The Ohio State band prepares to dot the “I,” an emotional spectacle at Ohio Stadium, even with Tennessee orange largely combined with scarlet.
The last of the first four college football playoff games was played on campus precisely like the first three (Texas, Penn State, and Notre Dame) in one sense: in a wonderful atmosphere. The scenes, if not the games, lived up to the hype, and now Rece Davis tells an ESPN audience about her experience while parading “The Best Damn Band in the Land. “Davis compared what we were looking for to “some sterility” found at independent bowling sites.
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You’re right: there’s a big difference. And that’s not even the main explanation for why the school football playoffs have to move to their quarterfinal venues in the first year imaginable, after the normal 2026 season. Equity, we decide through In a not unusual sense, is the main explanation for this.
Justice and common sense shape this 12-team tournament, even though we are talking about school football. And high school football’s only undefeated team can simply argue that those elements are sorely lacking.
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The No. 1-ranked, 13-0 Oregon Ducks debut in the Playoff this week as underdogs at a neutral Rose Bowl site against perhaps the most talented team in the sport. Part of the issue is the seeding of the field, a problem that should be fixed next year. But set that aside and focus on the location.
If it were No. 8 seed Ohio State (11-2) at Oregon, the Ducks would have an edge they won’t have Wednesday, and they’d have other benefits that a team with the best regular-season performance should have. It wouldn’t be a financial windfall for the school — most of the revenue goes into the Playoff pot — but it would be for the surrounding community. The Autzen Stadium scene would be a tremendous recruiting pitch.
And Oregon fans in the domain can simply attend a playoff game without charging up their credit cards. If the Ducks make it all the way to the national championship game and a Ducks fan plans to see it all in person, that fan traveled earlier this month to Indianapolis for the Big Ten naming game and will be in Los Angeles this week. (850 miles from Eugene) for the “College Football Playoff Quarterfinals at the Rose Bowl presented by Prudential,” will head to the domain of greater Dallas for the Cotton Bowl semifinals (perhaps to see Oregon take on to Texas in a de facto home game). for the Longhorns) and will conclude on January 20 in Atlanta.
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That’s $5,000, easy, and only that low if you’re spending as little time as possible in these cities and avoiding expensive meals. And going alone.
“It’s shocking, given the intelligence of the other people who planned this, that it happened like this,” said Jered Takeuchi, a former student, donor and former basketball player from Orepassn. “What you hear a lot from Orepassn enthusiasts is, ‘I’m going to stop by to get to the Rose Bowl, pull out the Cotton Bowl and see if we make it to the championship game. Other people are costing a lot of money. ” bowling, but three?Very few will make three.
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The Takeuchis, adding to a season in which the family of four (any of the youngsters are Oregon students) will watch the Ducks win at Michigan. They had successful careers in business and co-founded a corporate gifting company. They can comfortably. They give enough to Oregon athletics to sit with the nearly 3,000 donors and family members who will attend each and every game in this race.
They are the only sure things. The traditional bowl experience worked when every team had one postseason game. Now we have a tournament. A team that wins it might play as many as 17 games. It doesn’t work anymore. I understand bowls are as baked into this sport as beans with brats at a tailgate, rivalry trophies and “I”-dotting sousaphone players, but it just doesn’t work.
If you’re going to set something up like the NFL playoffs, then you have higher seeds host lower seeds and a championship game at a neutral site. You have appropriate rewards for deserving teams and their fans, and you get rid of the “sterileness” that we’re about to see at depressing levels for some of these games.
I guess it happens at some point. It may not be for many years.
For now, once the pre-existing contract expires at the end of the 2025-26 season, let’s go to the original venues for the first round and quarterfinals. It’s a trade-off that will be difficult to achieve.
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Ohio State is scheduled to be in Oregon this week. Notre Dame, the No. 7 seed, will be the No. 2 seed Georgia. No. 6 seed Penn State will be seeded No. 3, Boise State. Se expected Texas, seeded number five, to play Arizona State, seeded number four. (And yes, I agree that, in the latter two, the ratings are eccentric because of the automatic breaks for convention champions. )
Then move on to bowling for the semifinals, and how about one of the CFP’s six bowling games to distribute to other cities after it arrives in Las Vegas in January 2027?Nick Saban complained at this season’s “College GameDay. “that naming matches were held in random cities rather than classic bowling venues, arguing that bowling venues know how to host those events better than anyone.
That’s the same point the bowl folks made in arguing that all games in the new 12-team Playoff should be at bowls, with four new bowls added to the CFP roster. So we’ve had compromise already.
Bill Hancock, who retired in 2023 as executive director of the College Football Playoff, told The Athletic he isn’t sure the CFP (now headed by successor Rich Clark) will want to stop shopping the title game around and lock it into one of the six bowls. Even if that’s the case and the bowls just get the semis, that’s one-third of those bowls involved in the tournament — exactly the same percentage as during the four-team Playoff era.
The other 4 New Year’s bowls produced hot matchups, but they had nothing to do with the championship. There have been unsubscribes in those games. With the transition from a 4-team tournament to a 12-team tournament, one hundred percent of the six balls are now in play. My plan, with the name game included, comes in at 50%. More than fair.
“What happens to those other three bowl games in the other years they’re not in the CFP?” Hancock asked in response to that plan. “When do they play? What are the matchups?”
If you’re in position this year and let’s say the Rose Bowl wins the naming game, how about BYU vs. Alabama in the Sugar, Colorado vs. Ole Miss in the Fiesta and South Carolina vs. Miami in the Peach? These are hot games. . Yes, the bowls that now have those groups would have to go deeper, and there would be a trickle-down effect that would leave some unhappy.
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But bowl games, as we saw this year, continue to occupy a valuable position in the world of sports, attracting audiences and making artistic tactics matter. They’re turning culinary musings, like Pop-Tarts and Duke’s Mayonnaise, into cultural sensations. How about Brussels sprouts, taquitos and nachos with cheese? Let’s continue like this.
And let’s make the tournament and the sport better by applying common sense and fairness, considering the greater good over the financial interests of a small group of people.
On the question of when, colleague Stewart Mandel has the right plan: moving the season up so that the semifinals can take place on New Year’s Day instead of the quarters. The left-out bowls could then attach themselves to the broadcast lineup and make the best of their years off.
As Mandel wrote, commissioners verbally committed to continue bowling until the quarterfinals through the 2031 season. That contract is already closed, but converting it now “would be very different from what is foreseen in the CFP”.
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Still, in talking to representatives of two of the six CFP bowls, minds are open to the possibility it could happen. And there’s an understanding that public outcry could increase as this first iteration of the 12-team Playoff continues.
This week, let the clamor resound.
I’ve heard the arguments in favor of the prestige quo, based mainly on the low hotel stock in many school cities and the logistics of those games. And, of course, Saban would have been scared at the thought of his team staying at a Ramada at Penn State. But the first circular went well in all 4 cities.
It really comes down to hoping that “being good partners” over such a long period will matter more to the leaders of the sport than having the best possible version of the thing their sport now revolves around.
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Around the same time Davis was bemoaning the “sterility” of the bowl on ESPN, Peach Bowl representatives were “inviting” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian to their press conference after a first-round win against Clemson. All 4 winning trainers benefited from this treatment, a kind of reminder of the wonderful tradition that exists.
But other people mistakenly apply the word culture to things that are simply obsolete.
(Top photo: Ian Johnson/Icon Sportswire Getty Images)