crafting their argument in way that makes fans of the game buy into it. But it isn't good for football. People complain and moan about BCS snubs and teams being jumped—this system does the exact same thing, and we're not talking about exhibitions anymore.

Thompson is right, though; you should have to win something to get into the four-team field—something such as winning a lot of football games and enough games to get you into the Top Four. If every year happened like 2007 and 2009, Thompson's idea would be great.

Unfortunately, 2011 proves just how foolish this move would be.