DALLAS >> As Oregon and Ohio State arrive in North Texas Friday night for Monday’s inaugural College Football Playoff Championship Game there will be no pause to lament the passing of its predecessors, the late Bowl Championship Series, Bowl Alliance and Bowl Coalition.
Exultation in their demise, perhaps, but definitely no tears shed for their overdue elimination.
Because if the BCS (1998-2013) was still in existence with all its computer formulas, the Ducks and Buckeyes would be home watching Florida State and Alabama play for the title on TV instead.
How absurd would that have been given what we saw transpire on Jan. 1, when Oregon ripped Florida State and Ohio State stunned Alabama?
"Obviously we’re thankful for the playoff system," Buckeye running back Ezekiel Elliott told the media. "(That) gave us the chance to go out there and show that we’re one of the better teams in the nation and deserve to be in the national championship. So, I think the playoff system definitely helped."
Linebacker Darron Lee said, "You get to see the best two teams play for it all."
It has given us, for example, something resembling a real playoff, a process major college football has lacked or avoided for more than a century.
By contrast, its little brother, the Football Championship Subdivision, has had one since 1978.
What that means is that this year, two days after running back Darius Anderson of Island Pacific Academy suits up for North Dakota State in the FCS national title game against Illinois State 33 miles north in Frisco, Texas, Saint Louis School’s Marcus Mariota and five other Hawaii-bred players, Isaac Ava (Saint Louis), DeForest Buckner (Punahou), Koa Ka’ai (Kamhammeha), Davis Miyashiro-Saipaia (Punahou) and Bronson Yim (Saint Louis), get the overdue opportunity to help make history in taking Oregon against the Buckeyes.
The country’s appetite for a genuine playoff was attested to with stadium sellouts and record TV ratings topping 28 million viewers each game for the semifinal-round contests.
What that has done, along with the exclusion of Texas Christian (12-1), is beg loudly the question of expansion. Not whether to expand, but how soon, and to how many teams?
The lords of college football are a conservative — and tight-fisted — lot, which is part of why it has taken so long just to get to this point.
They have wanted to preserve the superiority of the so-called Power Five conferences (Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern) while sweeping the table of the bulk of the riches.
Only when they were assured more of both did they finally give in to a four-team playoff.
After each Power Five conference cashes checks of $60 million to $87.5 million while the lesser leagues, such as the Mountain West, bank $12 million to $16 million, it shouldn’t take long to entertain the thought of an eight-team playoff format.
Meanwhile, nobody is looking in the rear view mirror at the BCS, which has become just more roadkill here along I-30.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
