This is the American sports version of the age-old question.
Which is better, Ferrari or Lamborghini?
The College Football Playoff crowns the best college football teams in the country and is so big that the field is expanding from four to 12 teams ahead of the 2024 season.
March Madness is what it is — absolutely crazy — and there’s nothing in the world like the NCAA’s version of a lose-or-out tournament that crisscrosses a vast country, lasts for weeks, and generates more than $1 billion in revenue One year.
To put March Madness into perspective, imagine combining Wimbledon with the European Football Championship and then having 68 teams — big colleges and small schools — in Dayton, Ohio, and Spokane, Wash., on location days Playing the game day after day. Omaha, Nebraska and Los Angeles.
Michael Jordan, Stephen Curry, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird all burst onto the global basketball scene for the first time in March, taking the country by storm and dominating television screens.
So which one is better, the College Football Playoff or March Madness?
Which one is cooler and more worthy of attention, CFP or The Dance?
The new money and momentum clearly favor the College Football Playoff, which is on the verge of striking a massive $1.3 billion new media rights deal with ESPN.
If the deal is completed, the CFP’s revenue will exceed that of the NCAA and bring in more than $700 million in new revenue.
The College Football Playoff was born out of the ashes of the Bowl Championship Series from 1998 to 2013.
Over time, this computer-influenced system came under heavy criticism, with small schools regularly being left out of major bowl games and fans begging for a true playoff system that would produce the undisputed champion.
The CFP, which dates back to 2014, is dominated by Southeastern Conference schools, including Alabama and Georgia.
The CFP format and championship game have become so popular that hosting the finals is an honor for the winning city.
With the national emphasis on the CFP throughout the college season, other smaller bowl games have fallen out of favor, with a “CFP or bust” mentality taking hold in recent years.
This resulted in the CFP expanding from four to 12 teams, and that number will likely continue to rise as the NIL era and player transfer portal result in the NCAA being nearly squeezed out of its own sights.
“I said to myself, ‘Maybe this doesn’t work anymore, the goals and desires are different, the question is how much money can I make as a college player?'” former Alabama coach Nick Saban told ESPN.
“I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying it was never our intention and it’s not the reason for our success over the years.”
The SEC and Big Ten are governing college football, and players have more power than ever before, with fans calling the “amateur” game from August to January It has become the second most popular sport in the United States.
But despite the power and dominance of the CFP, including constant ESPN coverage and weekly debates around the country over team rankings, the NCAA’s first and most important product remains March Madness.
Unparalleled, “The Dance” dominated the American sports world for an entire month and filled offices, bars, restaurants and home televisions.
There’s no match for the March Madness bracket, either — if you haven’t filled one out and quickly watched it crumble into pieces, you haven’t quite lived it.
Florida Gulf Coast, George Mason University, Davidson University and Loyola University Chicago have become synonymous with Cinderella on the court, with fans across the country suddenly rooting for teams and players they had never heard of before.
99% of the time, college football is higher than college basketball, and it’s not even close.
But March Madness is the most unique major event in American sports, and although it has gradually changed since the first event in 1939, it has not lost its luster.
With 68 teams now participating in the dance competition, the field may be expanded again, diluting the tournament’s best result of 64 teams.
As powerful as the CFP is, not even a 12-team college football championship game can compare to the joyous madness of March.
Dance is the perfect sport and the best thing about college competition.