From Polls to Playoffs: College Football Finally Grew Up

Since we have the first-ever 12-team playoff field set, I got to thinking about just how monumentally ridiculous college football championships used to be—and trust me, "championships" deserves those quotation marks with all the air quotes I can muster.

Before the introduction of any playoff format, the national championship in college football was less a legitimate sporting achievement and more a high-stakes popularity contest that would make a high school popularity pageant look like a rigorous scientific selection process. For decades, teams were "crowned" national champions through a process so convoluted and political, it makes congressional redistricting look straightforward.

Imagine a world where your national title wasn't determined by who actually won games, but by who had the most convincing PR team and the shiniest historical trophy case. That was college football pre-playoff. Sports writers and coaches would gather like some secret society, casting votes based on criteria that seemed to involve more mystical divination than actual athletic performance. Want a national championship? Better hope your team has a photogenic quarterback, a coach with a compelling backstory, and plays in a conference with enough media clout to make ESPN swoon.

The most laughable part? Multiple poll organizations could—and frequently did—crown different national champions in the same year. It's like if the Oscars and the Golden Globes just decided to pick different "Best Picture" winners and expected everyone to take it seriously. In what universe does that make sense? Certainly not in a world that claims to value competitive sports.

Regional bias wasn't just a bug in this system—it was a feature. An undefeated team from a "smaller" conference could go perfect all season and still be left out of the championship conversation, while a one-loss SEC team would get royal treatment simply for existing. These weren't championships; they were elaborate exercises in institutional vanity.

The playoff format—first with four teams and now gloriously expanded to twelve—has utterly demolished this ridiculous house of cards. Now, championships are won through actual combat, not corporate boardroom negotiations. Teams must prove their worth by beating other top-tier opponents, not by having the most impressive alumni donation list or the most photogenic mascot.

So yes, those pre-playoff "championships" absolutely deserve an asterisk. They were titles by press release, victories by popular vote, crowns crafted from press clippings and institutional ego. The current playoff format doesn't just improve how we determine a national champion—it exposes the previous system as the elaborate charade it always was.

For the first time in college football history, we can look at a national champion and know, without a shred of doubt, that they genuinely earned the title through direct, unquestionable athletic competition. No voting, no politics, no nonsense—just pure, beautiful football.

And isn't that exactly how it should have been all along?