KAYSHIN15

June 20th, 2012 at 7:27 PM ^

The SEC has been kicking butt and taking names for over a decade. Until another conference rises out of the ashes and take the crown, they will be catered to. I for one believe the end of their reign comes on September 1st in Jerry's World.

Roachgoblue

June 20th, 2012 at 7:49 PM ^

It helps recruiting, so why cater to them? Do they have 6 commissioners? I am tired of people catering to cheating. Saban has tryouts and that is common knowledge, why is it allowed?

GoBlueInNYC

June 20th, 2012 at 7:51 PM ^

Although I agree with your sentiment, the SEC have not been "kicking butt and taking names for over a decade." They've dominated the BCS Championship for the past six years, but they were far from dominant before that.

But I agree with your general point that someone needs to start beating the SEC before we can expect the NCAA to not cater to them. And it will happen eventually.

WolvinLA2

June 20th, 2012 at 8:19 PM ^

Yeah, certainly not over a decade.  In fact, less than a decade ago, an undefeated Auburn team (and SEC champ) was denied the BCS championship game, and before this 6 year streak, the SEC had done very little as far as national championships outside of Saban's LSU and Florida in like '94 or something.  Oh, and Tennessee in '98.  Still, these things ebb and flow. 

And it's not like the SEC dominated all of those games either.  Texas would have beaten Bama if McCoy doesn't go out.  And LSU wouldn't have won if they would have played USC like they should have. 

 

jmblue

June 20th, 2012 at 8:26 PM ^

Whatever they decide will not be as good as the eight team model

What's so great about eight teams? Does the #8 team in the polls really deserve a shot at the title?

I'm fine with a four-team playoff. That keeps up the importance of the regular season - you're going to have to go undefeated or lose no more than once to get in.

Huma

June 20th, 2012 at 8:59 PM ^

Have you ever heard of the NFL? It has this thing called a Wild Card ...



Obviously you have heard of it -- asking the question about whether or not the #8 team deserves a shot is the same as asking if any Wild Card team ever deserves to go to the Super Bowl (and keep in mind the multiple road games it has to win to get there). If the #8 team gets hot and beats #1 in a playoff, do you really think #8 still wouldn't deserve to move on?



Including the top 8 means you can include nearly all of the top conference champions plus throw in a couple wild cards.

B-Nut-GoBlue

June 20th, 2012 at 9:53 PM ^

What if 3 of those losses were for a total of 10 points and one loss happened by a bad referee call, essentially making them 10-5 and possibly able to have been 11-4/12-3.

It's an age old debate anymore, and is great off-season chatter material about the sports we adore.  Anymore though, we keep striving for this perfect post-season format, but is it even possible?!  Now we're to the point of calling the NFL playoffs inconsistent and Super Bowl teams/winners(?) undeserving.

jmblue

June 21st, 2012 at 12:05 AM ^

What if 3 of those losses were for a total of 10 points and one loss happened by a bad referee call,

Boo-hoo. Life isn't fair.

Part of what's so cool about the college football national championship is that it demands perfection, or something close to it. Our 1997 team was perfect - 12-0. It wouldn't have been the same if it had gone 9-3 and then just got hot for three weeks. All the other sports do that. College football has done its own thing for all these years, and I like that.

B-Nut-GoBlue

June 21st, 2012 at 5:49 AM ^

You don't have to boo-hoo me.  You're right, life isn't fair.  Us fans need to realize that about the sports we watch and teams we cheer on.  What I was getting at was that every post-season format for declaring a "champion" is now under ridicule it seems; nothing is flawless.  (In detail, I was just trying to imply in my above statement that an NFL team who had such a record probably was just as deserving of a playoff bid as another team with up to 3 more wins; i.e. Arizona Cardinals of 2009 and New York Giants of last year.  Most NFL teams are not as different talent wise as we my like to think.)  So this drama in college football about playoffs and "getting it right" to me is also really just a bunch of boo-hooing.

I have the same feelings as you.  The college football season and "post-season" are the reason I started to like college football over the NFL in the first place.  I liked the pre-BCS days to be honest, though those weren't perfect either, but it seemed so much more unique back then.  It seemed as though people weren't so caught up in the hoopla about crowning this ONE team (out of 110+ teams) a national champion and were focused more on having a good regular season with tough games throughout and enjoying a fun and challening bowl game match-up; seeing what happened after the bowl games was just some extra fun.  It is us fans who are boo-hooing and crying out for some mythical be-all-end-all format where everyone goes home happy in the end.  It ain't happening though.

Oscar

June 20th, 2012 at 10:24 PM ^

Ok, lets go with your idea, so lets say Michigan loses its first playoff game?  Are you fine with seeing Michigan only play one game?  Of course not.  Just because a game doesn't have high playoff significance does not make it a worthless game to everyone.

jmblue

June 20th, 2012 at 11:58 PM ^

First, I really don't care about the NFL, and I'd prefer in general, that college football not use the NFL as its guiding light. Second...

Including the top 8 means you can include nearly all of the top conference champions

I don't understand this fascination with including as many conference champions as possible. We all agree that the conferences are never balanced in terms of strength, so why treat them all as equals in the playoff format? If the Big East champ is the #20 team in the country, no way in hell does it deserve a playoff bid.

M-Dog

June 20th, 2012 at 9:16 PM ^

It's a practical matter.

If the 4 team playoff was in place last year, the Big Ten Champion may not have gotten in.  Instead it would have been Alabama, LSU, Okla State, and Stanford/Luck.  

If that Big Ten champion were Michigan instead of Wisconsin, I know I would have had a tantrum.

It is fashionable these days to trash the Big Ten.  That will work against us in a 4 team playoff, mark my words.  An 8 team playoff ensures that the Big Ten champion will always get in.  I'm for it if for no other reason than that.

 

jmblue

June 20th, 2012 at 11:52 PM ^

I don't think Wisconsin was better than any of those teams.  If we'd had the same season as them, I wouldn't be that upset over being passed over.  Why should the Big Ten be guaranteed a spot in the playoffs?  This is a league that has won two national titles in 40 years.  

For that matter, I don't think any conference should get an autobid.  If the SEC champ is a 9-3 team that pulled the upset in Atlanta, good for them but they're not one of the best teams in the country.  Conference championships are a different animal than the national championship.  Winning the Big Ten is a goal in itself.  It doesn't need to be reduced to a gateway for the playoffs.  

 

B-Nut-GoBlue

June 20th, 2012 at 7:28 PM ^

As in it's lame the two semifinal games will be within the current Bowl games.  This is no surprise, and apparently the kids love the idea of making a trip to the warmer destinations, but it's all a big crock in my humble opinion.  The Northern teams are once again at a disadvantage, until they can make the National Title game held in Detroit/Indy/Chicago once every decade.  Yay for politics and the love of $$$.  Yay for the Bowls still existing in their current form and old white men in orange jackets raking loads of money.  Sometimes reform sucks and isn't very reformed at all.

Also, what the hell took them so long to come up with this crap?!  This sh*t could've been decided in a 6 hour meeting back in March, not pushing June 30th deadline.

woomba

June 20th, 2012 at 7:35 PM ^

In practice, I doubt that this will this be any different from the top 3 conf champions in top 6 + 1 at-large model that was also discussed in depth - so count me in as being happy!

M-Dog

June 20th, 2012 at 9:26 PM ^

I hope we in the "uncool" Big Ten are not always that odd man out.  If there are only 3 conference slots to give out in practice, I see us getting shut out when the other 3 choices are the SEC, the Big 12 if it is Texas or Oklahoma, and the Pac 12 if it is USC or Oregon.

If you look back over the last decade or so, this would have happened a lot.

Needs to be 8 teams, or 6 teams with a bye for 1 & 2.

smwilliams

June 20th, 2012 at 7:37 PM ^

Saw on the bottom line some more details not included in the original article. To summarize...

- Semifinals at bowl sites

- Championship at highest bidding city

- Committee to select 4 teams based on various factors including whether team won their conference and strength of schedule.

Mr. Rager

June 20th, 2012 at 7:46 PM ^

Prediction: "Committee" to select top 4 teams does not end well.  Within 4 years of playoff being in place - it either moves to a 6 team playoff (four automatic qualifying conferences - the "super" conferences with at least 12 teams) or a 4 team playoff with the (dreaded in my eyes) 16-team supers battling it out.  

sterling1213

June 20th, 2012 at 7:55 PM ^

 

This may not be the first step, but it is definitely the one that begins the decline of my interest in college football as a whole.  This is a big screw you to the Big Ten.  This isn't any more fair than what we have had and I would argue that it is actually more unfair to any Northern/Midwest school.  Playoffs are going to kill college football, in the same way that the BCS killed the greatness of the bowls.  This will also finish off one of the great things about college football, that being the regionality of the conferences as we "have to" move to four super conferences to further the playoff concept.  Further destroying the tradition of the game for a system that is no better than what we currently have or what we have had in the past.  This has been a day that I have been mourning for a long time.  

Zone Left

June 20th, 2012 at 8:09 PM ^

I don't think the BCS killed interest in the bowl system so much as proliferation and the general desire to know who the absolute best team is in a given year. Back in the heyday of the bowl system, there was a relatively limited number of games and teams had to have a pretty good season to be selected. Today, 6-6 teams from the big conferences are basically guaranteed selection, and there are approximately eleventy million bowl games. The BCS and the top 3-4 non-BCS games basically replaced the old system of relatively good games, while the dregs made bowl season almost painful to watch.

The desire for a champion, in my mind, is a natural outgrowth of the human desire to compete. When things go well, the championships have been fantastic, and the playoff likely gives more of an opportunity for excellent championship matchups--although I personally think bracket creep towards an eight team playoff will happen rather quickly--be that from a "superconference" method of playing champion vs champion instead of what we view as conference title games or through a formal expansion.

Generally, I'm a fan of the playoff, but I'm disappointed that the semifinal sites aren't going to be on campus. Hopefully, some really subpar showings due to USC/Virginia Tech playing the Cotton Bowl or some such event will fix that in a few years.

chrs5mr

June 20th, 2012 at 8:13 PM ^

In the dream scenario of an undefeated Michigan season, as an every day fan, I'm unfortunately staying home and not traveling to the semifinal because I can't afford all that traveling.  I'm sitting at home and waiting to see if they make it to the Championship Game.  I would think that ALOT of fans are going to be in the same boat.

Hopefully some empty stadiums for the semifinals fixes that faster as you and I hope.

sterling1213

June 20th, 2012 at 8:30 PM ^

 

I am not so interested in the lower bowls.  The big bowls have decreased in meaning tremendously since the BCS began.   But I do agree that the amount of bowls is outrageous.  

As for as finding out who the absolute best team is, I would argue that a playoff system is a pretty piss poor way to do that.  It basically awards the hot team at the end who gets in, and completely ignores everything that leads up to that.  Just look at the recent "champions" in sports.  The Giants, L.A. Kings, St. Louis Cardinals... None of those teams were the absolute best teams.  They got hot at the end and got some favorable match-ups.  A playoff doesn't always crown the best team, and often does not.  I would even argue that voting after the bowls gives you a champion that has earned it over the course of the entire season, and is a truer champion than a playoff winner.  

All and all, I think we are throwing away far too much for a system that doesn’t really do a better job of crowing a champion.   

B-Nut-GoBlue

June 20th, 2012 at 10:02 PM ^

Why you get negged for speaking an opinion?!

I agree with some of what you say and some of what Zone Left says.  My heart doesn't like and has for years been dreading a playoff format.  I've come to accept that it will happen, and over the course of some assinine season finales that could've involved other deserving teams, I've come to think something of a playoff may not be soooo bad; I still don't love the idea.  Much tradition has gone by the wayside because of the BCS and other factors.  The purity I used to think was so prevalent in college football has eroded.  The word "playoffs" just doesn't fit the bill for the college football I grew up to love.  One might easily be able to tell I liked the sport best during the pre-BCS days.  But...the game and format we have is here and most likely here to stay.

I definitely agree with Zone Left on the point of the sport growing in popularity and this somewhat newfound need know (attempt to know) who the BEST is.  It's almost weird in a way because of the way our society has become, in the same period of time, a PC nation and how child worshipping has become so common...i.e. Everyone is a winner and gets a gold medal, no more dodgeball in gym class singleing out the slower/non-athletic kids, and "oh look at my kids aren't they the greatest?" (No, they're not).  But God da**it I NEED to know who the best set of 18-22 year olds is out of 110+ teams; a conference championship and a win in a the Cotton/Orange/Rose isn't enough, we need NATIONAL CHAMPION next to our name. 

Home-site playoffs would go a long way to bringing me to the Dark Side and learning to thoroughly enjoy some sort of playoff.  Someday?

Smoothitron

June 20th, 2012 at 8:00 PM ^

I guess you would call this a win for the B1G, since the results are likely to be more similar to their plan than the SEC's. Yay?  Applied to previous years, this will likely exclude a number of SEC teams, but not in favor of B1G teams. These are all for 4th place btw.

2011 - Oregon almost certainly gets selected over Stanford by a committee.

2008 -  Conference champion USC(lost at Oregon St. very early) or Alabama(Lost SEC championship game to Florida)?  Very tough to say.

2006 - 2-loss LSU vs Conference co-champ 2-loss USC.  Probably Trojans.

2004 - Unbeaten Utah or 1-loss Texas?  Extremely tough, given that Texas's loss was to #1 Oklahoma

ThadMattasagoblin

June 20th, 2012 at 8:19 PM ^

What were Dave Brandon/Jim Delaney/ all the big wigs in big ten country thinking when they made us go to the bowls for semifinals?  The closest one is in NO, Louisiana 1000 miles away!  We could have protected the Rose Bowl and still had on campus semifinals, but it's too cold for the SEC in Ann

Arbor in December sigh. 

Leonhall

June 20th, 2012 at 8:23 PM ^

Better but you still have problems, how do you pick the 4? Still going to have teams pissed that they didn't get in, he'll they take 68 teams for MBB and you still have teams pissed...

Perkis-Size Me

June 20th, 2012 at 8:26 PM ^

Maybe someone can explain this to me a little bit, but how will this exist within the current bowl system? What I mean is do the other bowls, such as Outback, Capital One, Emerald, etc., still exist after this coming season? It might sound like a stupid question, and I have to imagine they will considering how much money would be lost if they didn't.

I guess I'm just wondering if a game like the Rose Bowl will still be played by a team who may have just missed the cut for making it into the playoff.