A Certain Houstonian

Average viewership down 11% overall viewership is actually up The talent spreading out means more games are being watched by people not just a select few

The old bowl system did not provide broad championship access. It provided broad postseason validation. It allowed a large number of programs — not five or six, not 12, but 30-plus in a given year — to plausibly end the season believing they had accomplished something meaningful. The modern playoff system has taken much of that meaning and concentrated it into one event. So when I say the postseason format needs some reasonable relationship to the size of the group actually investing and trying to matter, I do not mean the old system was a clean title-access machine. It obviously was not. I mean the old system had enough meaningful postseason outcomes to support the number of programs trying to define themselves as successful. Now that the playoff has swallowed so much of that meaning, playoff access has to carry more of the burden. You cannot devalue the bowls, weaken conference-title games, centralize the entire sport around the CFP, and then tell 30 or 40 serious programs that 12 spots is enough because the rest of the postseason technically still exists while simultaneously telling them making a bowl doesn’t matter.