My earliest memory of college football does not extend all the way back to the introduction of the Associated Press poll in 1936, but it’s closer than I might prefer at this point.
No, my introduction came a few decades later, on a Saturday afternoon when my younger brother and I were rounded up and stashed in the back of the station wagon for the trip to my grandfather’s house to watch ABC’s telecast of Notre Dame vs. Purdue. I knew not where either school was located, nor did I understand my family’s devotion to ND was the result of my parents’ status as first-generation Irish Catholics. I did learn that day in 1968 that Fighting Irish quarterback Terry Hanratty and receiver Jim Seymour were very good, but the Boilers’ QB Mike Phipps and running back Leroy Keyes were better.
So that’s how long I’ve been waiting for this: a good deal longer than half a century.
This will be the greatest college football season, ever.
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There may be no player as magnificent as Reggie Bush. There may be no offense as overwhelming as LSU 2019. There may be no defense as oppressive as 1979 Alabama. There may be no game as great as Nebraska-Oklahoma 1971. The title game may not feature an upset like 1986 Penn State over Miami, or a classic on the order of 2005 Texas squeezing past USC on Vince Young’s sprint to the corner flag. And still this season will be better than all of those, combined.
Because this will be the first season in which college football executes its season the way all grown-up sports do: Every major team will know, as their seasons begin, exactly what they must do to play for the championship. If they win their league, they will enter the playoff, now expanded to 12 teams. Every mid-major conference team will know they at least have a shot: one champion from among those five leagues will automatically enter, as well.
It could be Quinn Ewers and Texas. It could be Dillon Gabriel and Oregon. It could be Carson Beck and Georgia. It could be all of them. It could be none. What is certain is they will earn it through their performance and results.
This season will be a competition, not an election.
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The absurdity of choosing a champion by a vote, or of excluding legitimate championship contenders because they might not be as attractive to television, or of elite teams being prohibited from competing against one another in the postseason because they have conflicting bowl affiliations – all of that is relegated to the inconsistent history of what has been, at once, among our greatest games and worst sports.
From 1936 until 1997, college football actually decided its champion by a vote. Not until 1968 did that vote include the outcome of any bowl games contested. That wasn’t true sport. It was more like the Academy Awards.
Even with the introduction of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998, the polls still had influence on the process of identifying the two teams that would play for the championship. And the arrival of the four-team College Football Playoff in 2014 – during a period when there were five major conferences – meant at least one champion would be excluded from competing for the title by a committee that, yes, took a vote on who should play for the trophy.
Now there will be no more episodes like Penn State 1968 … and 1969 … and 1973 … and especially 1994, all seasons in which the Nittany Lions finished with perfect records but essentially lost the elections that determined who was champ. Perhaps they should have had a better ground game.
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There will be no more “split” titles as in 1997, when Michigan won all 12 games, including four against top 10 opponents, and Nebraska won all 13 games, two against top-10 opponents. Michigan’s conference affiliation bound them to enter to the Rose Bowl. Nebraska, a member of the Big 12 at the time, was compelled to compete in the Orange Bowl. The media personnel comprising the AP poll voted for the Wolverines. The coaches voting in the USA Today/ESPN poll went for the Huskers. We share M&Ms in this world, and tips on the best Airbnbs, but sharing championships is antithetical to the very idea of competition.
There will be no more catastrophes like Florida State 2023, when the Seminoles won every game they played in a major conference – plus a non-league game against an SEC opponent that featured the Heisman Trophy winner – and still were excluded from the alleged championship playoff because they’d lost their starting quarterback to injury and thus were deemed by the committing choosing the participants to be less likely to put on a good show for TV.
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All those teams would have had a genuine opportunity to compete for a championship under the system in place now. The new College Football Playoff is not perfect; there should be greater use of campus sites, and the length of the tournament presents an argument to ditch the meaningless 12th regular season game that always was an empty money grab.
After more than 150 years of competition, though, after nearly 125 years of bowl games, after just short of 90 years of poll tyranny, after a decade of a committee exclusively deciding who gets to play in the biggest games, at last college football will determine its championship on the field of play.
When the four-team CFP was introduced, we were sold the idea that every game mattered, but soon we learned even games that decided league championships on the very weekend the playoff teams were chosen didn’t count. This wonderful sport has deserved better for so long.