Wetzel: B1G Drops Push for Campus Site Playoffs

I like the Rose Bowl and all, but it loses something when  the Big 10 and/or Pac 10 champs aren't there, which has happened quite a bit in the last 10 years. Since 2002, the following non-Big Ten/Pac 10 champions have been in the game.

2002: Miami, Nebraska*

2003:Oklahoma

2005: Texas

2006: Texas*

2007: Michigan

2008: Illinois

2009: Penn State

2011: TCU

*These are BCS Championship games. Obviously more prestigious than a Rose Bowl without nat'l championship implications, but not adhering to the tradition, which is my point. 

In other words, the only time the game has been between the champs of each conference was 2004 (Michigan/USC), and 2010 (Ohio State/Oregon). Not exactly adhering to the tradition.

Also, what's more prestigious: a championship game played in Ann Arbor or a trip to California?

Different article, same news

http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/it-looks-bowls-will-be-part-college-football...

It seems like this was a foregone conclusion. There was no way the SEC would agree to play  in the north in January. It's unfortunate for fans in most parts of the country, but it looks like we are stuck with bowl games only in warmer climates.

Am I the only one that likes the idea of playing the semi-final games at the conference championship locations? Hypothetically: #1 SEC v #4 PAC12 at Atlanta and #2 Big 10 v #3 Big 12 at Indianapolis. This would give the top ranked teams a geographical advantage, also it would ease up on the distance traveled by fans. Thoughts?

I thought this was a wonderfully written article - comparing the affair between the Big 10 and the Rose Bowl to that of Romeo and Juliet... they refuse to live without the other, even if it means committing suicide together. 

This is lunacy.. it is crazy to think that the NFL and the cities that host their teams make millions of dollars off of a playoff script that has, for the most part, allowed for a team to win a championship based on its skill and NOT its region. This is all in the face of college football, an institution where extortion and theft should be discouraged, with its reluctance to leave its abusive relationship with the bowls.

There are NO LEGITIMATE arguments against the idea of having a semifinal + final playoff, with the higher seed in the semifinals getting a home berth. Screw the advertising firms! Who needs them? Michigan has been consistently making profit from its athletics without advertising in the Big House, if that's what they're scared of. The TV revenue from a semifinal game played ON a college campus would be ENORMOUS. Not to mention the revenue the city itself would get. On top of this, the college football finals game, now deemed as a legitimate contest for the best team in the country, would also experience an ENORMOUS increase in ratings.

Literally everyone involved wins, aside from the Bowl CEOs and some advertising companies. Is that too much to ask?

practically cedes the home field advantage to the opposing team.  I just don't get this great affection the Big Ten has for the Rose Bowl.  The Big Ten and its member institutions played a huge part in making the Rose Bowl what it is.

How on earth did the NCAA basket ball tournament ever get so popular without their version of the Rose Bowl????

While its easy to blame Delaney and co. for giving up on home semifinals, we don't know what was happening in those BCS meetings. If the semifinal plan was just not going to happen, I would be happy if they protected the Rose Bowl. Unfortunately, of the power conferences, only the Big 10 doesn't have a bowl game in its footprint.

So lame. I would MUCH rather see Michigan vs Alabama at the Big House in December than see Michigan vs USC in California on January 1st. Both things are magical, but one is more... Michigan than the other.

This will change after 2 years of poor attendance at the semi-final games.  Its completely illogical to think that fan bases will travel twice in one week, especially if both games are AFTER New Years day.

I hate the Rose Bowl.

This article lays out how ludicrous this all really is.

Sorry the Rose Bowl is not the end game anymore - it's winning national championships.  This is not the 80s anymore.  We need the advantage of bringing teams up here to the Midwest just like the SEC, Big 12 and Pac 12 have had for decades.  

Poor form. I don't see why Delaney is so willing to cede home site advantage to the SEC and PAC 10. I agree with above, I wish they could've stuck to their guns long enough to force a compromise of semifinals at conference championship locations. That's in a dome, so the weather argument would be null.

How is travelling to the Rose Bowl going to alleviate extra travel?

I agree with this. I will be lenient and assume Delany is taking the longview on this. Neutral site semifinal and finals are going to be a complete failure. Delany knows that the SEC will not agree to traveling north, but will likely change their mind after pathetic attendance figures.

Maybe someone at the Phoenix coaches tour can ask Brandon about this, given that the Fiesta Bowl is the shining example of the corruption of the bowl system. 

For those that aren't aware...

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/03/29/20110329fiesta-bowl-john-junker-investigation.html

And while the corruption, the ticket guarantees, the competitive disadvantage bugs me, this bothers me just as much...

Minutes later, Junker described how he saw the Fiesta Bowl rise from a mid-level football enterprise into one of the nation's premier games worth billions of dollars to Arizona's economy.

Billions...of...dollars... With much of it flowing out from the region of the nation that has undergone the greatest economic struggle over the past two decades. 

Delaney and the ADs are basically helping to transfer wealth from the Big 10 footprint to southern California, Arizona, Louisiana, and south Florida in the form of the tourism dollars of Big 10 fans. As part of institutions that in 11 out of 12 cases, are state institutions.

It's hard to overstate how unhappy the B1G's ridiculous Rose Bowl obsession is in the playoff era. I have always thought it was a great tradition, but selling out our own chances of ever having a level playing field for this is outrageous.

Home games were going to level the field and preserve some relevance to the regular season; now, SEC teams get a home game every year and an almost guaranteed berth in a title game.

Sanity and quality is losing every major issue in this playoff arrangement. The B1G is converting a position of strength into nothing so that some 10-2 teams can occasionally go to the Rose Bowl.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather win a national championship.

Send e-mails or letters to the AD's. This is BS!

I am going to wait to comment until they actually announce the final plan.  This is like the conference realignment debate with all its ups and downs and back and forths, only much more compressed in time, and this time we can't even pretend to know what's important to the decision-makers.  Our picture of the process is way too incomplete.  I don't really like the direction it's going, but then I never trusted these people to come up with a good idea in the first place, which is why I never wanted a playoff in the first place.  I suspect the people who're most disappointed right now are the ones who had an idealistic (and unrealistic) outlook on a playoff.

I read an article last night in which Delaney claims he had a teleconference with the football coaches last week, and the consensus was to use bowl sites for the playoff games.  They made a conscious decision to give up homefield advantage, and Delaney claims he warned them of the potential consequences, and the coaches all recognized they were probably giving up some level of competitive advantage.

Most of the other major conferences object to campus playoff games. Even if the Big Ten favored it, they would be outvoted.

I also think there is considerable truth to the statement that campus playoff games would undermine the viability of the Rose Bowl, because it would become a contest between playoff losers.

In other words, if the Big Ten or Pac-12 champ were in the top four, it could only go to the Rose Bowl by losing its playoff game. Now, if you're anti-bowl, as Wetzel is, maybe you don't see that as detrimental. If the Rose Bowl withers on the vine, so to speak, who cares?

But if you think the Rose Bowl has value, I can understand the reluctance to turn it into a consolation game.

If they have to go with bowl sites, I just wish no team would have to play LSU at the Sugar Bowl or USC/.UCLA at the Rose Bowl, etc...

I know the semifinals were highly unlikely to ever be on-campus games, but this is ridiculous.  At least fight to keep the semifinals at Indy so there would at least be a regional semifinal.  As soon as a playoff became a reality, a lot of traditions were going to be ended.  It just doesn't make any sense to fight for a game where the schools and fans have to travel approximately 3,000 miles.  While I mostly have supported Delaney's positions in the past, but this one pisses me off.

Having the Rose Bowl be a part of the play-off only dilutes (not "delludes" for the Sparties out there) the tradition and significance of the Rose Bowl.  Keeping it separate guarantees a B1G vs Pac 12 match-up every year and I'd much rather have the chance to host a play-off game once every 5-10 years than having UM play for an MNC in the Rose Bowl. 

in a made for TV world, i am not sure why anyone thought that this would not be the case.

its sad, i know, you can't undo the past, but maybe the two poll system with big fancy bowls that we had until 10 years ago or whatever was not the worst thing in the world. we will have something just as indefinitive, but 100 times more annoying and 10 times more expensive for the fan and generating 10 time more revenue for people who aren't college athletes.

Big Ten Conference- let them know this is bullshit!

James E. Delany

Commissioner



1500 West Higgins Road

Park Ridge, IL 60068-6300

(847) 696-1010



Fax numbers:

Admin. (847) 696-1150

Comm. (847) 696-1110

I think you have to look at the long game here, if Delany has concluded that there is no real chance (yet) for on-campus playoff games, an opinion that is very reasonable, then there is no sense being unloyal to the Rose Bowl. Even if it is an evil bowl, it's still the best of the lot and it makes sense to keep as much exclusivity with it as possible by not stabbing it in the back until you are sure it will die.

If the "experts" rave about playoff games in Green Bay, Chicago, and New England as how playoff football is "supposed to be," I see nothing wrong w/ playoff games in Ann Arbor, Madison, or Columbus.  It makes little sense that sunny, warm playoff games aren't "real" playoff games in the NFL but should be in college.

This must be my youth talking but who gives a f*#% about the Rose Bowl?  It holds absolutely zero pagentry for me nowadays what with ESPN/Twitter/Red Zone only channels etc. etc. If having a parade is what people want I'm sure something can be arrainged... 

I want a college site or at worst regional playoff system that doesnt cater to the Southern schools. PERIOD.  

UM has an average deficit of 2.9 points in the RB game---almost exactly the (3pt) advantage ascribed tof the home field.*

Moreover, the difference between playing on a visitor's home field and playing on one's own homefield is huge (about a 6 pt change in the point spread advantage).

Is that really worth the "privilege" of going to SoCal and inhaling smog for one winter week?  You'd have to be nuts, in any other circumstance, to give the opposing team an extra 6 points.  Does, Delaney want the BigTen to become the Big Patsy?  Is this the kind of commissioner we really want?

*though UM is about +2.9 overall, including the era prior to 1950.  Admittedly, playing at the RB obviously is not as much of an advantage for Wash as it would be for USC or UCLA; however, it is an advantage nonetheless.

I've only been following cfb seriously for about 6 years and the rose bowl is almost never significant. As was pointed out above, it hasn't even featured the B1G vs Pac12 champion in most years so who cares about it anymore?... oh just Jim Delaney? That's sort of what I thought

"Well, so critical that they're willing to make business decisions based on emotion, willing to give up on competitive advantages, logistical ease and monetary benefits." - from the article

This was sort of hashed out in last night's thread, but sentiment really cannot be part of the new system if the Big Ten wants to be a relevant part of how any playoff system finally comes about. The tie-ins cannot feasibly continue unless they went to a system that involved conference champions. In a four-team playoff, there is nothing stopping the Rose Bowl from continuing in it's present role as a high-end consolation (which is what it rather became in the BCS system) with perhaps the Big Ten runner-up, but I would hope that our conference wants to contend in a playoff and I would rather they represent our local interests whenever possible.

Bottom line is I just don't see myself going anywhere far, including the rose bowl, for a semifinal game. I would rather just hope we win and go to the finals, and if we lost I'd just wait for next year (hopefully) or the next opportunity. Flying to SoCal for a semi is just not appealing.

As a fan this is sad to say, but here are a few realities to accept:

1) This is a business to those making the decisions.  This is a passion for the rest of us. #1 rule of making good business decisions, don't bring emotion into it.

2) Fans will travel to the semi-final games.  It's your chance to see your team play in the final four.  Besides, you know your team will be playing in that game, there are no garauntees about the next game.

3) The Championship game will become like the Super Bowl. i.e. most of the people attending will not be true fans of the school but the elite few who can afford to attend a premier event. This has basically already happened. To be blunt, corporations buy seats to events like this, not people. As said as it is to say, it's easier to fleece corporations than it is fans. And, no, do not bring your fans will pay for anything argument here.  There is a much higher threshold for spending by corporations vs indivisuals.

4) Whether we like it or not the SEC, and even to a small degree the Big 12, has more clout at the table than the B1G does right now.  There was a time the B1G would have gotten anything they wanted in these negotiations, that time has passed, and believe me, the other conferences have not forgotten it. 

So if you want to guess what the future format will be, you can make a pretty good bet it will: 1) be what is in the best interest of the SEC/Big12 and 2) what generates the most money.  Not for the schools, but for all the associated entities which surround college football (TV, sponsorships, Bowl committees, advertisers, etc).  For without the money that gets funneled into all these things, the schools get nothing.

I hate being an adult.

So earlier this morning I sent Dave Brandon an email about this issue, just to make my loud and irritable voice heard, and this was the meat of his response:

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If anyone still believes that the game should be about the student-athletes (And, I do!), then they would quickly learn how much the players look forward to traveling to unique locations where many of them have never been ... being greeted by a host committee who treats them great ... playing in special venues and often in nice weather ... and, having a unique experience to end their season. I understand why most fans like to only think about "the fan experience," but I weigh the student-athlete experience heavily in any of these discussions.

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I suppose it would be pretty fantastic to be treated like the players are treated during their bowl games, but as dropping attendance shows, the fans (and their money) are losing interest more each year... I would think that as a student-athlete, playing for a place in the national championship game in front of your home fans in your own stadium wouldn't be so bad. Surely not a bad trade; as a player, you gain home team advantage and play in front of a sellout crowd (instead of tens of thousands of empty seats) in return for the lack of pampering.