DECEMBER (^202113)
fatigue swept across the U.S. in
2007, a group of commissioners,
determined to stage a playoff,
formed a commission of conference
office administrators: Bloom
from the SEC; committee chair
Nick Caparelli, with the Big East;
Mark Womack, another SEC staff
member; Ed Stewart of the Big 12;
and the ACC’s Mike Kelly.
They were to examine what then
SEC commissioner Mike Slive
referred to as a “Plus One” system—
in other words, a four-team playoff
based on the BCS rankings.
Slive and ACC commissioner
John Swofford, both proponents,
presented a model to their fellow
commissioners in April 2008 at a
meeting in Florida. The other four
power conference commissioners
were against expansion, with
the Big Ten and Pac-10 again
citing their ties to the Rose Bowl.
Mike Tranghese, then commissioner
of the Big East, voted against
it because he wanted a human
element involved in selecting the
teams. “I took more crap for voting
against that than you can imagine,”
Tranghese says. “It was represented
that I stopped the playoff.”
Four years later, commissioners
approved virtually the same
model, leading to the current CFP.
“We oughta go back and get us
some royalty fees,” jokes Stewart.
And now, college football’s power
brokers are pondering broadening
the CFP but facing familiar questions
about bowls, academic calendars and
how many teams is too many. Bloom
recalls one of the talking points
during his secret commission’s
monthslong exploration. They called
it “the playoff creep.”
“We knew it wouldn’t end up at
just four,” Bloom says. “It will go to
eight teams, 12, 16.”
He pauses. “Hey, that’s what
they’re talking about today, right?”
WAGERING ON POSTSEASON COLLEGE
FOOTBALL GAMES IS A FRAUGHT PROPOSITION
BOWLED OVER
SI SPORTSBOOK
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IF YOU think gambling on the regular-season whims and
behaviors of 18- to 22-year-olds is a crapshoot, allow me to
introduce you to the college football postseason. Yes, there
are always carefully calibrated metrics to factor into your
decision-making (like the SI Composite betting projections, for
instance), but a bettor also has to use intuition. With bowls that
often means, Which team wants to be there more, and why?
Are you a big power who had national title aspirations
but instead are playing a plucky Group of 5 team that
overachieved? Guess which team cares more in that scenario.
Did one team’s head coach get fired in November? Now you
must consider whether the interim staffers were able to truly
focus on the task at hand while they worried about their own
future job prospects. (While Kevin Steele bombed out filling in
for fired Auburn coach Gus Malzahn in last year’s Citrus Bowl
against Northwestern [above], a recent Action Network
report found that interim coaches are right around .500, both
straight-up and against the spread.) Did a star player or two
opt out of the bowl game entirely to prepare for the NFL draft?
Looking for an overall pattern? Good luck. In 2015–16,
favorites went 25–16 against the spread, and overs hit 26 times.
The next year favorites were 14-26-1, and overs hit just 17 times.
In the four years since it’s been largely a toss-up. Those are just
a few things to factor in while you clutch that ticket on a noon
bowl game while you should otherwise be paying attention to
the family in town you’re choosing to ignore. —Richard Johnson