The CFB Playoffs Are A Long-Awaited Gift For The Fans

We are smack dab in the middle of a festive holiday season. I realize that the holidays can be a stressful period of many, and I certainly do not want to add to that load. I will simply say that on December 20th, at 8pm EST, the dawn of a new era in college football will have finally arrived.

The College Football Playoff.

While I do not wish to add to the stress, I do realize that there are a number of college football fans who are unhappy with the direction that college football has taken, and the College Football Playoff are a portion of that unhappiness.

I will simply say that for many college football fans such as myself, the College Football Playoff represents something that was long sought, yet never delivered. Kind of like when my younger sister Chrissy repeatedly asked for a Snoopy Sno-Cone Maker at Christmas, but never received it. (Note: Chrissy eventually did get one…but as an adult.) But I digress.

After reading through this article from ESPN.com from March 2024, I can assure all of you that the quest for a true college football playoff is something that has been vexing the college football intelligentsia for decades. As someone who grew up watching college football in the 1980s, it always frustrated and puzzled me on New Year’s Day to hear television commentators talking about how the voters would decide the mythical college football national champion.

Why did college football have to be decided by a vote? Why couldn’t the results on the field be the determining factor? Fortunately, I was not the only college football fan who was asking these questions, year after year.

I remember how in 1986, the Fiesta Bowl was able to become a power player among the other college football bowl games by pitting then-independent and undefeated Miami (FL) and then-independent and undefeated Penn State for a national championship game. Other national championship games followed, with the 1987 (Miami versus Oklahoma) and 1988 games (Notre Dame and West Virginia). Still, college football fans were plagued with split national championships based upon votes in 1990 (Colorado and Georgia Tech) and 1991 (Miami and Washington).

The 1990s gave us the Bowl Coalition (1992-1994), then the Bowl Alliance (1995-1997), and then we had the Bowl Championship Series in 1998. We finally were going to be given a One versus Two match-up. But then we saw there were multiple teams worthy of being in the top two, and that was from the onset in 1998, right, Ohio State fans?

The flaws of the two-team BCS system (1998-2013) led us to the four-team model that we have had for the past 10 college football seasons. While I agree that there are flaws in the newly configured system — and yes, I have no doubt that the College Football Playoff is going to be expanded, I genuinely like the idea that 12 teams are going to be in the mix for the national championship.

As an Ohio State fan who cherished the 2002 BCS national championship over Miami in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl under Jim Tressel, as well as the 2014 College Football Playoff national championship under Urban Meyer, I look forward to seeing how Ryan Day and this year’s team navigate this year’s historic quest to win another national championship.

At this festive time of the holiday season, and after so many years of wanting a true college football playoff system, I can imagine receiving no greater gift.