BCS eliminates 8 & 16 team proposals, recommends 4-team playoff without AQ conferences.
Not really sure why we should pay attention to Buffalo State College's playoff proposal.
This whole situation has totally pissed me off to the point where nothing they propose will make me happy.
thats what this system is designed to do
Wanna give a little of an explanation behind why you think that's the case? It would have to be a crazy scenario for that to even be possible, and it would likely mean the top teams from the other conferences just sucked. But the point is, it could be an All BIg Ten or Pac-12 final four just as easily.
lol, no it couldnt
Why is that? Because the teams that are good in 2012 are the teams who will always be good always?
April 26th, 2012 at 10:45 PM ^
is there some reason you're pretending not to get the references to the polls slobbering all over the SEC?
April 27th, 2012 at 12:31 AM ^
his vision sounds oddly plausible given how many of the current voters are either unpaid interns, apathetic voters, or computers designed to solve some crazy voodoo mathmatical nonsense.
I look forward to all the bitching about team #5 getting left out.
That will always happen. Hell, they even have a whole show dedicated to who gets left out of the NCAA tourney - I remember because this was Michigan a couple years when I was in college or just after. So no doubt that debate will happen, with bitching from that fanbase.
But it will be different. There will likely not be a team who many think is the #1 team getting left out. There will not be an undefeated Auburn or #1 ranked USC left out. Almost never is there a situation where the 5th team has a legitimate argument as the top team in the country.
If you get left out of a top 4, you likely don't have a good excuse. It clearly means you didn't go undefeated (in a major conference) and it likely means you either have 2 losses, or you just didn't play anyone. In either case, you don't have an argument as the best team in college football.
April 26th, 2012 at 11:08 PM ^
That a higher seed left out will likely not be deserving of a shot at the title. But I have somewhat of an argument against that. The difference between the #1 ranked team and the #5 ranked team may be quite a bit, on paper, or by the eye test. However, the difference between the #5 team and the #4 team, MAY not be all that much, if any. Why does then the #4 team get a shot but not the #5 team (and maybe #6 team). Same scenario holds with an 8-team playoff. Difference between #1 and #9 is probably easy to tell, but between #8 and #9, is why people get their panties in a bunch.
I'm not taking the time to look at the past 14 years of BS, ahem, BCS results to check how the teams compare to one another; I know there have been posts here that have done that (I'm not searching for it all though). But there will always be b**ching about teams being left out, no matter what. It won't be because said left-out teams are as good as the #1/2 ranked team(s) but because the team(s) just ahead of them will get a chance at the championship and they will not.
The only solution is scrap the regular season and go to a 120 team playoff. Fair is fair.
Which 5 teams get left out of the playoff? Or, are there going to be 5 play-in games?
Slippery Rock may be DII but they would help balance that out just nicely in my opinion.
go back and read it again, see if that helps
Wait, wait, wait... how about a 19 team playoff with a six-team play-in held in Canton on the Tuesday before the real tourney starts?
April 27th, 2012 at 12:36 AM ^
How about a two-man sack race held on consecutive Sundays until a champion can be crowned?
by putting playoff games at higher seeded teams' home stadiums and the national championship game at the Rose Bowl.
Here's how I see it: The SEC's preference is probably bowl sites only and no conference champion requirement. The Big Ten prefers on-campus, and it's unclear how they stand on the conference champion. The Pac-12 prefers on-campus and conference champions. The ACC would probably prefer conference champions, but might not have a consensus on game sites. Texas and Oklahoma probably prefer top 4 and may be ambivilent about bowl sites, and they probably speak for the whole conference as the only ones that matter.
I think eventually they reach a mutual understanding whereby only conference champions qualify, games are played at neutral sites but not only bowl sites, allowing northern cities to get in the rotation.
I'm sure the Big Ten is not in favor of conference champions only, considering they are probably the next most likely conference to have multiple teams outside of the SEC (Big 12 being very close). The Pac-12 probably doesn't care because USC will always get a shot when they're good and most years the conference didn't have a viable second option anyway.
You might be right, but the Big Ten hasn't publicly taken a position on the issue. And the last time the Big Ten finished with two teams in the top 4 of the regular season was 2006 (The Pac-12 did it in 2010 with Oregon/Stanford). How likely is that scenario to be repeated especially with the prospect of a UM-OSU rematch? I think the Big Ten is as likely to have a conference champion outside of the top 4 that would benefit as a non-champion in the top 4 that would be left out. Or at least, it's close enough that it's something the Big Ten should be willing to trade to get cooperation towards northern semifinal sites.
Edit: Also, I'll add another line of reasoning for this compromise from the Big Ten's point of view. When the tournament expands, which you know it will, you add non-conference champions in an 8 team tournament in exchange for home teams hosting the first round, something that the southern schools might not be as opposed to after the traditional status quo of bowl sites is broken..
No AQ? Poor, TCU and Boise jumping to tougher conferences.
Not really. First of all, they're probably getting more money out of it, but there will still be some bowl system in place outside of the 4-team playoff. And BSU and TCU were in situations in their old conferences where they played in a bowl no one cared about unless they ran the table and got a BCS bid. Now, when Boise or TCU goes 10-2, they'll play in a bowl that I've actually heard of, and if they win their league without going undefeated, they'll play in a very good bowl (likely a current BCS bowl, or similar).
Getting into the Big 12 was a dream come true for TCU. The Big East's worldwide expansion looks crazier now. It barely made sense when there was a chance of keeping their AQ status.
Congratulations to the Mountain West and other conferences formerly known as non-BCS: you just fucked yourself with all your whining about "monopolies" and "auto-qualifiers" and all that. Now you'll never play in anything bigger than the Las Vegas Bowl. The BCS let you play in the Rose Bowl, which will never, ever, ever happen again.
Now you'll never play in anything bigger than the Las Vegas Bowl.
I don't know about that - I can think of at least a few scenarios where a non-AQ would have gotten into a four team playoff in the last decade or so, specifically the year TCU made the Rose Bowl. With the old BCS, the non-AQs were never, ever, ever going to get into the National Championship game. Now, they may never, ever, ever get to play in the Rose Bowl again, but I'm pretty sure they are willing to trade that for a realistic shot at getting into the playoff if they run the table.
I don't know if I'd like that trade if I were one of those schools. Before, if you ran the table as a mid-major school (or maybe even finish with one loss), you'd get to play in a BCS bowl against a major conference team in front of the entire country. You'd also get you and your conference a ton of money.
Sure, in the new scenario you get to play for the title if you make it, but it will be a lot harder to make it. Over the last 5 years or so, there has been about one mid-major school in the BCS per year. In the new platform, it will be near impossible for a mid-major to make it in.
Why weren't they going to, though? They had exactly the same requirements as the so-called "automatic qualifiers." That's why that whole argument was so bogus. The only "automatic qualifying" was to the various bowl games - Sugar, Rose, etc. - which was exactly the same as the MWC sending its champion to the Las Vegas Bowl.
We will get an 8 team and/or a 16 team playoff eventually. Baby steps.
April 26th, 2012 at 10:07 PM ^
Why is eight perfect? Three rounds of playoffs would be a lot - you'd see a lot of empty seats in the opening round, probably. I think a four-team playoff is fine, especially given that the chances that there will ever be on-campus games is basically zero.
April 26th, 2012 at 11:42 PM ^
If the first round of games were home games for the higher seeds, there wouldn't be any empty seats whatsoever.
If it were 8 last year, you would have had Kansas State and Arkansas in the playoffs, two teams each with three and two losses respectively and no super impressive wins, the most impressive being Arkansas's win over a South Carolina team that didn't have Lattimore. That, to me, pretty significantly degrades the importance of the regular season. I'm fine with 4, maybe Brian's 6 team plan at the most.
It doesn't really matter what the first iteration of the BCS playoffs looks like. Just like the NCAA tourney, once you have a playoff format you can then tweak it down the road. Finally having a playoff, any sort of playoff, will be infinitely better than what has recently gone before.
Why is the BCS allowed to run this tourney? I thought that was the NCAA's perview. That way money would make its way back to the schools instead of lining the pockets of these sham 501-C phoneys.
I may be wrong, but I think the BCS is technically the conferences themselves, they just happen to work with the bowls. And if I'm wrong, since the conferences hold all the power, it can easily be arranged that the BCS be renamed as the bowls are cut out.
The conferences run the BCS, so the conferences have decided to do this.
I think it's fine, personally. I'd prefer home sites over bowl sites but I'm not going to shout down a playoff over it. I might prefer the pre-BCS system to this but whatever. Baby steps
What exactly is the BCS? I mean, it is a damn strange... entity, whatever it is. I feel like THEY tell the NCAA what's up, not the other way around. Kind of the like the little kid telling the parents what exactly he wants for dinner and how he wants it cooked. Little bugger wouldn't be around without them either.
Oh, and now I know what it must feel like to live in a kleptocracy.
...it probably responds like this when you ask it a question:
If this were to be the case, I would rather have homes sites for the semis and a BCS / neutral (i.e., bid) site for the championship game. I rather liked that idea if only because it allows for some meaningful postseason play in areas that have never seen it but would benefit economically from it.
I also like the idea of getting rid of the AQ / non-AQ distinction, although with the interstellar reach of the Big East, I am pretty sure the Democratic Order Of Planets will have to convene in Weehauken to discuss the implications.
It seems like a step in the right direction, though not a complete solution certainly.It seems that the problem that the BCS was supposed to solve is only now starting to be solved, although it will never stop the complaining of fanbases who are "on the bubble", if you will - the great thing about a change like this is that it could at least control, if it is well-conceived, some of the old arguments as to why Team X is not in Bowl Y and whatnot.
Technically, the NCAA has to sanciton whatever format they come up with, but since the 5 major conferences hold a majority of FBS teams, they can push through any playoff proposal if the current BCS conferences less the Big East are unanimous. It's close though and if there are presidents categorically opposed to any form of a playoff (not out of the question), the big conferences may have to grease the wheels a bit. Maybe just requiring participants to be conference champions is enough to get the Big East. Maybe assure a minimum yearly payment to all FBS members. Whatever they do, I'm sure they won't go to the NCAA until it's clear they have the votes.
... but at least it's a start.
The core problem, of course, is that the current system is based upon the polls. Any four-team playoff, conference champions required or otherwise, will still have to take the polls into consideration, which means we'll continue to vote instead of settling things on the field.
What I'd like to see is a set of hard and fast qualification guidelines. If you do X, you make the playoffs, and if you do not, you don't. Ideally, the number of teams to make the playoffs would be flexible, so that any team, at the beginning of the season, could say they have a legitimate shot to win the championship -- or, if they didn't, that it's their fault.
For example, these guidelines might be: no more than six home games (except for teams playing at Hawaii), no fewer than five road games, no I-AA opponents, no more than one non-conference opponent from conferences which are in the bottom half of I-A, win at least 10 games.
The fact that teams dictate their own schedule and can make their path to the title easier or harder entirely at their own whim is one of the things that upsets me the most. I -want- a nonconference schedule like '97 -- Notre Dame, Colorado, Baylor. It shouldn't behoove us to schedule cupcakes, ever, and it shouldn't be so unbelievably amazing that we're going to play Alabama that only Texas is big enough to contain the hype.
Still, baby steps...