2 words why College Football Playoff games should be held on campus: Tennessee-Alabama

The knuckleball of a kick crept through the uprights, giving Tennessee a dramatic 52-49 victory over Alabama and unleashing a scene that only college football can produce.

A sea of Tennessee orange mobbed the field. Victory cigars were lit up all over Neyland Stadium. The goalposts were swarmed, torn down and one of them was carried to — and deposited in — the nearby Tennessee River.

The sound system began playing “Dixieland Delight” and everyone sang along. It was a clever troll job since it's from the band “Alabama” and gets played at the end of the third quarter of every Crimson Tide game. (The lyrics do mention Tennessee, of course including how you “couldn’t feel better” on a “Tennessee Saturday night.”)

“This,” Volunteers head coach Josh Heupel shouted on the field postgame, “is college football at its absolute best.”

It sure was.

It was supported by a “black out” and field storming in Utah and a “purple out” and field storming at TCU and another “orange out” and field storming at Syracuse and a “maize out” — and just a confident beatdown victory — in Ann Arbor, not to mention wild crowds and old traditions on bucolic campuses across the country.

Which is why whether you were 9 or 90 you watched that celebration in Knoxville and wished you could be a part of it; the big night, the biggest of nights, on an electric college campus.

And so, here is one last final plea to the people who run college football as they zero in on what is expected to be an announced expanded College Football Playoff later this month:

Please get as many postseason games in these magnificent, magical college stadiums as possible.

Mercifully, they are finally going to push the playoff to 12 teams. And in a nod to what makes the sport great, that will include four first-round games to be played on the campus of the higher-seeded team (seeds 5-8 hosting seeds 9-12). Those games will play out in front of astounding backdrops.

Yet the expected plan will still serve as a slave to the bowl industry, which will continue to host the quarterfinals and semifinals, plus an understandably neutral site for the championship game.

It is the product of inertia, cronyism and the opinions of some cowardly, unimaginative coaches who fear the disadvantage of a playoff road game more than they appreciate the theater of what makes them rich.

To continue to play multiple rounds at neutral sites will be a waste of an opportunity, a waste of resources, a waste of artistry and a waste of time.

Everyone in college athletics knows, deep down, that the football playoff should follow the lead of the NFL, where home field is used in every game except the Super Bowl. Many of the commissioners and major athletic directors who will determine this upcoming format even quietly acknowledge that eventually the home field will be used beyond just the first round.

So why not do now what everyone knows should be done eventually?

It’s not too late to set up the next playoff format in the best possible manner, no matter the hurt feelings of multimillionaire bowl directors.

Because no one — not even an Alabama fan — could have watched that scene Saturday from Knoxville and truly, honestly said it would have been better if it was played 1,000 miles away in an antiseptic NFL stadium where only the wealthiest of boosters can generally afford to attend.

There is a reason there's an entire tourism industry based on groups of fans visiting college venues for games where they don’t even have a team playing. Bachelor parties. Fortieth birthdays. Let’s go to the Grove. Let’s go see LSU. Let’s go jump around in Madison.

No one says, “Let’s go to the Chick-fil-A Bowl.”

Applying the current AP poll as an imperfect and untimely seeding system (some of these teams will knock themselves out of contention) to the expected 12-team playoff format, you’d have the first-round games at Tennessee, Michigan, Alabama and Ole Miss.

Awesome. If you think mid-October games and victories generate unimaginable energy and atmosphere, then imagine a win-or-go-home scenario.

Yet the winners of the first round won’t visit top-four seeds (based on conference championships) Georgia, Ohio State, Clemson or TCU. They would go play on a neutral site somewhere. If they win, it’s onto another neutral site. And if they win again, another after that. (And this is after the neutral-site conference title game for most of these teams).

Only the most well-heeled of fans can travel to four consecutive neutral-site games. The players would spend at least six weeks just crisscrossing the country because the people in charge seem to hate their own campus stadiums and towns.

The idea of robbing the sport of home atmospheres in Columbus and Athens and Death Valley is absurd.

There is no counterargument.

College football is giving money away by outsourcing its most valuable games to third-party, independent bowl directors. It also takes the direct economic impact of a big football weekend away from the towns and communities that support these teams year-round and sends it off to a major city somewhere else.

As for competitive balance, if you want to host the game, have a better season. The fight for seeding — all the way to the top two — will increase the importance of the regular season, making every game truly matter.

Everyone knows the right thing to do here. The NFL does it right, home field until the title game — just play it every year at the Rose Bowl if you want a nod to history.

So as the powers that be make their final tweaks to the playoff to come, remember Knoxville … and Fort Worth and Salt Lake City and whatever is to come this Saturday and the next and the next after that.

Remember what sport you are entrusted to run and what makes it special.