College football needs a playoff system.

"Your argument here is that extending a particular programs schedule increases the risk of injury and decreases ticket demand. The risk of injury is inherent in any game and the number of programs and players who experience this marginal increase would be minimal because the number of programs participating would be smaller each week." The risk of injury can be shown in mathematical model as a power function. Depending on the players body, they have a certain "x" variable which is defined as their injury risk as a player, as some players tend to get injured more than others. The x is then raised to the power of y, which takes into account the number of games played. By playing additional games, that same player raises their risk injury because with each additional minute of play they have one additional minute where they may be injured. Now, as in the case of longer games, for example, a college football game that goes into 2OT, more injuries tend to inherently occur in the overtime periods because the players are fatigued and they naturally resort to unnatural body movement to ward off the fatigue. This will lead to more fractures, tendon injuries, and contusions. So, by adding additional games, especially playoff games, the players will have to play harder against tougher competition, and teams will then lose their players, risking not only a loss but their career in the NFLs. This matters, because, taking the top 16 teams in the nation, they tend to have the most highly touted prospects of that year. The longer schedule will be placing this injury risk on the lottery and first day selections. To show the impact of injury, former U of Miami RB Willis McGahee tore a knee tendon in the championship game loss against Ohio State. His draft stock dropped from top 5 to his draft position, late in the first round, costing him millions of dollars and an at least extra year in his rookie contract. While this was not the result of the college playoff system, the same losses would happen to hard working players more often under your system. "You make it sound like ALL programs would be playing a 16 game schedule. This is not the case. Only 16 programs would have one additional games, while the next sucessful 8 would have another additional game." As I stated above, the 16 "most" important programs in the nation will be playing longer, and the 2 best will be competing for the championship, adding four additional games to their schedule each. "Also, no one said we have to get rid of the bowl names. Have the sun bowl and the capital one bowl etc. be the preliminary rounds and the progressive rounds will have the more prestigious bowl names. This will keep your prestige and sponsorship high, while providing the benefits of the playoff system." This is an attempt to mask the importance of a bowl title. Your system either scraps the concept of giving bowl games to smaller schools who are not the best in the nation but do garner popularity, or it attempts to ruse fans by saying that "USC is the Capital One Bowl, Sun Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Cotton Bowl champions!!!" The market share is hurt for the smaller bowl games and especially for the NFL playoffs. Unless the college football schedule is adjusted to being bowl games before December 20th, the season would extend into at least Martin Luther King weekend in the thick of the NFL playoff race. Because of exclusive network rights, more overlaps of "more important and prestigious bowls" over lesser bowls would knock them out of televised slots. This is a disincentive for prospects and recruits to jump from high school to rebuilding programs. The college playoff system attempts to level the playing field, but it only gives exposure to those participating teams. Hawaii, Boise State and others were able to recruit players by winning lesser bowl titles and showing their playoff success to America. Giving more focus to fewer teams only perpetuates the dominance of a select few teams as seen throughout CFB history, reversing the fortune in 2007 that saw USF and BC each reach #2, and even Cal reach #1. "Every year we see this drama about a split championship. The playoff system would solve this. Yes, there would be "snubbed" teams in a playoff system." This is an error to the BCS system that can be fixed as follows: 1. Make college football teams schedule less games against Division 2 and Division 1-AA schools and instead expand their non-conference schedule to show the strength or weakness of each respective conference. 2. Do not allow teams that are not invited to play in the National Championship to win because of poll numbers. Once the top 2 teams have been named, narrow down the choices for BCS National Champion to those 2 teams. 3. Encourage all major conferences, regardless of size, to hold a conference championship game, specifically the Big Ten. The college football playoff system is seemingly great because of the major flaws of the BCS, but many problems lie with the scheduling of football teams. Even extending the regular season schedule by just one game would give a greater difference in records. The key to the future of CFB is non-conference games within Division 1. SEC teams are applauded over all other conferences for having a tougher level of competition. In order to level the playing field, allowing Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, Big East, SEC, and others to play one another would help to show which conference in college football is actually the best, and then allow any conference bias to be justified. Thanks, The Colonel