Payoff from a Playoff
I agree with the WLA post on money keeping the BCS in place, but don't think a viable alternative would really be that hard to figure out. In an 8 team playoff, there would be 7 games, 4 quarterfinals, 2 semi's, and a championship game. with 6 major conferences and a whole bunch of schools we can group as "other" it gives us a total of 7 different groups we must appease.
Now, when you start the playoff, you start a rotation of games. You have games 1-7 numbered and drawn out of a hat, with 1 being the title, 2-3 being the sems, and 4-7 being the quarters. Each conference, including other, gets to choose a site among its schools to host their game at this year. The tv rights for that game would be sold to that conference and they would then sell them to a network. By doing this the conference can rake in ad revenue and ticket sales from each game. Obviously games would try to be matched regionally in the quarters so as to increase draw.
Each year the conferences rotate, going up one number, or, if they are number 7, going down to 1. This is necessary because obviously some games will make more money than others. You also would keep the current non bcs bowl structure for teams that do not make it into the playoff system, yet still get 6 wins, as sort of a huge nit.
December 10th, 2008 at 5:56 AM ^
It would be really hard to have a playoff generate as much money as the current system for the schools. The NCAA owns the legal rights to any playoff system and once their monopoly gets its hands on it money would most likely be funneled to side projects.
If there were a playoffs of 8 teams, all of the other bowls would lose a lot of meaning. Instead of, "hey we made it to the citrus bowl, which is still a decent bowl" it is "hey we missed the playoffs the season wasn't good." A lot of fans would be less likely to show up IMO, lowering the money those bowls could generate with ticket sales and tv contracts. Also the bowls generate a lot of charity money as well.
Over the past 10 years the BCS claims to have donated more than $100,000,000.00 to non-BCS conferences.
Also in your plan teams have to travel multiple times. How many times will Penn State fans travel if they made it to the title game? Could they sell out half of a stadium each time on the road?
December 10th, 2008 at 10:39 AM ^
So in your world, when a team plays in the Citrus bowl they don't say "hey we missed the BCS bowls so the season wasn't good" rather they celebrate making a halfway decent bowl?
I can see many arguments against a playoff but dimishing the other bowls is not a valid one. There are 5 BCS bowls teams care about right now. If they were in contention and didn't make it they will be pissed with their resulting bowl. If they weren't in contention, they are happy with whatever bowl they go to. How will that be any different than a playoff? I
I also don't understand the arguments that it would dimish the regular season, but I digress.
December 10th, 2008 at 12:29 PM ^
I think this has already happened. With the advent of the BCS, ratings and attendance at other bowls is, I think, down. It used to be that 40 teams were excited about making bowl games, and 20 were excited about winning them.
Now with the BCS, 38 teams are pissed about being in a bowl, but not the national championship game, one is pissed about losing the national championship game, and one is worried about making the national championship game the next year.
With a playoff, teams that are in non-playoff bowl games will feel the same as teams do now that are in non-BCS games. Virtually unchanged except for the fact that we'd have a better process for identifying the national champion.
December 10th, 2008 at 5:57 AM ^
Right now they have the 4 quarter finals and the championship game in place, so all they need to do is add two games.
The championship game rotates each year between the 4 bowls. I think it might be better to rotate the semifinal bowls based on the championship game. The two semifinal bowls would be the bowls that are not hosting this year's championship and did not host last year's championship.
So this year, winners of Fiesta and Orange go on to play in the Rose Bowl pt. 2, and the winners of Sugar and Rose play in the Fiesta Bowl pt. 2. Winners of that Play in the Orange Bowl (championship).
2010:
Fiesta + Orange = Sugar2
Sugar + Rose = Fiesta2
Sugar2 + Fiesta2 = Rose (championship)
2011:
Fiesta + Orange = Sugar2
Sugar + Rose = Orange2
Sugar2 + Orange2 = Fiesta (championship)
etc.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:14 AM ^
I think there are several truisms about playoffs that this idea violates. First and foremost here is: people will not travel twice. I really do not believe you can get any fanbase to make more than one pilgrimage a year. I especially do not believe you can convince fanbases of teams like Florida or USC to first go to the Big Ten site, then the Big East site, then the Big 12 site, all of which are far away and cold.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:17 AM ^
In theory I think your plan could work, but as Wahoo and wildback noted, there is too much money tied to the current bowl system, and adding so many levels of abstraction and “regional hubs” and everything else would make an already-convoluted bowl season even worse. I’m not so worried about fans traveling because your team is only going to maybe 3 different stadiums, one of which will likely be close. Plus, most schools that consistently compete for MNCs have huge numbers of alumni and fans spread across America, so finding locals to fill in the stands, along with all the corporate spots, wouldn’t be too difficult. What would bum out fans would be the notion that their season was a “waste” because they missed the playoff, and would already cheapen some of these 2nd-tier bowls. At this point, though, I almost rather see a playoff be implemented just so that people would see it is not really a better alternative, just a different one.
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