College Football Is DEAD: 24-Team Playoff Ruined Everything | Ep 1262

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

The Hulu Original Series, The Kardashians, is back.

SPEAKER_2 (0:03)

Season eight, isn't it great? This year has been insane.

SPEAKER_3 (0:08)

Have you dated anyone privately?

SPEAKER_2 (0:09)

Let me just say this, I can't control myself.

SPEAKER_4 (0:14)

What about you?

SPEAKER_2 (0:15)

I'm single, I might be ready to mingle.

SPEAKER_3 (0:18)

Of course I'm getting more action than Glowy.

SPEAKER_2 (0:20)

You think I walk around with this smile on my face for nothing? Oh my God.

SPEAKER_1 (0:24)

All episodes of season eight are now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Jason Whitlock (0:30)

Yeah, they've ruined college football. And I've been telling you all that they've been ruining college football for three decades, for 30 plus years. I have been telling you they're going to destroy college football with this pursuit of the perfect playoff system. And so now, everybody's on social media complaining. They've expanded the college football playoff to 24 teams. They've reached the deal. And everybody knows we don't need a 2014 college football playoff. And everybody knew or anybody with a brain knew, we didn't need a two-team college football playoff. And I know that many of you think I'm some sort of Johnny Cum lately or whatever. I've been arguing this since the 1990s. What are you doing? There's nothing wrong with college football. Nothing. Even before we had the BCS, when there was no playoffs, when it was the mythical national championship and people just voted on the national champion. And I can remember my sports editor at the Kansas City Star in the mid-early 1990s. He would argue with me, Dale Byrne, he insisted that we always call it the mythical national championship because it's not decided on the field. And the sports media industry decided to go to war with major college football over its lack of a playoff system. And they took all these little shuttle shots, mythical, this or that. And like, what are you doing? College football is great. It's awesome.

I've been making the same argument from the beginning of time. There's nothing, there was nothing wrong when college football teams played an 11 game schedule, regular season, one team or a couple teams out of your conference, I played in the Mid-American Conference, one team would go to the California Raisin Bowl and that was it. Your conference champion. In the Big Ten, your conference champion went to the Rolls Bowl and a few handful of other teams went to bowl games and that was great. Everything was about winning your conference championship and then the sports riders would vote and there would be an argument that would go on all during the off season. Did so and so get screwed? Should someone else have been ranked number one? Why is Penn State? Why is this team? Why is that time? Why is it this team? That was what was unique about college football and at some point in the late 1990s, I had the epiphany when they were inevitably having another one of these college football playoff arguments. I came up with the perfect argument that others started adopting, never get credit for it, but who cares? It's not about that. But I explained to people that college football was the only sport, only team sport, only major team sport, where absolutely every game had monumental consequences. Monumental. Every game. If Michigan was playing a mid-major Kent State on some Saturday, that game mattered because it affected Michigan's chances of winning a national championship or whatever major college team. If they were playing some mid-major, if they were playing some one double A team, that's what we called them back then. The final score mattered because if Michigan was playing Kent State or Western Michigan or Ball State or whomever, and if they didn't beat them by a wide enough score, it might affect them in the rankings.

So if it affects you in the rankings, if you're Michigan and you're playing Ball State or you're playing Kent State, you know what guys, we got to beat them 45 to 7, 45 to 10 because if it's a squeaker, if it's close, we might lose AP votes. We might lose votes in the coaches poll. Every single game, every play mattered back before there was a playoff system. And so I was anti-playoffs. I was anti the BCS. We didn't need two games picked to play at the end of the year because it devalued the regular season and I made the argument that college football had the most unique, most impactful, most important regular season of all the sports. And that's what made college football special. What made it different than the NFL, different than the NBA, different than Major League Baseball, different than the National Hockey League. Every single game mattered and that was the value of college football. Made that argument, there was no such thing as going viral then, but that argument spread. It was an influential argument and article that I wrote defending college football. And people picked up on it, but of course you had the proponents of the playoffs and they were relentless.