Bowl experience vs. CFP appearance: Shane Beamer explains pros and cons
Let’s preface this with the obvious: Shane Beamer wants to make the College Football Playoff. Four teams. Twelve teams. A hundred teams. He wants his South Carolina squad in the dance with, however slim, a chance to win the national championship.
In saying that, though, Beamer isn’t too enthused about the first-round setup in this inaugural season of the 12-team playoff.
You see, the first round of the CFP is played at the higher-seed’s stadium. It is the “NFL-ification” of college football. For the first time, a meaningful postseason game will just be another home vs. away matchup.
And while that might be great for the higher-seeded team, which gets to sell tickets and have its home fans going nuts, it can take the shine and pageantry away from the traditional bowl experience for players and coaches.
“Let’s say you play on Saturday the first round,” Beamer said. “You’re going to leave on Friday, travel wherever you are. You play the game and if you lose your season’s over. That’s it. You don’t go to a bowl game.”
This is pertinent for South Carolina because the Gamecocks do have a chance to make the College Football Playoff. If they beat Clemson on Saturday, ESPN’s playoff predictor gives South Carolina a 58% chance to make the CFP. And if USC were to get in, it would assuredly be playing a first-round matchup on the road.
While talking out his thoughts on the first round logistics during his weekly press conference Tuesday, Beamer was trying to think on the fly how it could be different.
He was sort of speculating out loud of the possibility of some sort of consolation for the losing team. Maybe they head to a bowl game after losing in the playoff. Within seconds, he brought up the reason that would probably never happen.
“I know if you lost in the first round of the playoff,” Beamer said, “nobody’s going to want to get their team to rally back to go to the, you know, whatever bowl.”
No college football team is going to choose a bowl game over a spot in the College Football Playoff. But it will be an interesting dynamic with one first-round playoff game on Friday, Dec. 20 and the other three games a day later.
For the first time, four of the best teams in country will have their seasons over before Christmas.
“That’s all a good trade-off, too, that you get to go on in the playoff,” Beamer said. “But you do lose the bowl experience for the four teams that lose in the first round.”
Beamer, though, pointed out the way around this. If a team is victorious in the first round of the playoff, they head to a major bowl game — Fiesta, Peach, Rose and Sugar — on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day.
“So my advice would be: If you get in, don’t lose in the first round and you get to go to a bowl,” Beamer said. “Pretty simple. Control what you can control.”
