There Is No Right Answer

could texas be a victim of karma? maybe, just maybe mack brown voted nebraska ahead of michigan in 1997 or maybe it was voting florida ahead of michigan in 2006? my guess is he probably voted against michigan on both accounts, so fuck him.

I have been 1 of the nuts thinking about playoffs for years and the "we can't ruin our regular season" and turn it into basketball was a valid argument against. Brian's system is by far the best I have seen(I proposed a similar 1 for years :-)). Being a fan of Nebraska and Michigan my entire life, I lamented every Jan 1 as my team traveled across the country to play a major bowl at a "neutral" site like playing Miami in the Orange Bowl or USC in the Rose Bowl. I love big match ups like USC-OSU this year. The thought of a USC-Alabama game in mid December to advance would be awesome and to see Florida come up to Mich in Dec for a plyoff game would be off the hook. The only mod to Brian's system I have always proposed was a 7 team playoff...the main reason being we get 1 day that would be our March Madness the week after the championship games.. 3 games Noon, 4:00, 8:00. Great matchups all day long. I do like some Conf Champs getting a few of the auto bids(3 toughest conference based on ratings)or not allowing non conf champs to jump conf champs to keep the conf champs important.

There is no right answer to the Tex-Okl argument but laugh every time the Tex people pile on and ignore Texas Tech and their win and horrid out of conf schedule which they claim doesn't matter....We're Texas!!

No. OSU vs. UM in 2006 would have been compromised. A battle for a bye is not nearly as meaningful as what took place.

-Regular season ends by Thanksgiving/Dec 1, reduce number of regular season games to 11, finish conference championship games earlier.
-seed 6 conference champions, 2 at large.
-1st and 2nd rounds at lower seeded home stadium, 2nd and 3rd week of December
-All Bowls continue as they are, losers of quarter and semi finals can still go to NYD Bowls
-Final 1st week of Jan at Rose-Sugar-Orange-Fiesta rotation.

I'd never, ever want to diminish the importance of the Michigan/OSU game by making it about seeding. I was fine with the polls and bowl system and split national championships than bullshit BCS ones. How would you have rather capped off the 1997 season: In the Rose Bowl with Keith Jackson calling the game or playing Tennessee in the Tostitos bowl? The choice is clear.

Michigan/OSU rivalry > helping other conferences and the rest of the country determine a legitimate national champion. Beat OSU, win the Big Ten, go to the Rose Bowl. Anything else that happens is gravy.

I completely agree with everything Brian said. The only bowl game that has any prestige is the rose bowl and making it the national championship makes so much sense even though it would be sad that Michigan or any other Big Ten/Pac-10 team would have to go through a couple of playoff games to get there instead of just winning the conference.

"A return to the old bowl system and entirely mythical championships"

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Conference championships should be the most important championships in college football.

go back to the old bowl system and mythical championships.

...and by the way..."hard to leave utah out?" why on earth would that be? they'd have two losses, MINIMUM, in ANY bcs conference. shit, we almost beat them. screw them, screw hawaii, screw boise and their chickenshit razzle-dazzle crapola against oklahoma.

wow, imagine how pissed off i'd be if we weren't 3-9.

I love how people continue to say this is another case of the BCS screwing a team.

This has everything to do w/ the Big 12s choice of tiebreakers and their conference rules. If they used the highest temp on sunday the 30th as a tiebreaker, we'd still be here if Oklahoma was hotter. The SEC and the ACC, both of which use the BCS in tie-breaking scenarios, have rules for such an event.

Blame your conference, Texas fans, not the BCS.

Brian, I'm a bit perplexed as to how you can say that autobids are a mistake, but that a six team playoff with no more than 2 teams from each conference going would be a workable system. The fact that you would have Penn St. over Texas Tech shows the utter failure of your system. Either no autobids, and no max teams per conference, or autobids with at-large. I prefer a return to the old system, call me nostalgic. College Football was never about "crowning" a national champion, it has become a complete creation of ESPN and the Sports Media in general. College Football is about winning your conference, getting to the best bowl game, and winning that. If I had to do a playoff, I would do a 16-team playoff with 6 auto-bids. Anything less than 16 teams would make an already horrible system worse. You can't arbitrarily decide between a handful of 2-loss teams, which, although not this year, would be the case in most years. I would drop 1 or even 2 non-conference games, and eliminate the conference championships. Still, the old system was the best.

just go back to the bowls. it was fine back then

Didn't Texas leapfrog Cal a couple years ago in the last week of the regular season when they played and Cal didn't? And didn't that end up sending Texas to a BCS game instead of Cal? In the long term, this all evens out.

PLAYOFF WILL BE 16 TEAMS. this will be the death of CFB as we know it. I like Brian's proposal, but the NCAA will NEVER approve it, so don't go running to the NCAA about a playoff unless you want 16 teams.

I don't see how you can use strength of schedule to rank Oklahoma over Texas. It ignores the fact that Texas's strongest opponent and win was over Oklahoma on a neutral field. Oklahoma's weakness is its defense. It couldn't stop Texas, while Texas's defense stopped Oklahoma when it mattered.

Why do people seem to want to disregard Oklahoma's ten point loss on a neutral field to the team with which it is being compared and not look at the fact that Texas's only loss came on a fluke last second TD to the number five team on the road? It's not like Texas lost to Baylor.

Two points—although I am not really emotionally vested in a playoff because it’s not likely to happen anytime soon and I recognize the argument is much of the fun.

1. A playoff would increase not decrease interest in the regular season. Right now one slip up and your on life support which whittles the fan bases hoping for the crystal football down week by week. If the system was just a tad more forgiving more teams would remain alive longer. It’s not as if a 6 team playoff is going to mean “Oi, who cares if [insert team] wins this weekend because they’ll be in the top 6 anyway!”

2. I do not get the people that say OSU/UM 2006 would have lost some luster with a playoff. Every OSU/UM game is sacred to me. That one was just one of the biggest, baddest of all (not as big as 1997 or 2002 though because each had won one recently). When UM is beating OSU in the second half I can barely breath regardless of the external stakes. No crystal trophy could have made that game any bigger. The BCS was just something to get jacked about a week after I stopped running around the neighborhood with no pants on yelling, “Michigan just beat OSU and I got no pants on!” That one could not go to eleven. Lastly, policy justification via anecdote is stupid and results in policies that are geared to stop a terrorist from planting a time bomb on a bus full of orphans (which only happens in movies.) But if I’m allowed to carve a terrorist up bit by bit, I can save a bunch of orphans like Jack Bauer (besides my dum ass daughter has been kidnapped for the third time and the President is a double agent)! OSU/UM 2006 is not going happen again and even if it did that is not sufficient justification for a stoopid policy.

I laughed when I read about UM 2006 getting screwed. That outrage has not aged well.

"I do not get the people that say OSU/UM 2006 would have lost some luster with a playoff. Every OSU/UM game is sacred to me."

To you, yes. To all of us, yes. The rest of the world would have ceased to give a shit entirely. Depending on the system, the outcome of the game would have meant nothing but which opponent you play - and would you really care if we played Texas instead of USC (or whichever teams were good that year)?

Anyone else see this as a very nice, esoteric, philosophical, and totally useless, irrational discussion based on (as Brian said) "the worst playoff that has ever been conceived"??

People complain about how they have been ranked in "the worst playoff that has ever been conceived".

How joyous!!!!!

So, D2 Football can justify and conduct a 16 team playoff.

And, FCS Football can also justify and conduct a 16 team playoff.

But the BCS can't??

Even when several of us have provided 16 team playoff scenarios that actually retain ALL the current bowls and retain or improve the desirability of all the bowls??

Ow, my brain hurts!

Wrong! The six team, BCS seeded, no autobid playoff is one of very few right answers.