Possibly the issue is us, these of who nonetheless tune in in droves each Saturday (and Friday, and Thursday, and Wednesday), these of us who nonetheless get pleasure from school soccer, nonetheless care about it, nonetheless benefit from the coloration and the pageantry, the hyperbole and the hypocrisy, all of the issues that make school soccer … effectively, school soccer.
Our downside is that we maintain anticipating a sport that units its watch glacially to begin considering digitally. We maintain hoping school soccer will sometime take an incredible quantum leap ahead into the 2020s, whereas a lot of its sense and sensibility nonetheless appears locked within the ’70s.
“We have now entrenched points which can be no nearer to being resolved,” Massive 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby stated after the School Soccer Playoff Committee met and adjourned Monday with out reaching consensus on an expanded playoff system.
“Entrenched” has been school soccer’s abiding challenge for years, for many years — for a century, if we’re being sincere. Nowhere has change been extra feared, the place progress has been extra shunned. In some way, the game crept out of the Darkish Ages just a few years in the past and provided up this four-team playoff format that yielded an Alabama-Georgia SEC grudge match Monday night time at Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium.
The four-team system is an efficient factor provided that you examine it to what got here instantly earlier than it — the two-team BCS — and what preceded it to the start of time, a system of random bowls and random postseason that generally introduced one of the best groups collectively however extra usually allowed two voting our bodies — the AP, made up of sportswriters, and the UPI (later USA At this time), made up of coaches — to find out the nationwide champ.
And, generally, two nationwide champs.
After all that was an absurd solution to decide a champion, however that system was allowed to exist for years, for many years, for rattling close to a century. So, sure, what we have now now’s higher.
However solely within the sense that dial-up web was higher than no web in any respect.
It’s so clear {that a} 12-team playoff would profit the game in manifold methods — and but the committee can’t determine a solution to pull the set off. Monday’s stalemate was simply the final instance of aggravation.
“We’re going into extra time,” government director Invoice Hancock stated. And whereas Hancock is without doubt one of the final real optimists left on the planet, the tougher fact is that this: Change, if it comes in any respect, is probably going to not come till the present CFP deal is up in 2026. It was hoped the committee may transfer that date as much as 2024. That hope has dimmed.
And that’s a disgrace.
School soccer actually has accomplished a outstanding job the previous couple of years of lastly making an attempt to catch as much as the occasions. A few of it was pressured, corresponding to identify, picture and likeness rights. A few of it’s nonetheless laborious to digest, notably the eternally spinning switch portal. Some is conceding to widespread sense — the concept that “class time” was an element when most schools are on break for a lot of December and early January was at all times laughable.
A 12-team playoff makes a lot sense it nearly hurts your mind to suppose in any other case. All of the Energy 5 conferences can be represented, and would possible every have a shot at at-large bids, too. The Group of 5 conferences — which lastly landed Cincinnati within the CFP this 12 months — would have a seat on the desk. Notre Dame’s independence would nonetheless lead to bids if the Irish had been worthy.
And everybody would make a bucket of cash.
“Everyone is extra involved about their very own silo than everyone else’s,” Bowlsby stated, and in a time of nice upheaval within the sport that’s comprehensible. And the truth that bowl video games which have dominated school soccer roost for years is likely to be additional subjugated is one other competing silo.
Nonetheless, progress is progress. Frequent sense is widespread sense. And the truth that the boys who run school soccer can’t agree on one thing that virtually anybody exterior their small circle can be in favor of? That’s worse than entrenched. That’s downright silly.
