For decades, there was no official National Championship Game in NCAA Football. There was simply the AP poll, which determined which top teams would face off in various Bowl games. Generally, the Bowl game that featured the top two teams—usually the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, or the Sugar Bowl—was viewed as the “de facto” National Championship.
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The winner of that game was then regarded as the National Champion. However, because there was no official game, the determination of which Bowl game should feature the top two teams and whether those should even be the top two teams in the nation was entirely subjective. The selection process was notoriously murky. That’s why, eventually, they moved to the College Football Playoff system that we have now.
Originally conceived as a four-team affair, the CFP was expanded to 12 teams last year. Naturally, this meant more drama around who truly deserved the final few at-large bids. To add even more fuel to the fire, a recent report from ESPN’s Heather Dinich outlined a possibility where the selection process could be influenced not only by a team’s performance and record, but also by its TV ratings, according to a source.
“One possibility, which could be viewed as a compromise, is having conferences earn automatic bids through their play each season. A model in which each Power 4 league can earn guaranteed spots through a combination of its teams’ overall records — and maybe even TV ratings, according to a source — could be presented,” read the report.
Right now, the proposals with the most backing are the current 12-team model and a 14-team format. The latter would see the Big Ten and SEC each receive four automatic bids, the ACC and Big 12 receive two apiece, with one more each for the Group of 5 conferences and one at-large bid (for Notre Dame if they’re good enough that year).
However, even the remotest possibility of TV ratings affecting the selection process (though they already did to a degree) is cause for concern. As TJ from College Football Addiction said in a video discussing the report, it seems “ESPN is doing their darnedest to” ruin college football with this proposal.
TJ’s guest, Locked On Big 12‘s Drake C Toll, took the selection committee to task for the TV-ratings proposal. He also acknowledged that “they’re done lying” to fans—that wins and on-field performance are supposed to be all that really matter.
“They’re done lying to you, they’re done hiding it, they’re done keeping you in the dark with this and making you assume that it’s all based on money, that it’s all based on power and prowess, it’s not based on wins themselves. They’re done having you believe this conspiracy theory that it might just be about ESPN’s brokering money based on TV ratings, that determines who makes the CFP. Now, instead of having you assume that, they’re just telling you that.”
The disgust with which Toll spoke about the situation likely echoes how a lot of people in the college football community are feeling about this. Everybody always kind of assumed. But now they’re simply dropping the facade and admitting that old Wu-Tang maxim: cash rules everything around me.
ESPN doesn’t care if an unknown team goes 11-1 if they can’t drive ratings when they reach the CFP. We were all thinking it, and now we know it. The silver lining, if there is one, is that at least we’ve all been somewhat vindicated by this report — even if it’s not in a way we would’ve liked.
