College Football Playoff: What if a 16-team playoff was launched in 1936?
By Zach Bigalke
The AP Poll first launched in 1936. What if a 16-team playoff had formed in the same season? Keep reading for Part 1 of our Playoff Counterfactuals series.
In a recent Sunday Morning Quarterback column, we looked at March Madness in college basketball and how a larger playoff would impact college football. Over the next few weeks, we will be drawing upon that concept with a series of counterfactual thought experiments. The basic premise is simple: What if a playoff existed in a given year? Tune in each day as we look at how a playoff would have impacted landmark seasons in college football history.
For most of college football history, the national championship has been a mythic concept. Various mathematical formulas and polls had but there was never a comprehensive nationwide agreement on a national champion. In any given season, a series of regional champions could each lay claim to the crown.
1936 offered a breakthrough in the quest to name a decisive champ. The Associated Press inaugurated its weekly poll over the course of the 1936 regular season. Polling beat writers across the country, the AP poll offered the first real nationwide ranking of teams in real time.
The system was better than the void that existed beforehand. But it was still an inexact method of declaring champions.
It was also a system that persisted until the very end of the 20th century.
With the birth of the AP Poll in 1936, top-tier college football ushered in six decades of placing its championships in the hands of various human rankings. What if the sport had taken a different direction? March Madness had not yet arrived in college basketball. The NIT was formed in 1938, and the NCAA tournament came into existence a year later.
What if college football had become the first intercollegiate sport with a full-scale playoff? Let’s break down the challenges that would have come with organizing the first playoff and the opportunities it could have presented before breaking down a potential bracket for the 1936 field of contenders.