Commissioners Looking at Neutral-Site Playoff Semifinals at LinesMaker

Col­lege foot­ball has report­edly taken another step toward a play­off sys­tem. And if a report from ESPN on Tues­day is to believed, the folks that run the game have demon­strated once more that, more often than not, they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.

Accord­ing to the report from col­lege foot­ball writer Mark Schlabach, the con­fer­ence com­mis­sion­ers meet­ing in Florida this week were inch­ing toward the for­mal adop­tion of a four-team play­off to deter­mine the national cham­pion. The sys­tem would likely not be put in place until 2014, accord­ing to the report.

None of that was par­tic­u­larly surprising-it has been assumed for months now that the four-team for­mat would be adopted sooner or later. But then there was this: Accord­ing to an unnamed source quoted by Schlabach, the com­mis­sion­ers seemed most likely to cre­ate a sys­tem in which not only the national cham­pi­onship game but also the national semi­fi­nals would be played at neu­tral sites, rather than on campus.

The source said that the idea of play­ing those games on cam­pus is almost cer­tainly dead because of logis­ti­cal con­cerns. In a way, that argu­ment makes sense-it would indeed be tricky for some schools and some col­lege towns to host an event of such mag­ni­tude, as hotels and restau­rants in some tiny towns might be scarce-but the neu­tral site idea is just as per­ilous, as it would demand that fans add yet another week­end of travel to an already packed late-season sched­ule. I mean, just take a look at some of the atten­dances for the league cham­pi­onship games of late-outside of the SEC, tick­ets aren’t exactly hot commodities.

And beyond that, there is this: Every school that is cur­rently play­ing in col­lege football’s FBS is already, you know, host­ing big col­lege foot­ball games. They do this sev­eral times each sea­son. And to my knowl­edge, col­lege foot­ball fans who visit these schools do not have to sleep on the streets or beg for pro­vi­sions. In that regard, the “logis­tics” argu­ment is a smokescreen.

Any­way, more on this story most cer­tainly to come.

But in the mean­time, my advice is this: Pre­pare for the worst.

Photo: Imag­ine an LSU-Alabama national semi­fi­nal. At Ford Field. Wouldn’t that be swell?