David Williams: College football's new playoff deeply flawed

So major college football finally has a playoff.

Praise Mike Slive and pass the beer nuts.

Well, Slive and all his conference-commissioner cronies who concocted this barest minimum of a playoff, and the college presidents who signed off on the thing, and all who hail it as historic and momentous and altogether game-changing.

Really, now. Except for one more day of football, what, exactly have they given us?

What will change, in any substantive way, once the four-team playoff takes effect in the 2014 season?

It's certainly not the end of the reign of the power conferences. Heck, they're the architects of it — so you know whom it favors.

The Big 12 commissioner, Bob Bowlsby, said it means an "open marketplace for all schools." But how so, exactly? Conceivably, the Conference USA champion could crash the current Bowl Championship Series system and qualify for a spot in the national championship game. It's not going to happen, but it's conceivable.

In a couple of years, you'll be able to say the same thing about the new system.

The four-team playoff will give us a slightly expanded version of what we already have. It will be some combination of the Southeastern Conference, the Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-12. It'll be Alabama vs. Oklahoma in one semifinal and LSU vs. Ohio State in the other.

Sounds more like "boon for the big boys" than "open marketplace for all schools."

I know, I know. Shouldn't we expect the best teams from the best conferences to emerge and prevail, once the committee convenes and weighs such factors as win-loss records, strength of schedule, head-to-head meetings and whether teams won their conference titles? How else would it work?

Here's how: For starters, let the NCAA run it. Why the NCAA has ceded this responsibility escapes me. The NCAA runs the basketball tournament — sets the rules, forms a committee, selects the field, collects the revenues and decides how to distribute them. Why not major college football's postseason, too? Why give college football's rich and powerful, the people who gave us the BCS, the authority to create this new system? The result is sure to be something that benefits them, even more than before.

Next, expand the playoffs. Make it an eight-team field — some semblance of an actual, you know, tournament. Put a premium on conference titles. In my system, the Big East gets an automatic berth, along with the champ of the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and ACC. Maybe the Mountain West gets a spot, too. That leaves one or two at-large spots, and so let the second-best SEC team scrap for a berth. (If you don't win your conference, what expectation should you have of playing for the national title?)

Does this plan ensure the best eight teams in the country are in the playoffs? No. But it's better for college football as a whole, because it looks out for the not-quite-big boys — the Big East, say — and gives them a legitimate route to raising their games, their programs, their leagues. More leagues and teams could prosper, not just the richest few. A University of Memphis program that could automatically qualify for the NCAA playoffs by winning its league could recruit better players, draw more fans — and help spread the wealth in college football.

Otherwise, the rich continue to get richer, the poor poorer, and we move ever closer to the day when the most-powerful 60 or so schools take their football and leave the rest behind, to wither and die.

To reach Sports Editor David Williams, call (901) 529-2310 or e-mail williams@commercialappeal.com.