I wonder, though, how much money is brought in from other bowl games? How many are there now, like 30? They get fans from two teams to travel to the area, stay in hotels, eat at restaurants, and buy Emerald Bowl Champion memorabilia, or whatever the bowl may be. So those cities that host games lose out big time. Not that they would have much of a say. Then, the NCAA loses out on the money made from the sponsors of those bowl games as well as ticket revenue. If you have the top 8 or 16 teams make it, you've lost a few games from the normal bowl schedule, by about half. Or more. And then there's payouts for bowl victories. Schools lose out on money from winning a bowl game. For some of the bigger teams, like Alabama, Florida, USC, etc., a playoff might be nice. They assume every year, they're going to be near the top of the rankings, and get into the playoffs. But for teams that know they just aren't generally going to compete for national titles, they at least get a bowl game victory recognition, and the opportunity to win money for their school. Teams like Army and Navy, for example. Or teams in the MAC, WAC, etc. who maybe 1 out of every 4 years would get someone in the playoffs, with a chance to win their conference money. The cheapest payout for a bowl game I see is $300,000. That's a lot of money for some smaller schools, that can use their portion from the conference as a big portion of their budget for sports. Now, if the MAC gets into three games, the amount increases even more. So for some, the guaranteed payday of 2 bowl games every year is likely better than the extreme long shot that they make a playoff game. Looking at the top 16 teams this season, assuming we had a 16 team playoff, you have two teams from the MWC and one from the WAC. Actually pretty good for the smaller conferences. But look at something like Conference USA> Last season, they had 6 guaranteed bowl games. That's a lot of money for them to forfeit. Look at the Pac-10 even. We'd have Oregon in the playoffs, but that's it. No money to be gained from OSU, Stanford, Cal, USC, UCLA, etc.
Again, I think a playoff would be awesome as a fan, but I can see why college football just isn't going to do it. Another thing is, it keeps people talking about college football year round. Part of that is just the quality of the sport, but college basketball, most don't give a shit until the tournament starts. And then, you get a winner, and it is quickly forgotten. And a lot of people only pay attention at that time because of gambling(tournaments). Whereas, to this day, I hear Oregon fans complain about not getting a chance at Miami how many years ago? And fans of other teams, about how they got screwed by this or that. Obviously, Oregon fans would have rather gotten the shot. But if they lost, you wouldn't hear anyone tlaking about it.
