TV Positioned as Lone Winner in Playoff System

Although Alabama and LSU were generally acknowledged as the top two teams in college football entering the national championship game, the lopsided Crimson Tide victory has ignited another round of reactionary, revisionist history -- and an overdue but misguided call for changes to the Bowl Championship Series.

Most notably, the Tide's 21-0 victory has some championing a playoff series, which would be nice, or the "plus-one model" -- which would be a mistake.

Still, the logic behind this latest call for change fails because it's based on the fact that the most recent championship game was a blowout. Changing the postseason system would not guarantee the elimination of blowouts in the championship game, or anywhere in the playoffs for that matter.

Any change in the BCS -- be it a "plus-one" that matches the top two teams after all the bowls are completed or a small playoff system (perhaps as few as four teams) -- would guarantee just one winner, though: the respective BCS TV partners.

Sure, one team will win the national championship each season but revenue, viewership and all that comes with it will empower, most likely, ESPN, because it would get valuable programming.

Without reshaping the bowl system significantly (which college administrators will not do because they want to keep their holiday-season junkets to bowl sites), a "plus-one" is unnecessary. This season, LSU and Alabama would've been selected 1-2 entering the process, with the ultimate expectation that they would meet for the national championship. As it was, we simply skipped a step, not needing to see Oregon and Stanford lose in the semifinal round, but got a dominant performance from Alabama that made the final product seem less than it was.

An eight-team playoff would work best, and generate even more revenue for the BCS and its TV partners, but that could come at the expense of many bowl games -- as well as the related junkets for academics and tourism dollars for those bowl game locations.

Still, TV partners will be happy with whatever happens because they'll have the games.

While ratings have been down for some bowl games, and the BCS games in particular, the programming still draws better than other options that exist for ESPN. Specifically, BCS ratings were down this year but ESPN still attracted three of the top five shows on cable last week with those games. Also, the BCS championship game attracted the largest audience (24.2 million viewers) in cable TV history. It was behind only last year's BCS championship game (27.3 million viewers).

Plus, ESPN is especially adept and spreading the game and related content across a variety of platforms, leveraging something like the Fiesta Bowl post-game show, for example, to some 10 million viewers.

Change will come to the BCS -- hopefully in the form of something more than a worthless "plus-one" -- but the power of TV, and the willingness of people to watch, will remain the same.