The College Football Playoff released its Week 8 projections, and the usual chorus of fans and pundits is obsessing over who's in and who's out. Here's what nobody in the press wants to talk about: the entire 12-team playoff is a billion-dollar racket built on the backs of taxpayers and tuition-paying students who will never sit in those stadium suites.
After Week 8, just three undefeated teams remain: Utah, UCLA, and Miami, according to the Ventura County Star. The Big 12's dream of landing three teams in the playoff is, as the Star put it, "on life support" after both BYU and Texas Tech lost. Texas Tech likely needs to win the conference outright. BYU, still hovering in the top eight of both polls after falling to UCF, remains in the mix. The new CFP rules guarantee bids to five conference champions from the Power Four conferences, plus the highest-rated Group of 6 team — regardless of whether they win their conference. Notre Dame gets a bid if the selection committee ranks them in the top 12.
Meanwhile, the Sport Illustrated crowd is tracking Michigan's collapse. The Wolverines have lost three of their last four and fell to No. 6 Indiana 13-6 in overtime — failing to score a single touchdown. SI, ESPN, and CBS Sports all project Michigan sliding down to the Cactus Bowl or the Music City Bowl. CBS Sports' Brad Crawford noted Michigan "hasn't solved its identity issues offensively" and pointed to red-zone execution failures. Michigan's CFP hopes are officially dead.
Here's the scandal neither outlet touches: these aren't just games. They're publicly subsidized empires. UCLA is a public university. Utah is a public university. Michigan is a public university. Every dollar funneled into coaching salaries, stadium expansions, and conference realignment comes with an opportunity cost — and that cost is borne by students taking on debt and taxpayers footing the bill for institutions that increasingly function as sports conglomerates with a side of education.
The CFP's billion-dollar television contracts don't lower tuition. The conference realignment that swallowed the Pac-12 into the Group of 6 umbrella — as the Star noted — didn't make anyone's degree more affordable. The selection committee's deliberations don't produce a single dollar of relief for the working-class families sending their kids to these schools.
Sports Illustrated treats Michigan's slide as a football story. The Ventura County Star treats the Big 12's dimming hopes as a conference-competition story. Neither asks the question that matters: why are American taxpayers underwriting a professional sports league masquerading as amateur athletics?
The playoff field will sort itself out on the field. The bill always gets sent somewhere else.
