– Derek Allen, Attorney –
Less than nine months ago, the powers-that-be in college football approved a plan that would ditch the current postseason bowl season for the best teams in the country and replace it with a four-team playoff. While many had been clamoring for an eight- or sixteen-team playoff, the four-team playoff was certainly an improvement over the previous system that had no playoff at all (just ask the teams from Oregon in 2001, USC in 2003, Auburn in 2004, and Cincinnati in 2009, among others).
Yesterday, those same powers-that-be unveiled the name for the new college football playoff: College Football Playoff (you can vote for one of the logos to the right here). I can only assume that the powers-that-be called up a geriatric and hard-of-hearing Don Draper, tried to explain to him what they wanted, and found him shouting “college football playoff” into the phone over and over as he tried to figure out if they were saying “college football playoff” or “cauliflower pilaf.” Turning to each other, they said things like “the old bear’s still got it” and “pure genius” before hanging up, calling up the trademark office, and getting trademark protection for “College Football Playoff” on March 28.
I seem to recall that lots of advertisers refer to the Super Bowl as the “Big Game” and “the Football Championship” when they haven’t received approval from the NFL to use the term “Super Bowl.” I’m assuming that “College Football Playoff” would have been one of the go-to options had another term been chosen, so I’m curious to see what advertisers will use as this goes forward. Maybe “The Not Quite Professionals Mini-Tournament to Determine Who Gets the Trophy” or “The Way to Pick a College Football Champion That is Better than the Old Way”? Maybe I’ll stick to my day job.