End of the BCS

By: Lauren Fitzpatrick

On June 26, 2012, the NCAA presidents formally approved that the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) would no longer be used, but instead a College Football Playoff would be in place starting with the 2014 season. A few months later in response to the controversy around the country, an official website for the College Football Playoff was created. This is how the creation of the website positively or negatively helped the promotion of the new college football playoff.

The website was created on April 23, 2013 in an attempt to promote the good aspects of having football playoffs, as well as provide one place to find any new information. The top of the page includes a countdown until the official start of the College Football Playoff to add enthusiasm and excitement.

Present on the website are links and feeds to both their Facebook page and their Twitter page. These days, there is nothing that goes unnoticed on social media and with or without these official pages, talk about the new system would be under way, both good and bad. These accounts provide a communal place for these comments to heard. Under the Uses and Gratifications Theory, it states that a PR professional must target different groups of stakeholders using different types of media. The creation of all three of these types of media attracts multiple groups of stakeholders that would not just look in the news or even on a website. Mostly younger fans would look at the Twitter and Facebook page and older fans would look more at the website or news releases that provide access to the website.

Since they were both created, the amount of posts coming from both pages have not been significant compared to what they should be to add enthusiasm to the following year.

Timeline of Social Media:

• 4/23/2013 – the announcement of the name of the event officially becoming “College Football Playoff”
• 4/24/2013 – the announcement of the first game in the playoffs being held in Arlington, TX
• 4/29/2013 – the new logo for is chosen by fans

To promote the College Football Playoff, they got the fans involved in the choosing of the new logo. An announcement was released with a link leading to the website where the actual voting would happen, as well as a video getting fans excited about the voting to make it feel as if the fans had a say in the new system. The motto was “Your choice. Your voice. Your logo.”

After the first initial buzz died out, they lagged on the social media, only posting once a month about new developments to the playoffs. What the website does well is provide a brief explanation of what the playoff actually consists of, answering various questions that many  have on this new implementation. The Facebook and Twitter pages are there to provide a conversation between the fans and the organization, as well as allowing fans to communicate between each other. It supplies an opportunity for fans to pose questions they are curious about and even provide opinions and comments about the playoff as a whole.

Following the Uses and Gratifications Theory, the website is able to gratify the fans of college football in the following ways:

• Information: “What exactly does the new College Football Playoff consist of?” “Who’s in charge?” “Who decides what teams make it to the playoff?”
• Social Interaction: “Who else feels the same way I do about the new playoff?”
• Excitement: “How soon are we able to watch this playoff?” “Where is the playoff being held?”

Although there are some changes that can be made, this is a positive form of PR because the website was used to make fans feel that they had a choice in the system as a whole, even if they did not. Older fans of the old BCS bowl system may be more skeptical about the new playoff system, so the addition of this competition added conversation and excitement. Not only this, but the addition of the Facebook and Twitter pages are used to be a prime source of information to target the younger audience specifically.

Now it is just left to see if this College Football Playoff really pays off.