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NCAA News Archive - 2007
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Bowl-game benefits trump tourney
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By By John V. Lombardi
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
The following is reprinted by permission of the author from the online publication Inside Higher Ed.
Now that the college football season is finally past, the headlines have abated, and all eyes are on the professional extravaganza of the Super Bowl, we might take a look at that hardy perennial argument: college football bowl games versus a possible national championship tournament. Those of us who find ourselves in the college football environment often discover that our friends and relatives, colleagues and students, eagerly engage this question.
Triggered in part by the endless controversy over the Bowl Championship Series selection process and nurtured by the extravaganza of the NCAA’s Division I college basketball tournament, many observers champion a revision of big-time college football’s bowl system to construct a championship process for the teams in Division I-A, following the model of the NCAA Division I-AA tournament. (I know the official NCAA designations are Football Bowl Subdivision and Championship Subdivision, but old habits die hard.)
The drama turns on that desperate American need to establish who is No. 1 in everything every year. Whether best dressed, best movie, best college, best hot dog or best college football team, Americans cannot abide the possibility that No. 1 is an irrelevancy among high-quality products, and that the difference between any No. 1 and Nos. 2-5 or more is likely to be minuscule and accidental. Still, we love our No. 1.
So the first knock against the bowl games is that they do not produce a real champion but a constructed champion. For those who do not follow these things, the current system uses a variety of rankings by computers, by coaches and by sportswriters to determine which two teams play for the title of national champion in a bowl game.
The rest of the teams, in more or less descending order by the ranking system, get bids to participate in less significant bowl games. All the bowl games are played after the regular season ends beginning in early December and continuing until early January, with the title bowl game played at the end of the sequence, this year on January 8.
Many people are not aware that the college football bowl games do not belong to the NCAA but rather are commercial enterprises of the bowl venues (the stadiums and communities that house them) that negotiate with the football conferences. The current bowl championship system emerged as the premier football conferences and the major bowl venues developed a system to permit a final game between the two highest-ranked teams in the nation in a format that would generate the most interest and money. By every measure of interest, participation, ticket sales, advertising and television revenue, the current big-time bowl system is a huge success.
However, because the top level of competition is structured by rankings derived from computer and expert polls, many object that the top two ranked teams may not be the best because the rankings are mathematical or opinion-based and may not actually pit the very best contenders against each other as might happen to some extent in a tournament format. Hence, the No. 1 crowd argues for a Division I-A football tournament.
In contrast, Division I-AA, which is composed of conferences and institutions that support football at a somewhat reduced scale and with significantly reduced expenses, ends its season with a tournament that pits teams selected by conference and by various other criteria against each other to produce a final game between presumably the two best teams in Division I-AA. That activity is controlled by the NCAA on behalf of the conferences and institutions in the subdivision.
So which is best? A reasonable academic response might be: Who cares? But as many pure academics have discovered, many people really care. So let me offer a perspective on these competitions.
The money is important, but truth be told, it is significant mainly for the top bowls. Even then, while those bowls pay a good sum, the money almost always goes to the conference, not the institution, and the conference shares the revenue among its 10 to 12 members. Twenty-two bowls pay between $750,000 and $1.65 million; five pay between $2 and $6 million, and the five BCS bowls pay between $14 and $17 million. Although the payday is important for the top bowls, only the top 10 meet or exceed the likely cost of participation. The rest of the Division I-A teams participate for the value of the experience, because the money does not fully compensate for the cost of competing in the game.
The impartiality of a tournament for establishing the best of the best among football teams is not quite as effective as we might imagine. In the case of Division I-AA, of the 16 participants in that tournament, eight are selected as a result of winning their conference. A committee chooses the other eight from the remaining members of those conferences and from among 49 other Division I-AA teams. While the committee is surely wise in its choices, it is no wiser than the people and computers that select participants in the Division I-A bowl games — the Division I-AA tournament may or may not include the truly best teams competing for the position of No. 1.
Participation ratio
Another perspective on these end-of-season events evaluates the odds of participating. Division I-AA has 106 teams competing for a 16-team championship field, which means only 15 percent of the eligible teams have a shot at a postseason experience. As a result of the tournament format, only two teams can participate in the championship game. When it is all over, only one Division I-AA team and its fans can celebrate an end-of-season victory. We have one winner, to be sure, but we have 105 losers.
Division I-A, however, has 119 teams eligible for a postseason bowl game. This past season, 32 bowl games provided for 64 teams to have an end-of-season game on national television. More than half of the Division I-A teams had a shot at winning a postseason game. At the close of the bowl games, 32 teams, or 26 percent of Division I-A, returned to their campuses with a trophy from a postseason bowl game. Clearly, Division I-A teams have a much better chance of participating in a postseason event and securing a triumphant return than do those in Division I-AA that are “stuck” with a tournament.
Postseason football also is significantly about the event — the engagement of alumni, friends, donors, legislators, trustees, students and fans in an extravaganza of enthusiasm and good cheer about the campus’s team. It should be a fine party. The postseason event offers the possibility of a televised activity highlighting the university campus, its spirit, its enthusiasm, and of course, its ability to be a winner. That potent form of advertising helps universities seeking the visibility that translates into high rankings in popular opinion polls. The value of those celebratory moments are significant in recruiting students and, obviously, student-athletes.
Weighing experience vs. costs
When we have a bowl game to look forward to, we can plan and organize around the event for maximum alumni, student, fan and donor impact. We can establish transportation and housing packages, we can create appropriate pre- and postgame events, and we can produce effective publicity. We can focus all our postseason activity around this final event and make sure everyone has a fine time.
In Division I-AA, however, with the disadvantage of a tournament format, the postseason event is exceptionally difficult to organize. Even if we defy the odds and become one of the 16 participants, we do not know how to focus our event planning. If we focus on the first game of the tournament — the only one we can be sure we will play — we can have a good time but everyone will know it is not the main event, which is the final game. They will wonder if they should save their trip time and money for the next game in the tournament, assuming we win the first one, or take the even longer odds on getting into the final game.
For those two teams that last to the final, their athletes and all the accompanying student support will have had a long football season with four postseason contests. While that is a lot of extra games, it affects only 16 teams at the beginning and two at the end. In the bowl scenarios, the postseason is indeed extended chronologically into early January, but only for one extra game (the bowl), even though 64 teams will have a one-game postseason appearance. If they bet on our getting into the final game, but we do not make it, then those fans, friends, donors and students who waited will not have any postgame event, even though we made it to the semifinals. If we do get into the final, we have only a limited time to organize and deliver a significant event, and the attendance is often severely limited because people have not anticipated this highly unlikely result. Worse yet, among all those 106 Division I-AA teams, only one goes home a winner and only two can claim to have participated in a real, end-of-season event.
The Division I-AA tournament also costs the institutions money, and the more successful the team, the more money it costs. While the NCAA allocates funds for the team and various other expenses, it does not pay for the band or for the parties. As a result, if we go all the way, and if we support each game as if it might be the last one we play, we accumulate financial losses as we succeed in the tournament. In Division I-A, in the top 10 bowls or so, the teams and conferences make money by attending the bowl.
The rest of the bowls pay a reasonable amount, but not enough to cover the cost of participation, so the teams in those bowl games lose money — but then again, they only lose on one game and they get an event worth having for the expenditure. They get a party, they get to mobilize their fans, and they have a 50 percent chance of ending the season as a winner. They will be on television, and their potential recruits for next and subsequent years will see the event and the campus highlighted.
With all that, I tell our athletics director we should try to establish and participate in a Division I-AA bowl game. Unfortunately, that is not likely to happen. The NCAA likes the I-AA tournament because it controls the tournament. The winner-take-all crowd likes the tournament because in spite of its selection defects, it appears to create a No. 1. The possible venues for Division I-AA bowl games are more likely to bid on yet another Division I-A bowl rather than take on the regulatory and revenue risk of trying to create a high-quality Division I-AA bowl.
So the reality check is that we are not likely to get any improvement in the end-of-season activities for our division for quite some time. The moral of the story is that Division I-A should continue to develop, refine, defend and market its terrifically successful and institutionally rewarding bowl games.
John V. Lombardi is chancellor and professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and former president at the University of Florida. The Massachusetts football team was the 2006 Division I Football Championship Subdivision runner-up.
Now that the college football season is finally past, the headlines have abated, and all eyes are on the professional extravaganza of the Super Bowl, we might take a look at that hardy perennial argument: college football bowl games versus a possible national championship tournament. Those of us who find ourselves in the college football environment often discover that our friends and relatives, colleagues and students, eagerly engage this question.Triggered in part by the endless controversy over the Bowl Championship Series selection process and nurtured by the extravaganza of the NCAA’s Division I college basketball tournament, many observers champion a revision of big-time college football’s bowl system to construct a championship process for the teams in Division I-A, following the model of the NCAA Division I-AA tournament. (I know the official NCAA designations are Football Bowl Subdivision and Championship Subdivision, but old habits die hard.)
The drama turns on that desperate American need to establish who is No. 1 in everything every year. Whether best dressed, best movie, best college, best hot dog or best college football team, Americans cannot abide the possibility that No. 1 is an irrelevancy among high-quality products, and that the difference between any No. 1 and Nos. 2-5 or more is likely to be minuscule and accidental. Still, we love our No. 1.
So the first knock against the bowl games is that they do not produce a real champion but a constructed champion. For those who do not follow these things, the current system uses a variety of rankings by computers, by coaches and by sportswriters to determine which two teams play for the title of national champion in a bowl game.
The rest of the teams, in more or less descending order by the ranking system, get bids to participate in less significant bowl games. All the bowl games are played after the regular season ends beginning in early December and continuing until early January, with the title bowl game played at the end of the sequence, this year on January 8.
Many people are not aware that the college football bowl games do not belong to the NCAA but rather are commercial enterprises of the bowl venues (the stadiums and communities that house them) that negotiate with the football conferences. The current bowl championship system emerged as the premier football conferences and the major bowl venues developed a system to permit a final game between the two highest-ranked teams in the nation in a format that would generate the most interest and money. By every measure of interest, participation, ticket sales, advertising and television revenue, the current big-time bowl system is a huge success.
However, because the top level of competition is structured by rankings derived from computer and expert polls, many object that the top two ranked teams may not be the best because the rankings are mathematical or opinion-based and may not actually pit the very best contenders against each other as might happen to some extent in a tournament format. Hence, the No. 1 crowd argues for a Division I-A football tournament.
In contrast, Division I-AA, which is composed of conferences and institutions that support football at a somewhat reduced scale and with significantly reduced expenses, ends its season with a tournament that pits teams selected by conference and by various other criteria against each other to produce a final game between presumably the two best teams in Division I-AA. That activity is controlled by the NCAA on behalf of the conferences and institutions in the subdivision.
So which is best? A reasonable academic response might be: Who cares? But as many pure academics have discovered, many people really care. So let me offer a perspective on these competitions.
The money is important, but truth be told, it is significant mainly for the top bowls. Even then, while those bowls pay a good sum, the money almost always goes to the conference, not the institution, and the conference shares the revenue among its 10 to 12 members. Twenty-two bowls pay between $750,000 and $1.65 million; five pay between $2 and $6 million, and the five BCS bowls pay between $14 and $17 million. Although the payday is important for the top bowls, only the top 10 meet or exceed the likely cost of participation. The rest of the Division I-A teams participate for the value of the experience, because the money does not fully compensate for the cost of competing in the game.
The impartiality of a tournament for establishing the best of the best among football teams is not quite as effective as we might imagine. In the case of Division I-AA, of the 16 participants in that tournament, eight are selected as a result of winning their conference. A committee chooses the other eight from the remaining members of those conferences and from among 49 other Division I-AA teams. While the committee is surely wise in its choices, it is no wiser than the people and computers that select participants in the Division I-A bowl games — the Division I-AA tournament may or may not include the truly best teams competing for the position of No. 1.
Participation ratio
Another perspective on these end-of-season events evaluates the odds of participating. Division I-AA has 106 teams competing for a 16-team championship field, which means only 15 percent of the eligible teams have a shot at a postseason experience. As a result of the tournament format, only two teams can participate in the championship game. When it is all over, only one Division I-AA team and its fans can celebrate an end-of-season victory. We have one winner, to be sure, but we have 105 losers.
Division I-A, however, has 119 teams eligible for a postseason bowl game. This past season, 32 bowl games provided for 64 teams to have an end-of-season game on national television. More than half of the Division I-A teams had a shot at winning a postseason game. At the close of the bowl games, 32 teams, or 26 percent of Division I-A, returned to their campuses with a trophy from a postseason bowl game. Clearly, Division I-A teams have a much better chance of participating in a postseason event and securing a triumphant return than do those in Division I-AA that are “stuck” with a tournament.
Postseason football also is significantly about the event — the engagement of alumni, friends, donors, legislators, trustees, students and fans in an extravaganza of enthusiasm and good cheer about the campus’s team. It should be a fine party. The postseason event offers the possibility of a televised activity highlighting the university campus, its spirit, its enthusiasm, and of course, its ability to be a winner. That potent form of advertising helps universities seeking the visibility that translates into high rankings in popular opinion polls. The value of those celebratory moments are significant in recruiting students and, obviously, student-athletes.
Weighing experience vs. costs
When we have a bowl game to look forward to, we can plan and organize around the event for maximum alumni, student, fan and donor impact. We can establish transportation and housing packages, we can create appropriate pre- and postgame events, and we can produce effective publicity. We can focus all our postseason activity around this final event and make sure everyone has a fine time.
In Division I-AA, however, with the disadvantage of a tournament format, the postseason event is exceptionally difficult to organize. Even if we defy the odds and become one of the 16 participants, we do not know how to focus our event planning. If we focus on the first game of the tournament — the only one we can be sure we will play — we can have a good time but everyone will know it is not the main event, which is the final game. They will wonder if they should save their trip time and money for the next game in the tournament, assuming we win the first one, or take the even longer odds on getting into the final game.
For those two teams that last to the final, their athletes and all the accompanying student support will have had a long football season with four postseason contests. While that is a lot of extra games, it affects only 16 teams at the beginning and two at the end. In the bowl scenarios, the postseason is indeed extended chronologically into early January, but only for one extra game (the bowl), even though 64 teams will have a one-game postseason appearance. If they bet on our getting into the final game, but we do not make it, then those fans, friends, donors and students who waited will not have any postgame event, even though we made it to the semifinals. If we do get into the final, we have only a limited time to organize and deliver a significant event, and the attendance is often severely limited because people have not anticipated this highly unlikely result. Worse yet, among all those 106 Division I-AA teams, only one goes home a winner and only two can claim to have participated in a real, end-of-season event.
The Division I-AA tournament also costs the institutions money, and the more successful the team, the more money it costs. While the NCAA allocates funds for the team and various other expenses, it does not pay for the band or for the parties. As a result, if we go all the way, and if we support each game as if it might be the last one we play, we accumulate financial losses as we succeed in the tournament. In Division I-A, in the top 10 bowls or so, the teams and conferences make money by attending the bowl.
The rest of the bowls pay a reasonable amount, but not enough to cover the cost of participation, so the teams in those bowl games lose money — but then again, they only lose on one game and they get an event worth having for the expenditure. They get a party, they get to mobilize their fans, and they have a 50 percent chance of ending the season as a winner. They will be on television, and their potential recruits for next and subsequent years will see the event and the campus highlighted.
With all that, I tell our athletics director we should try to establish and participate in a Division I-AA bowl game. Unfortunately, that is not likely to happen. The NCAA likes the I-AA tournament because it controls the tournament. The winner-take-all crowd likes the tournament because in spite of its selection defects, it appears to create a No. 1. The possible venues for Division I-AA bowl games are more likely to bid on yet another Division I-A bowl rather than take on the regulatory and revenue risk of trying to create a high-quality Division I-AA bowl.
So the reality check is that we are not likely to get any improvement in the end-of-season activities for our division for quite some time. The moral of the story is that Division I-A should continue to develop, refine, defend and market its terrifically successful and institutionally rewarding bowl games.
John V. Lombardi is chancellor and professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and former president at the University of Florida. The Massachusetts football team was the 2006 Division I Football Championship Subdivision runner-up.
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