A new national championship playoff schedule will provide a revenue boost to NCAA Division I college football, according to Randy Grant, Linfield College professor of economics, in a recent CNBC story.
Grant was also included in a Reuters story, “ESPN already the clear winner in college football’s playoff.”
Since 1998, college football’s Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has sent only the two highest-ranked teams to the national championship game. The new system adds two additional semifinal games, extending the window for marketing and advertising.
“It will be a wildly successful commercial entity, in part because it will be perceived as a better product than the BCS system that preceded it,” said Grant in the story.
The first-ever College Football Playoff, which started with two semifinal games, was held on New Year’s Day featuring four schools — Alabama, Florida State, Oregon and Ohio State. The national championship game will feature Oregon and Ohio State on Monday, Jan. 12.
Grant is the co-author (with John Leadley and Zenon Zygmont) of “The Economics of Intercollegiate Sports” published by World Scientific. The new edition includes a chapter covering the Penn State, Ohio State and Oregon NCAA violation cases.
Learn more about the Linfield Department of Economics.
Learn more about the economics of the college football playoffs from this interview with Randy Grant.
