[OutsiderFan]

If your desire is to have college sports be all about supporting the educational mission, and not to be commercialized and used to maximize revenues, and you want Stanford to adhere to this ideal, the argument should not be against a football playoff, it should be for Stanford to leave the Pac-12 and join the Ivy League or something similar.

In other words, there are two different world views going on in this discussion.  One is "I'm a college football fan and I want to see the championed determined on the field."  The other is "the mission of college sports should be all about education." 

In a perfect world I probably agree with the latter.  However, we live in a far from perfect world, and it doesn't seem to do a whole lot of good to resist the forces pushing for evolution and change.  In other words, if there is an irresistible force pushing toward a playoff, why not try to make it as good as it can be and derive the most benefit from it possible, as soon as possible?  Market forces have dictated that the benefit sought is more money from the college football post-season, so given that, why not try to maximize what can be gained by going in that direction?

Put all the brain power being used to argue against doing what is inevitable toward making the inevitable as good as it can possibly be.  Maybe start a movement to require any playoff participant to have a certain team graduation rate or GPA in core courses :)

[OutsiderFan]

If your desire is to have college sports be all about supporting the educational mission, and not to be commercialized and used to maximize revenues, and you want Stanford to adhere to this ideal, the argument should not be against a football playoff, it should be for Stanford to leave the Pac-12 and join the Ivy League or something similar.

In other words, there are two different world views going on in this discussion.  One is "I'm a college football fan and I want to see the championed determined on the field."  The other is "the mission of college sports should be all about education." 

In a perfect world I probably agree with the latter.  However, we live in a far from perfect world, and it doesn't seem to do a whole lot of good to resist the forces pushing for evolution and change.  In other words, if there is an irresistible force pushing toward a playoff, why not try to make it as good as it can be and derive the most benefit from it possible, as soon as possible?  Market forces have dictated that the benefit sought is more money from the college football post-season, so given that, why not try to maximize what can be gained by going in that direction?

Put all the brain power being used to argue against doing what is inevitable toward making the inevitable as good as it can possibly be.  Maybe start a movement to require any playoff participant to have a certain team graduation rate or GPA in core courses :)