College football national championship

[RiverDog]

And honestly, I think that year was a big reason the 'playoff' push got started. People started thinking "This can't be left up to J-school flunkies if they're going to botch the voting this badly".

I don't agree. A college football playoff system had been discussed for decades prior to and following the '91 season. You could point to a lot of factors, including mid majors like Boise State, that were always on the outside looking in no matter how good their teams were, or at least perceived to be.

Indeed, one of James' prior teams in '84 that on NYD beat Oklahoma, ranked #2 going into the Orange Bowl, yet finished 2nd in the final balloting to a BYU team that didn't even play on NYD nor did they play a single game against a ranked in the top 20 in the entire season, including their bowl game, yet they won the NC.

And going back even further, in the '60's, when two undefeated teams ranked #1 and #2, Notre Dame and Michigan State, played to a tie in which the Irish sat on the ball in the final minutes as they were leading in the polls. Notre Dame had a 'no bowl' policy back then and didn't even start going to bowl games until 1969.

D1 CFB has been under intense criticism for a long, long time.

[burrrton]

Eh, you're probably correct, RD. I just remember a lot of talk about it after that year (because of the outcome), but I didn't pay enough attention to disagree with you.

[RiverDog]

Eh, you're probably correct, RD. I just remember a lot of talk about it after that year (because of the outcome), but I didn't pay enough attention to disagree with you.

One of the reasons why I say that is that Don James himself was not a proponent of a playoff system and was perfectly happy to accept the bowl alignment/mythical NC as it existed. He didn't feel that it was worth keeping athletes and other students out of class long enough to compete in a playoff. If a head coach of one of if not the most disenfranchised team wasn't behind it, it's unlikely that the movement would have be perceived as significantly greater than it had been in the past.

Back then, one of the biggest players in the D1 football playoff debate was the individual bowl committees comprised mostly of businessmen that felt a playoff system would compromise the bowls and were able to influence a lot of pressure on the NCAA. I always felt that an 8 team playoff would make perfect sense, with the 4 quarterfinal games occuring on NYD in the form of the Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta bowls.