Same Old BCS Talk
There is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about congress deciding the fairness of the BCS System.
If anyone is interested: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124692993074303505.html
Whenever the BCS comes up there is always a lot of talk and a lot of disagreement between what is "fair" and what is best for college football. I think most college football fans would agree that a playoff would be ideal. The argument against of course being it takes away from the most meaningful regular season in all of sports, where all of a sudden one or 2 losses doesn't knock a team out of a chance to win the national championship. I agree that a 16 or 32 team playoff takes a bit away from the regular season, and all of a sudden that O$U U$C game doesn't mean as much early in the season. Maybe there is a way to get the best of both worlds...
Thus, my proposal: How bout a 4 team playoff? The 4 best teams in the country in a semi final and a final. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't remember there being a year where more than 4 teams had a legitamate beef about getting snubbed out of the BCS title game. With 4 teams fighting for the chance at the championship, the regular season remains just as important, while the Utah or Boise State of the season that goes undefeated will have a chance to earn a spot in the National Championship game even if they are 4th in the BCS rakings
http://mgoblog.com/content/congress-examine-bcs
Number 3 on the MGoBoard. Same issue is being debated.
But since there is a snippet of a new idea, here is my proposal:
- Expand Division I-A to 128 teams.
- Each team plays 10 regular season games.
- No conferences.
- Each team designates 5 permanent "legacy" opponents (Michigan gets Minnesota, tOSU, Little Brother, Notre Dame, and, uh, Eastern Michigan).
- A computer generates each team's other 5 opponents, using previous season finishes to even out strengths of schedule at beginning of season (some statistics dude like jc could figure this out).
Season ends second week of November. Every team gets seeded in a 128-team tournament which starts Thanksgiving weekend (16 games staggered Thursday - Sunday).
Continue until the National Championship game on January 9th.
The most games 2 teams would play would be 17. Many teams now play 14 so they're good for it. The losers of the first round games can get reseeded and play one last game the following week, in order for every team to play 12 games.
There. I've solved the playoff issue.
By making everyone hate college football forever.
but if every I-A team is involved, then no one can complain when they are eliminated. That seems to be Congress's goal here - to let everyone in. There is an easy way to do it.
Yeap. It's called the regular season.
I don't. And I don't think a potential playoff (a good thing, if done correctly) should have as even a minor goal having people not complain. Teams complain in the b-ball playoff as well, but (rightly so) people don't really pay attention. Just do the best one you can that doesn't compromise the regular season and tradition, and then go.
He said "what is this bs with every kid who participates in an event getting a participation award. This is complete bs when has america ever been about someone just showing up and getting a medal it's complete bs"
Your proposal might be the worst idea ever thrown out for college football so naturally congress will adopt it as it's own and we'll all be screwed.. If this happens I'm blaming you for everything!
my bad... just trying to rack up some points. No conferences though basically eliminates any tradition or regional loyalty. I Can't say I like the idea of no conferences
You don't remember when more than four teams could've been national title contenders?
Florida, Oklahoma, USC, Texas, Utah.
fuck USC
I'm pretty sure that was a very valid point that was raised....
Five teams headed into the bowls unbeaten. (Sure, two were mid-majors, but if you win every game you've played you should have a chance to play for the title. Even Hawaii in 2007, though I realize that's impossible in a format where only two teams make it.)
"How bout a 4 team playoff?"
What happens if you are the 5th best team in the nation? No matter how you cut it up, you'll get someone snubbed. It more or less works with basketball and 65 teams because someone that gets snubbed doesn't have a legitimate shot at the title, but you can't use the same logic to get around football's once a week game calender. I think one any given year, the 5th best team in the nation can say they are good enough to win the title.
My best idea is to just take all the conference champs. You win your converse, you're in. This shifts all the weight onto the conferences with the Oklahoma/Texas debates. Only one gets to go and the big 12 director has to pick one. Then you seed the conferences champs and give the top few byes while the lower BCS teams get to play the non BCS schools (for the most part, unless a mid-major is ranked high enough to play another mid-major).
This idea keeps the regular conference seasons meaningful, allows teams to play other non-cupcake games outside of their conference games, allows for a controversy free playoff (since the controversy is shifted to the conferences, and forces independents to join a conference.
The small non-bcs schools are already having a field day with how it's hard for them to get a BCS bowl bid and now you are basically giving them the middle finger with this proposal. Sorry but this would never work.
Maybe conference autobids and then 2 others but then it's basically a playoff of the BCS bowls.
I agree with everyone who says that Congress has no business in this and that the old tradition was much better.
Today in SI online, Stewart Mandel writes a piece making the case that it was the last time someone went to Congress/Supreme Court to break up the college football monopoly that the end result was the BCS...his question...do we really want to go down that route again?
Link:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/stewart_mandel/07/06/bcs-…
FWIW I mostly agree with Mandel and Bo on this one...I do not like the BCS and prefered the bowl system the way it was before the BCS with all the traditional matchups and do forth. Screw finding a definitive national champion. I side with tradition on this one. The BCS has ruined football tradition and a playoff would be worse that way. Its much more fun to argue about what we will never know. Could we have beaten Nebraska in 1997? I think so...but we will never know.
"Its much more fun to argue about what we will never know."
That is a horrendous statement. Have you ever put a pair of pads on?? You would rather talk about a game than actually watch it?? I want to play in the biggest games on the biggest stage not win some farce of a paper trophy.
that plenty of players are just fine with the "paper trophy" they won.
I'm sure they are happy with their championship but they all would have rather played it out. Plus there are many more that are unhappy with their paper non-championship. Auburn 04 they happy?? Michigan 06 they happy?? USC 2005-2008 they happy??
Take a look at the faces of players exiting any college tournament, whether it's basketball or baseball or hockey or whatever, and see if they're any happier because they had a tournament to validate the fact that they're not the best team in the land.
So you're saying that it would be better for everybody to be able to think they're the best without having to prove it? That we'd all be better off if we never knew what it felt like to lose at something -- even though losing is one of the biggest sources of motivation for improvement?
I'm sorry, but I vehemently disagree with this...
They're not going to diminish their own accomplishments. Anybody who has won a mythical National Championship is, in their own mind, an undisputed champion.
BUT, the problem with your statement is, for every player who is happy with his "paper trophy", there are several more who will forever be pissed off about never really even having the chance to win it in the first place.
I have no idea if you are old enough to remember 1997, but I remember how jobbed we all felt at the spit NC vote and the mud slinging that went back and forth between Woverines fans and Husker fans. The sublime beauty of that moment is that we will never know and can now argue until the end of time which was the better team.
That said, I spent a lot of time listening to Bo talk on this subject and everything he had to say about the diminished importance of regional rivalries, regional trophy games, and the importance of winning the Big 10 and going to the Rose Bowl are fading away as we all chase that undefeated season and the chance to go to the BCS NC game. I fell in love with college football because of tradition and it is just my opinion, that is all it is, nothing more, nothing less, that the BCS has done something irreparable to the long standing traditions of the game.
...and just for the record...the pads I strapped on were to cover up my shins when I played goal in hockey...
"Its much more fun to argue about what we will never know."
I think this is my favorite anti-playoff argument of all. So by this rationale, let's just get rid of that whole Super Bowl thing in the NFL, huh? It'd be much more fun to just play out the AFC and NFC playoffs and then debate for the rest of our lives about who was better! Yeah! Woooooooo 19-0 2007 New England Patriots!
He wrote a post about a 6 team playoff. He backed it up with data, and IMO it was the best playoff that anyone has thought of.
It was essentially the NFL playoffs with better teams getting home games and byes. Even if the 6th team in won it all, it would have the best resume by the end of the playoff gauntlet, making it the hands down national champion.
Also, its not the BCS that is standing in the way of a playoff, its the conferences. The commissioner of the BCS said that it isn't mandatory for conferences to be a part of the BCS. If they really wanted change, the conferences could pull out of the BCS and set up their own playoff.
Unfortunately for M fans, the B10 is one of the biggest supporters of the BCS because we're in love with the B10-Pac10 Rose Bowl.
The reason college football is so great is that every game matters. Every week the chance at getting to the national championship game is on the line. I can't imagine a college football without controversy and where not every game matters. That's what makes it unique.
How does a 4-6 team playoff make it so every game doesn't count?? You might have 1 game or 2 every 10 years that was unimportant as opposed to the 40-60 games that would be much more important as they impacted their teams chance to get back in it after a loss.
What congress is getting at is that every game ISN'T important. Games are only important to BCS schools. A mid-major will never have a shot at the NC game, even if they do go undefeated (Boise St, Utah x2).
If that's true then Congress is missing the point. There are no autobids to the national championship game, but Congress is acting as if there are.
If Utah was really deserving of a shot at the NCG, then why did no Mountain West coach vote them higher than fifth (and that 5th place vote was Whittingham himself) in the final regular season poll?
Both of them won every game, and both got passed over for teams that didn't. They had no chance before the season even started. And that's ridiculous.
Besides that, one could easily argue that a playoff makes more games meaningful. The only teams whose final games last year mattered were Florida, Alabama, and Oklahoma. Make it even an eight-team playoff, and now Florida-Alabama is probably for seeding only (although Florida might get knocked out with a second loss) but Oklahoma probably still has to win to get in (what with Texas and TTU waiting behind them), and the final games of USC, PSU, Utah, Boise State, and maybe even OSU (should someone slip up) become critical. All five of them were playing for consolation prizes by that time last season.
Ah, but the reason they were playing for consolation prizes was because they had already slipped up. It's possible a playoff would make more final-week games matter, but the great regular season that anti-playoff folks talk about is the whole season, in which USC-Oregon State or Texas-Baylor is as important as any other game with title implications.
I used to think the exact same thing. That was my biggest argument against the playoffs. Then 2006 happened, when Michigan went down two spots without playing a game. Then 2007 happened when Ohio State lost to Illinois- and lo and behold that game ended up not mattering.
Then I saw the eventual national champion LSU losing not one, but two games to unranked teams... and aparently neither of those games mattered either, because they would have won the championship whether they won or lost to Arkansas and Kentucky.
2007 was truly the year I realized the "every game matters" was a farce.
Any playoff proposal that doesn't include conference autobids is unrealistic fantasy and destined to die on the boardroom table. Period.
. . . if Congress got their collective nose out of college football and worked on making good national policy. But hey . . . maybe that's just me.
Agreed.
The regular season is still important with a playoff. Quoting the OP:
"The argument against of course being it takes away from the most meaningful regular season in all of sports, where all of a sudden one or 2 losses doesn't knock a team out of a chance to win the national championship. I agree that a 16 or 32 team playoff takes a bit away from the regular season, and all of a sudden that O$U U$C game doesn't mean as much early in the season."
In basketball, the equivalent of the OSU/USC game is unimportant because there are 65 teams in the tournament. (Perhaps the Bball equivalent is Duke vs. UNC?) Regardless of the result, those two teams are going to get into the (basketball) tournament considering their high rankings. This is not the same for a 6-10 team football tournament. (I put 10 because there are 5 BCS bowl games). If USC loses to OSU, it is almost certain that USC must win the P10 to get into the BCS as the conference champion (because of their relatively weak schedule). It is only if you get into a large (16-32 team) playoff format that this argument goes away.
We already know who is getting into the BCS:
2 SEC teams (Pick from: UF, Bama, LSU)
2 Big 10 teams (Pick from: OSU, PSU, B10 surprise team {Michigan?})
2 Big 12 teams (Pick from: OU, UT, B12 North champ)
1 Pac 10 team (probably USC)
1 Big East team (?)
1 ACC team (Pick from: FSU, ?)
1 Other (Pick from: nd, undefeated mid-major team, least objectionable {P10, BEast, ACC} team left)
*Disclaimer: "Pick from" teams not in any special order.
What WE ALL want to see and what A PLAYOFF would provide are games between all of these teams.
While I don't want to get rid of the BCS, this idea is a good compromise. One of my biggest beefs with a playoff is that they end up getting so big that they allow teams who are CLEARLY not the best to play for the championship. The top four teams are all deserving in some way...
I've advanced this before, but it's worth advancing again: A 16-team playoff with autobids need not destroy the regular season, nor does it have to ruin the bowls. Simply set up the playoffs in the Big East format with eight teams receiving Round 1 byes and four also receiving Round 2 byes. Then play it out beginning early in December and allow losing teams to be invited to bowls. It'd satisfy a lot of anti-playoff arguments, including most of my own, and I think the conferences would go for it, not least because it guarantees 12 teams instead of 8 a home game.
This is exactly why Bo said the main focus is the Big Ten Championship.
Dittos. I could not agree more.
I don't think congress is in a place to be deciding the fairness of anything.
Use my tax dollars to actually solve the nation's problems instead of destroying my favorite sport. Wankers.
I would hope they would be pissed that they lost like most of them are, but they would much rather have the opportunity and lose than sit at home and wonder why. You prove my point exactly. Why do you think those teams scream and cry when they get selected??
Because they didn't expect to get selected. Speaking of proving my point. Nobody acts a fool over getting selected to a tournament they expect to win. The only teams screaming and yelling over getting selected are the ones for whom simply being there is an accomplishment - in other words, teams that don't actually belong in the national title discussion.
There's a good read on Scout's CFN.com about why a playoff is not a good idea for college football. I had always supported the idea of a playoff, but this got me thinking about the flip side. Worth a gander...
http://cfn.scout.com/2/876769.html
It has been said before, but as long as only a select few teams are eligable for the National title game this system is a farce. Under the current system you need to have a fan base that will travel and purchase tons of tickets, get great ratings for TV, and have national marketability. This is why Boise ST. & Utah have no chance under the BCS. It's all about money. The people in charge are making billions off of this, and they will never change if they don't have to.
I actually don't mind our government getting involved, because they are the only ones who can change this mess. All of the playoff formats mentioned actually leave a space for any team to qualify. This is why a playoff would be the only way to make an equal chance for every team. If they continue the BCS, maybe they should create a new premium division of college football teams that only contains programs that actually have a chance of getting to the title game.
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