A full fledged playoff system would be a death blow for the athletic budgets of any program that is not perennially in the top 25. Only those teams good enough to be in the playoffs year after year would have any money for their programs.
As it stands now, bowl bids and extra practices for bowl prep benefit a large portion of the 120 FBS programs. If only 16 teams were to participate in a playoff every year the other 104 teams would get next to nothing. Some have proposed keeping some bowls around for the non-playoff teams but I can't see those bowls getting nearly the attention, or having near the payout of the current bowls. All attention and money would go toward the playoffs.
Another issue is how the playoff would work. With a 16 team playoff, the teams that end up in the championship game would end up playing 4 games after the regular season. If you keep 12 regular season games, which would mean those teams play 16 games in one year. Even though these guys are great athletes, they are not professionals like in the NFL. You will see a lot more injuries with 18-23 yr olds playing in 16 games. A "solution" would be to shorten the regular season to 10 games. However, this will hurt the non-playoff teams even more because there will be less ticket revenue, and less TV revenue.
Another issue is how it impacts recruiting for all of the 120+ FBS teams. Right now, some 4 star players go to the non-perennial powers, because they get to play and can still get the exposure of playing in a bowl at the end of the year. With a playoff system, the teams that are always in the playoffs would have that much more to offer recruits.
Another impact is to NFL prospects. Right now you have some NFL teams waiting until round 2 to draft "workhorse" running backs because they are worried about too many miles on the tires. If that running back is on a playoff college team, they might play 3 extra games and be that much more injury prone as a pro, hurting their career. Same issues with the other playoff players that have a higher potential for injury in extra games. The QB that gets a concussion in the 4 playoff game might drop 4 rounds because of it.
The key is to look at who a playoff system will benefit. In the long run will it really benefit teams outside the top 25? True, it might give TCU or Boise a chance to get to the championship, but the only reason Boise State has been able to build up their program is because they were able to build up to the higher status. A playoff system dwarfs the ability for lesser teams to build their program and we wouldn’t see any more BCS busters building up.
Someone mentioned how much the NCAA Basketball tourney makes, but they don’t seem to think about the fact that 65 teams get to be part of that and that a few more basketball games a year does not lead to as many more injuries as extra football games. There is no way to include more than a small fraction of the FBS teams in a playoff logistically so only that small fraction benefits.
The only thing that COULD work would be a Plus One system with the top 4 BCS teams. That would mean one extra game for the championship and leave the rest of the bowls alone. They might be able to go +2 at most with the top 8, but that lengthens the season even more and would probably lead to regular season changes.
Playoff proponents need to realize that these are NOT professional athletes. One extra Bowl game a year is a lot for them. You have travel and pre-bowl activities and the extra practices. If you do all of these at some level for each playoff game, that adds a lot more to what we are asking of student athletes. It works in the NFL because that’s their job. If NFL players get hurt in playoff games, they have their contract to back them up and the team has seasoned backups to step in.
I love the bowl system. It gives benefits to a lot more teams than a playoff would. Do you know how many donors pony up the extra dollars on a bowl trip? That donor money far outweighs the bowl payouts. An extensive playoff system would almost certainly kill the lesser bowls and the teams that would go to those lesser bowls along with them.
/rant
