Playoff Expansion
I don't see the playoff expanding too much, and yes, it is for the #1 item on Brian's list, that is, academics. Expanding a playoff would be difficult for two (academic) reasons:
- Fall semester/quarter final exams
- Spring semester/winter quarter classes begin
Because the season (conference championship) isn't over until the first weekend in December you can't fit too many games in before classes start again in January. Here is a list of all of the Saturdays in December 2011-January 2012 until classes start.
- December 3 - Conference championship game
- December 10 - (Potential) CFB national quarters *
- December 17 - End of finals week
- December 24 - Student - Athletes go home for Christmas holiday **
- December 31 - CFB national semis
- January 7 - CFB national championship on following Monday (the 9th) ***
- January 14 - Classes have started (Probably by the 9th) or are about to start (16th)
December 10th and the 17th could probably be flip-flopped depending on how you wanted to handle it. For this reason, I see the ceiling at 8 teams. I also think that there is a diminishing return on a title game the later that you schedule it. For example, I didn't watch any more football after the Sugar Bowl this season. It just didn't make it across my radar. That, and I didn't really care about the Bama - LSU rematch.
* I never understood the whole "the best teams can't go to bowl games if the playoff is too big" argument. The "other 4" bowls can pick from the quarterfinal losers for their games. This idea also rebuts the argument against home sites (at least for the quarters) because they can still go to a bowl game somewhere that there is warm weather.
** I guess that there is an implicit "think of the children" argument here by letting them go home for Christmas. Bowl games played on/around Christmas at least let the student - athletes go home for New Years. Either way, letting 18-22 year olds go home to Mama doesn't seem like a big thing to consider.
*** I so hope that they play one of these at Lambeau. Or Soldier Field would be ok too. Or even Yankee Stadium (I guess...but then I'll have to call certain people "cold-weather pansies")
had to travel to play in the cold. We play on your turf and in your weather, let's see how you old up on our turf and in our weather.
I agree. I do give at least some credit to Alabama, though, as they seem to be the only SEC team that is willing to travel to B1G country to play. Every other team seems so adamant about not having to travel north. I mean come on, Florida will barely even leave the SEC region for anything. Don't get me wrong, the SEC has some great football teams, but if their reasoning for not playing teams up north is for weather, they are a bunch of pussies.
I would love to see the likes of LSU make the trek to Camp Randall, the Big House, or the Shoe for a night game in the middle of December.
for the use of pussies in a sentence.
Watchu talkin bout willis? Their last two games in B1G country were both against Penn State, in 2011 and 1989. There only other games outside the South in that time were at UCLA in 2000 and a couple trips to Hawaii. LSU played at Washington 2009, Arizona St 2005, Arizona 2003, Notre Dame 1998 (Gerry DiNardo!) ...Just for reference, Michigan's last regular season away game outside the midwest was Oregon in 2003. The last one that Michigan won? Syracuse in 1999...
To be honest, I don't really think that late-December/early-January upper Midwest weather is really "our weather" either when it comes to college football. Our season ends by December, and our games are rarely visited by flurries. That's great and all, but a month later and things are definitely different. We can look to the NFL as an example of how that works as homefield advantage, but I don't think we can assume that would translate to CFB.
In general, I'm a fan of homefield sites for the playoffs, but only slightly more than the plan that was decided upon. I honestly don't know for sure that it would work, because we haven't done it (other than the hockey game at the Big House last year). Have you ever spent all day outside in 20-degree temps? Have you ever played football outside for 3 hours for free in 20-degree temps, knowing that you could be in Pasadena instead? I just don't think we can assume that homefield sites would've been this super-awesome thing in every way that we're deprived of because men in suits are such idiots.
be a limiting factor? They play while registered all season long. Is it because some senior may not be registered for the January semester?
Almost no sport has its competition season go into 2 semesters, at least not in any significant way. The exception to this rule is hockey. Basketball plays some games in December, but they mean almost nothing, and they try to keep the interesting/important games until after finals. Track is officially 2 semesters (there are "early bird" meets in November/December) but they aren't of much consequence.
I think 8 teams should be about right. With only 4, I suspect there will always be an argument about team #5 not having a shot at the national championship... but I can't think of the last time I thought a team outside of the top 8 was national championship material.
There will be arguments over who gets in no matter what the size of the playoff is. IMO that's beside the point.
The big problem with having only two teams, as in the BCS, was that sometimes there was a third undefeated team out there, as in Auburn in 2004. That team had done everything possible to reach the title game, but the system's insistence on only two teams forced them to be left out. Having a four-team playoff covers that. There are never more than four undefeated teams at the end of the regular season.
If you're the #5 team, there's a 99.9% chance you lost somewhere along the line, and therefore you did not do everything in your power to make it to the postseason. You ultimately can only blame yourself in that case.
a situation where the #5 team's only loss was to #1 by one point, while an undefeated #3 team played a cupcake schedule and squeaked by against a couple of weak teams. Sooner or later, there will be a crying #5 over something, but hopefully those running things will look past the extra money (stop laughing) and keep things limited to only the very best and most deserving teams.
If human polls are going to be used at all in determining the selections, nobody should be allowed to vote in them until everyone has played at least 4 or 5 games. Too often, the polls are screwed up all season by teams being ranked too high or too low by meaningless preseason polls, and either staying higher than they ever deserved to be, or being stuck behind teams they are better than.
An 11-1/12-1 team with a single loss by one point to the #1 team is not going to be left out of a four-team tournament by the selection committee. That kind of a team would be the top-ranked one-loss team, and there are never four unbeaten teams by the end of the regular season. Look at Alabama last year for a case in point. How far did they drop when they lost to LSU?
Also this just makes sense since one of the next big steps in college football(sports in general) is to pay players. Not all 120 FBS schools can pay all athletes and turn a profit. You need to be able to seperate the 64-80 schools that can make it successful.
And no, I don't care about the Boise/TCUs of the world.
that we've got an eight-team playoff now, or possibly something better, since a really good outside team could at the discretion of the committee be snuck in ahead of one of the major conference teams or a rematch set up if conference championship failed to provide a decisive winner and both teams clearly belonged among the top four.
For me the proof will be in the pudding. . . especially in a careful rationale for the choices being provided by the committee annually.
While all schools don't have the same academic calendar, Michigan's Fall 2012 schedule has classes ending on Tuesday, 11 December. That's ten days after the Big Ten Championship game taking place on Saturday, 1 December. See http://www.ro.umich.edu/calendar/fa12.php
Exams are given on 13-14 December and 17-20 December with three study days in place between the end of classes and the end of exams (12, 15 and 16 December).
If college football had an eight-team playoff in place and wanted to have the championship game in early January, then the first quarter- and semi-final games could have been played on the weekends of 22 December and 29 December if the powers that be were willing to stage the games at the home sites of the higher ranked teams. The championship game with the two remaining teams would then be played on Monday, January 7, 2013.
Even if college football pushed the schedule back a week, we'd have seen the first round on the weekend of 29 December 2012 with the second round (with just four teams participating) on or around Saturday, January 5, 2013. The two reamining teams would then be playing on Monday, January 14.
In the scenarios above, the remaining bowl games could be scheduled to be played prior to the start of the Winter Semester. At Michigan, those classes would start on Wednesday, 9 January 2013.
This really isn't an issue about the academic calendar. The major bowls that all used to be played on 1 January were spread out in recent years to the days following because it was thought that they would acquire higher television ratings. Concerns about academic calendars were put aside in order to accomodate the networks and to make room for more bowls to be played in an enlarged time period.
The conferences are also trying to accomodate the bowls. Simply put, there's no reason for any team to have to spend a week at the bowl site in preparation for the game. But since the bowls need to make their money in any possible manner (including from the fees collected to support tese teams at the bowl sites), they also need to make room on the caldner for them.
If college football had been willing to have the playoff games on campus sites, then scheduling those games would not have been a problem. Simply put, however, that avenue simply is not as profitable to them as having them at bowl sites where they can better control in-stadium advertising (and the money from that), the leasing of luxury boxes and the needs of the corporate sponsors.
While UM has a wonderful golf course, it's kind of tough to play on in late December. I'm pretty happy with the entertainment and restaurants around Ann Arbor, but are they up to a CEO's standards?
I lived in Phoenix when the Fiesta Bowl moved from Sun Devil Stadium to its current location in Glendale at the University of Phoenix Stadium. There was a big to do between the Cardinals and the Fiesta Bowl Committee about who controlled the luxury boxes, would the nomal stadium logos be available, etc. before they got everything settled.
Imagine what it would be like if a quarter- or semi-final playoff game was played at a Michigan Stadium that has no advertising and has major donors to the university who are leasing out the luxury boxes during the regular season. Can you see the Big Ten telling President Coleman to boot Stephen Ross (and his $100M plus donations to Michigan) out of his suite so that they can accomodate a game sponsor?
I realize that not all schools are on the same academic calendar. In some sense, the schools that spread finals out could be at an advantage because student-athletes could schedule some time around the game...
I will disagree with you on this:
This really isn't an issue about the academic calendar. The major bowls that all used to be played on 1 January were spread out in recent years to the days following because it was thought that they would acquire higher television ratings. Concerns about academic calendars were put aside in order to accomodate the networks and to make room for more bowls to be played in an enlarged time period.
I think that the new schedule is an indication that these other bowl games were NOT getting the same ratings. Am I really going to tune in on December 27th if it isn't my team? No. Am I going to go channel surfing on NYD while waiting for my game or while watching other games? Yes. Think about March Maddness. I don't think that anyone will tell you that there is too much basketball going on those days! (No, my wife doesn't count! :p )
One of the points I was trying to make is that a lot of the discussion about when bowl games should be played in this current playoff setup has centered around when the winter semesters start for teams. I recall one AD complaining that his school's team played their BCS bowl game, got on the plane that night, and the team had class the next morning. If that was a real concern in the first place, then the major bowls should not have been played out over so many days.
For example, the 2102 Orange Bowl was played on Wednesday, 4 January. The Sugar Bowl between Michigan and Virginia Tech on the previous day. Those two bowl games were schedule for those dates and played in prime time due simply to get the best ratings--there was no real concern for the academic calendar.
Now the talk is about reclaiming New Year's Day and New Year's Eve by putting these six major bowl games (two with national championship implications). That's a funny thing to say because college football already dominates those two days. Last year, for example, the games on 31 December included the Chick-Fil-A Bowl in Atlanta (which might be one of the six bowls mentioned above) on prime time, the Fight Hunger Bowl (a rather unmemorable game between UCLA and Illinois) , the Liberty Bowl, the Sun Bowl,and the Meineke Car Car Bowl. That's five bowls on New Year's Eve 2011.
Since New Year's Day fell on on a Sunday, the bowls normally played on that day moved to 2 January. By my count, there were six bowl games on that date including two BCS bowls (Rose and Fiesta). That's eleven total bowl games on those two dates. If you're the type of college football fan you're describing in your reply to me, then yes, that's a lot of football.
The problem with the ratings for the bowl games isn't their time or date placement--it's that they've essentially become sideshows vis-a-vis the national championship game. I went to a fantasy football fund raiser at Michigan back in 2006 and that's essentially what Lloyd Carr said during a Q&A session. He cited the 2000 Orange Bowl between Michigan and Alabama--two brand names in a major bowl played in prime time that was not sold out, was barely covered in the press (when compared to the NC game) and didn't have great ratings.
The powers that be recognize the problem, so their solution is to put the major bowls onto two days and intermix those games with the national semi-final bowls. They can promote the hell out of it and hopefully capture an audience that will stay with those games thru two days. Keep in mind that the SEC and Big XII actively talked about bidding out the semi-final games as well, but it didn't happen (Delany talked about how the bowls would become the equivalent of the NIT if that did occur). So the powers that be compromised (and are still working out the agreements) to bundle and market these games together.
What will happen, though, is that the major non-BCS bowl games that used to be on New Year's Day (Outback, Citrus, Gator) are going to be marginalized even further. There used to be four BCS bowls, but now there will be six "National Championship Series" bowls that are going to dominate New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. My guess is that those games are going to be moved to other dates.
The other ironic thing about this is that although these major bowls are changing dates, the actual participants in these games aren't going to change at all--it's sort of like reshuffling the deck chairs. The Big Ten and Pac 12 are still set on the Rose Bowl, the ACC has its agreement with the Orange and the Big XII/SEC have their own bowl which will likely be played in New Orleans (Sugar) or Dallas (Cotton). Also, since those five conferences are likely to provide the teams in the four-team playoff, it means the non-semi final bowl games will likely include a number of runners up--that further marginalizes those bowl games as well. This was the fear the powers that be had about an eight-team playoff, i.e., that the bowl games would be set aside if those games were taking place on college campuses. Well, they're essentially doing the exact same thing with their current setup.
So, how did the twenty teams that participated in the FCS playoff last year get around all of these terrible inconveniences? These are all kids who actually study, too, because they have no NFL illusions and know they have to get their degrees.
If the FCS can have a twenty-team playoff, the FBS can have eight teams in theirs.
In 2011, they started on November 26th. That means that they had it whittled down to 8 by the time that the FBS would start their playoff given current scheduling constraints. I guess you could make your playoff bigger by making the regular season shorter...but that would only give the "a playoff weakens the regular season" folks something to be angry about. Which we don't want. Plus, a shorter season means less $$$ for everyone because they can't schedule as many home games.
It also looks like they play at home sites until the championship game, which helps one team from a logistical perspective.
The Death to the BCS guys have it right: A 16 team playoff, all conference champs plus at large teams by committee to fill out the brackets, and run by the NCAA. Rounds 1-3 in December at higher seed campus, championship early January in Pasadena, the bowls can do what they want. The number of teams and games is not excessive, it is pretty much what they do in FCS, D2 and D3.
Comments