BCS, Conference Championships, and other insanity

Amen to all of the above.  The championship games and mega conferences are all about TV/money.  There needs to be a business case for a playoff and those who are making money now need to see that they will make even more money with a playoff before this crap-ola B(C)S system will change. 

I know a suggestion like this means the terrorists have won, but there wasn't a consensus NC (the BCS) until 1998.  Are we really that much better with one?  For the record I think that Bama/LSU game is unwatchable, on principle (two teams from the same conference), for the fact that it was the most over-hyped game the first time around, and from the fact that ESPN's talking heads are insisting that I pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

No championship game and loosly affiliated bowls are better than what we have now, which is straight up SEC favoritism.  I know, this is 'murica and we need a clear cut champ, but not like this.  This is worse.  The fact is, that most casual football followers will nod their heads like those bobble head dogs they used to have in rear view windows in the '70s.

 Go Blue.

Cincy = bearcats, Ohio = bobcats....right?

With football each system you come up with has inherent flaws.  A playoff, such as basketball only works because everyone accepts that if they lose they can't go back and claim (but hey we beat that team in the regular season).

The B10 wanted to expand, everyone agreed, and we now have two divisions and a championship game.  The only team complaining is the team that loses that Championship game.  And, I suspect if Wisconsin lost, they wouldn't be complaining like the Spartans.

We are stuck with large conferences and multiple divisions.  The championship game isn't going away anytime soon. 

And, overall, I would have loved to have one in 2006.  We would have played the Buckeyes a second time on a neutral field and likely would have won based on the team we had that year and the homefield crap the bucks pulled with the tall grass.  But knowing that, it may have been a completely different first game - each coach trying to game the other coach in preparation for the rematch. 

I say it is what it is, but if we move to a playoff, then the conference championship needs to be a playin to the tourney (if you lose you don't automatically get into the tourney).  Once you have a 16 team tournament, there should at least be no cause for thinking the NC did not make the cut.

If Georgia beat LSU, it would still be LSU-Bama in the NC game, then Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. 

I'm with you on 1 of the 3 BCS championship rules you lay out - teams should have to win their conference.

Other than that, the argument for conference championship game reform is tenuous at best. The Big Ten wanted to add a 12th team, wanted to get money from a conference championship game, decided to settle the championship by having divisions and a championship game. The SEC, ACC and Big 12 have been doing this for years; we aren't experiencing some sort of new divisional paradigm in college football, we're just getting used to a 12-team league structure that has been around 20 years.

This part was really annoying to me:

"Here we had a clear cut champ.  And if Sparty had pulled it off, I wouldn't have any qualms about calling little bro the conference champ.  But they didn't.  And now, who should be the champ?  Should Sparty?  I mean they split the season series, and both games were competitive."

What? There weren't any champions named before the championship game. Wisconsin is the champion. Done. The champion wins the championship game. With a conference championship game every team controls it's own destiny, regardless of schedule, at the beginning of the season. No more ties, no more bitching. MSU wins on Saturday, they can go to a BCS game. MSU lost and now they can't bitch. Or they could've beaten ND. Or Nebraska and might've been chosen for the BCS due to only having 1 or 2 losses (like us! ha!). Hell, MSU could've lost to Wisconsin the first time and you know Sparty wouldn't have bitched if they beat Wisconsin in the championship.

The key is still winning on their part. This all sounds like an RCMB complaint.

Had Michigan not been invited to a BCS bowl, we shouldn't have bitched either - we had our chance to beat MSU and win our division and we didn't do it. If Wisconsin wanted to be like MSU and complain, they could bitch that they played MSU in East Lansing two seasons in a row because the Big Ten added Nebraska and the Big Ten had to redo the schedule, but if they played at Camp Randal they would've beaten MSU the first time. Everybody that loses somehow thinks they 'deserve' something but I just can't agree with that.

There's always an excuse and a 'reason' to complain about how your team got screwed but the reality is win and it isn't a problem. Just win, baby.

I don't get it.

This seems to be an advocate piece for playoffs, but it has the exact same flaw that you rail against earlier.

Let say you have a 4-team playoffs. Both LSU and Alabama would have made it. What would happen if both of them made to the Championship and Alabama wins?

You woud have 14-1 LSU and 13-1 Alabama. But LSU won, on the ROAD - EPIC FAIL - according to you.

You try to weasel out of that by saying you have to be in the conf finals. But that really doesn't solve it. What if SEC did not have a championship game? What if they don't play conf championship game on a neutral turf? And if Alabama did not make a 4-team playoff this year people screaming bloody murder would be 1000 times louder than what it is now for OSU.

For people who say they are for playoffs, you all seem to value rankings FAR more important than actual plyoff results like Conf championships (if the "better" team does not win.

I'm sorry but the stuff about the conf ch games is ridiculous. If you want to be the champ, win the championship game.  Just like in many (most) sports, college football has adopted a kind of playoff, a series of championship games.  The winners of those games are the champions.  Its that simple.  The Patriots were clearly the best team when they went undefeated a few years ago but they didn't win the championship.  If the Packers go 16-0 and then lose to the Bears or Lions in the playoffs, whom they'll have beaten twice already, so what, they are not the champion.  The Phillies were the best team this year but the Cardinals won the World Series.

If they hadn't changed the rules perhaps MSU would have gone 7-1 and won the Big 10 outright (perhaps not because likely the schedule would have different).  But they did, and by the current rules the regular season was effectively a race to qualify for the championship game, which they did, and lost.  I guarantee you had they finished 6-2 and Wisky was 7-1 and MSU won the title game, not one sparty would give back that trophy, nor should they.

You don't come out and say it but it seems like you are arguing that there should be no divisions within conferences.  I think there are NCAA rules that force conferences to have divisions in order to have a championship game but I don't understand why. 

Think about a system in which you play 8 random teams within your conference, then the best two teams play in the championship game.

-  Avoid SEC's problem where best 3 teams are in one division and then LSU has to play  Georgia in what seems like a formality rather than a football game. 

-  Also, Georgia didn't play any of the LSU, Bama, Ark trio while Florida played all three I believe.  That's a touch unfair. 

This might be our problem in the next couple of years as the East division looks like an OSU-Wisky battle with PSU likely going down the crapper and we have to compete with Nebraska, MSU, & Iowa.

-  Avoid having to play a "rivalry game" so MSU doesn't get the built in advantage of playing Indiana every year while we play OSU, that's a half game right there they get on us every year.

With no divisions, sounds like your formula would come out 7-0.

There is no system that exists in football to insure the best teams win the championship or to even know who is the best.

You can't play enough games in college football to figure it out.   The best you can do is have the best teams from each conference play a playoff.   Teams change from week to week, injuries, schedules, weather etc.  There are so many variables it can't be calculated.   It's not perfect the best you can do is have the teams play.

The champ games are not perfect but they are better than the alternative.  Teams can't play every team in their league so it's not going to be fair to someone.

Was it fair MSU got to play OSU before they figured out to run Braxton Miller?

Was it fair to MSU that we avoided Wisconsin?

Was it fair we played MSU @ MSU in a wind storm? Did that prove they were better?

The best you can do is try and force teams to play as many meaningful games as possible and see where you stand. Based on resume LSU already has proven to be the best team in the country.  This champ game is not fair, but it's the best we can do. 

If Alabama would have lost to LSU in the final week of the regular season and OSU creams OU in the Big 12 chamionship, Alabama is never playing in the BCS championship game.   ESPN owns the SEC network and BCS and wanted two of their boys in the game.  NO way in hell ESPN wanted LSU v Oklahoma St.  

we cannot put the conference champions into the respective bowl games (e.g., the B1G and Pac 12 champions in the Rose Bowl) and then run a plus one or two format from there. Typically when all is said and done in January, we all are left wishing if only x team who won that bowl game convincingly, played y team who won this other one convincingly.

If on the side, the other bowl games can find revenue generating non-championship play in matchups, they can run the beauty pageant bowls ... more power to them.

The way we are set up now, the conference championships are about as meaningful as they are in basketball: you can play your way into a BCS game by winning an AQ championship, but not into the MNC.

Then again, I think the shift to 12 teams, and conference championship games, and the BCS disassociating with the major bowls, is all along the way to what the BCS have already agreed the future holds. We are pawns just watching the gradual transition.

Case in point:

You said that C-USA didn't need to have a CCG because they already had a "clear cut champion".... except that Southern Miss and Houston hadn't yet played during the season, and Southern Miss proved that they are a MUCH better team than Houston.  The way they were able to prove they were the best in the conference was by.... winning the CCG.

After I saw that monstrous fallacy in logic I pretty much said

sorry bro, tl;dr.

........with this year's BCS MNC game is the fact that there is at least one(and a somewhat arguable two, although Stanford got thrashed by Oregon who lost handily to LSU) team not from the SEC that has a legitimate beef about not being included in the game. If OSU loses to Oklahoma, then there is no argument, and an LSU/Bama rematch is acceptable.

LSU/Bama are PERCEIVED to be the best teams, and LSU's schedule this year heavily supports that perception, but we really don't know for sure if they are the two best teams. And we won't know at all now.

What if OSU really IS the best team out there, and their loss to ISU was truly due to being emotionally wrecked from what happened the previous day for their university? What if those coaches hadn't died in a plane crash? Does anyone think they don't win that game then?

And then we have the results from the first LSU/Bama matchup. 9-6, in overtime. For me, I enjoyed watching this game as it showed a defensive slugfest and was intriguing to watch and see which team would balk first. However, now that I've seen the game, I don't wish to watch it again, no matter what the result is. I'd much rather watch OSU's offense try and score against LSU's defense and see if their defense could possibly stop LSU's ground game enough to win. It would be a much more interesting matchup, and............

...........would give a nearly inarguable national champion if OSU, and completely inarguable national champion if LSU. That should be the goal every year for the MNC game, which is why even in 2006 though I was disappointed UM didn't get a rematch, I also knew it was the right call then. It should have been the right call this year as well.

So, the system itself isn't completely broken. It's just that certain parts of it need to be fixed in order clear up any controversies that may arise. One change that should happen is that a team that didn't win it's conference, if it played the #1 team during the regular season and lost, should be included in the MNC. This makes the regular season as important as it should be. Just this one little change would have a huge impact this year in the MNC, and would have locked in OSU as the opponent of LSU.

I've tried to think of the downside to this and haven't come up with any yet.

-It doesn't preclude teams like ND, who aren't in a conference, from playing in the MNC,  

-It doesn't preclude teams that have been really good, but lost out on some weird tie-breaker rule and didn't play in their conference championship from having a shot. Assume, for example, that Arky had beaten LSU during the regular season. Bama, most likely, would have gone to the SEC champ game(being higher ranked).  Arky would have been #2, but they lost to Bama during the reg. season and weren't the SEC champ. The next in line, most likely, would have been LSU(over OSU), and even though they weren't the conference champ, they had beaten Bama during the regular season, so giving them a shot for the title in this example would have been perfectly ok with me. OSU might still have a gripe about being included, but it would be lessened quite a bit due to being, most likely in this scenario, the #4 team behind Bama, Arky, and LSU, and possibly #5 behind Stanford, since the desire for many to move them up and avoid a rematch wouldn't be as high.

www.youtube.com

Nobody should bother playing anybody because it doesn't really prove anything.

Rule #2 fails for one of the same reasons you stated the championship game fails -- the championship game often pits the best team in the conference against the 3rd or 4th best team.  That rule would preclude Alabama,Stanford and Michigan from playing in a BCS game this year. 

Who are you going to replace them with?  Let's say we stick with the top 14 in the BCS rule. Do you really think Boise State, Kansas State and (oops there is no other eligible team -- you'd have to drop down to Georgia at 16) are better than Alabama, Stanford and Michigan?  The only argument you may have is Boise State, who finished 2nd in the MWC, might be better than Michigan who finished 2nd in the BIG Legends Division.  But if you are the chairman of a bowl committee are you really going to pick Boise State over Michigan?  Not if you want to keep your job.

Michigan is and will always be every BIG schools' 
measuring stick.

Here's my easy six-step master plan to institute a playoff system in NCAA division one football:

(1). Wait for the BCS television contracts to expire.

(2). Watch as the BCS bemoans the flat return when the networks decline to increase, or even decrease, the amount they are willing to pay for the television rights.

(3). Burst into the meeting room between the BCS and network execs carrying a sheet of college rule notebook paper hastily torn out of your spiral notebook with clumsily written, yet legible, 8 team bracket-bowl proposal, with elevated ratings projections. And a picture of a liger. Because ligers are awesome, being part lion and part tiger.

(4) Ask the network execs how much they'd be willing to pay for broadcast rights to your proposal.

(5). Turn to the BCS execs and angrily tell them to stop playing Angry Birds on their iPhones and to pay attention because this is important and concerns them. Then patiently turn back to the network execs and ask them to kindly repeat the figure, now that the BCS is not distracted and paying attention. Glare angrily at the BCS while you're saying this last part.

(6). Go home and start blogging to everyone about how you saved College Football. You're so cool!

Enjoy the playoffs!