Playoff director's goal for Year 2: 'Don't fix it if it ain't broke'

Published Apr. 30, 2015 9:30 a.m. ET

Stewart Mandel

IRVING, Texas -- The now-defunct BCS seemed to breed a new crisis annually for its leaders to scramble to extinguish. One year in, the College Football Playoff is operating so swimmingly that officials completed their scheduled three-day meetings here Wednesday after just two days.

"There was a pretty strong sentiment in the room," executive director Bill Hancock told reporters afterward. "Don't fix it if it ain't broke."

Following a first season that saw a relatively controversy-free bracket (outside of Fort Worth and Waco), a surprise champion (Ohio State), historic TV ratings and sellout crowds, the FBS commissioners apparently spent two days mostly patting each other on the back. And perhaps changing their return flights.

Organizers are happy. Bowls are happy. ESPN's happy. Fans are happy. And the nation's FBS athletic departments are collectively $200 million richer than they were just a year earlier because of it.

"The pop we experienced was in many ways the public saying, thanks for giving us what we had been asking for," said Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany.

There is one dissenter amidst the victory party: the Big 12. While his fellow commissioners mostly bore happy faces and airy tones this week, Bob Bowlsby looked visibly worn and defeated as he sat against a table Wednesday evening answering questions from reporters. The man whose 10-team conference unwittingly played the odd-man out role in Year 1 of the playoff had just listened to a presentation from selection committee chairman Jeff Long, and whatever Long said caused Bowlsby to draw some conclusions publicly from which he'd previously refrained.

"What we heard is if we don't go to a [conference] championship game, we're at a disadvantage," he said. "All things being equal, 13 games are better than 12 games. That's what we heard."

Hancock and Long have both said on numerous occasions that Ohio State's 13th game against a quality opponent [Wisconsin] ultimately pushed it ahead of Baylor and TCU. But apparently the words "13th data point" struck a particular nerve.

"Why did we not hear about the 13th data point until the last day of the season?" Bowlsby said he asked longtime friend Long.

Just a day earlier, Bolwsby struck a much more neutral chord when discussing the championship game issue, saying only the league would continue to push proposed NCAA legislation that would allow it to stage a title event despite just 10 teams, but that the league would not necessarily go through with it in 2016.

Now, Bowlsby said, "If the [NCAA] rule changes ... I surmise that we will probably move in that direction knowing what we now know."

Ultimately, that's a Big 12 problem, not a College Football Playoff problem. One of the other Power 5 leagues may well get left out next year, at which point maybe we'll hear more BCS-type angst. As for now, though, a group of mostly satisfied constituents decided to stay largely status quo.

"The heavy lifting has been done," said Hancock. "This meeting was to a great extent looking over what we've done and being very proud of it. This playoff could not have gotten off to a better start."

The one aspect some fans might have liked to see changed -- the selection committee's televised Tuesday night rankings, which seemed meaningless in hindsight when the final version dumped TCU from third to sixth -- isn't going anywhere. The commissioners rubber-stamped the committee's recommendation to do the same thing this season, beginning Nov. 3. There will be one less edition only because the 2015 season is one week shorter.

"The committee felt like they wanted to continue [the weekly rankings] because they thought it enabled them to get to know the teams best," said Hancock. "The [commissioners] agreed, and the [commissioners] continue to believe those weekly rankings are good for the regular season."

Meanwhile, organizers remain convinced they won't have to deal with a massive fan revolt this winter when the two semifinals -- being played this season at the Orange and Cotton Bowls -- move from New Year's Day to New Year's Eve. Though that plan's been known for nearly three years, a great deal of the public still doesn't realize it. Prepare to be bombarded with reminders if you watch any regular-season ESPN game broadcasts this fall.

There will likely be some grousing come this first Dec. 31, but given that date is locked in for eight of the next 11 years' semifinal games, it will soon seem normal.

All in all, the tenor of the meetings was markedly different from most of the 16-year BCS era, when the commissioners were either putting out fires caused by the previous season's controversy; defending it from an avalanche of criticism; or, eventually, figuring out how to scrap it.

Now that Year 1 of the playoff is in the books and everything's harmonious, it's worth looking back and asking: Why did these guys fight it for so long?

Delany, for one, was a longtime playoff opponent, and Hancock, who the group hired in 2009 primarily to take the bullets for them, spent his first two years on the job warning fans and media of all the evils sure to spawn from a playoff. The group even paid P.R. consultant and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer a princely sum to help with their spin. (Fleischer still remains on their payroll and at the meetings for reasons unknown.)

Maybe it's just the way things worked out, but the 2014 regular season was made more, not less, compelling because of the five-conference playoff hunt, and the actual playoff itself produced three entertaining games. It was hard not to like. Even the widespread preemptive clamoring to expand to eight or 16 teams seemed to die down a bit once fans actually experienced a four-team tourney.

How long will the honeymoon last? This being college football, probably not more than another year. We'll find something to complain about soon enough. Maybe this whole New Year's Eve thing.

In the meantime, the CFP's creators earned the right to take a bow. And to go home early.

Stewart Mandel is a senior college sports columnist for FOXSports.com. He covered college football and basketball for 15 years at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on Twitter @slmandel. Send emails and Mailbag questions to Stewart.Mandel@fox.com.