You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
After years of prodding from fans and some football coaches, the powers-that-be in college sports (meaning the presidents of the conferences whose members play big-time football) voted to stage a four-team playoff to decide the sport's champion. The first game hasn't even been played yet, but already calls are coming from some coaches and many fans for more -- and the closest thing college sports has to a faculty voice is trying to cut the campaign off at the pass.
The I-A Faculty Athletics Representatives group, made up of professors charged by their institutions to represent faculty interests regarding athletics, issued a statement Tuesday discouraging talk of an eight- (or more) team playoff in the future. "The ink is barely dry on the long-term agreement recently reached by ... conference commissioners and the ... Presidential Oversight Committee for a four-team college football playoff system, yet there are already individuals both within college athletics and from the media calling for more. Enough is enough," the statement said.
“The four-team College Football Playoff design is far superior to any expanded playoff system that would add more teams playing more games over more weeks, thereby further interfering with academic obligations, inevitably overlapping with final exams and extending into a second semester, and increasing risks for serious injuries," said Brian Shannon, president of the faculty representatives' group and the Charles (Tex) Thornton Professor of Law at Texas Tech University. "[We] would strongly oppose any further playoff expansion.”
