No bowls + playoff = more money

The main reasons why we don’t have bowl games instead of a playoff system in college football are probably:

1) Money
2) Tradition

Well, as The Wizard of Odds and Deadspin pointed out, teams could probably make a lot more money involved if the bowl games no longer existed:

In 2002, Gary Cavalli earned $90,000 as executive of a new postseason game in San Francisco. In 2006, his compensation package was $362,018 for the game now called the Emerald Bowl.

“Frankly, my compensation package is none of your business,” Cavalli said.

Cavalli is not alone. From 2001-05, compensation packages for bowl game executives have increased about 70%, with many of them more than doubling, according to an examination of the bowls’ Internal Revenue Service records.

With the executives of each bowl game getting hundreds of thousands of dollars, that amounts to potentially millions of dollars college football programs are losing out to people that are completely unnecessary.

As Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! sports pointed out, imagine how much more money the big conferences and the NCAA could make off of a playoff system, with sold-out games at home stadiums.

A playoff system needs to happen. If not for the fans’ enjoyment, then do it for the pocketbooks of the big conferences and schools.