WSJ Says B1G and PAC12 Should skip playoff to Save Rose Bowl
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304203604577396102303663334.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Basically it states the best thing about college football is the rose bowl, and a playoff system would make it less special
I agree
Why not just play for the B1G championship then go play against the Pac-12 in the Rose Bowl? What does UofM really lose?
Michigan, specifically its players and coaches, lose the chance to play for what everyone dreams of: a national championship. I absolutely love the Rose Bowl, no question. But it's foolish to think that, if Michigan were the #1, 2, 3, or 4 team in the country that we would not want to play in the National Championship.
There are options to keep the Rose Bowl's tradition alive, but this one is certainly not it. Why rob these kids of playing for the highest honor in their sport?
...but not everyone dreams of a national championship. Big Ten & Rose Bowl come first to me. And if there's anything that I really dream of, it's an undefeated season.
If the team accomplishes those goals, I could care less whether anybody thinks Michigan is national champion or not.
And you're ok with that? Why is the Rose Bowl more important than a chance to be the recognized, non-mythical champion?
That only applies to the BCS national championship. AP national champions are determined by AP voters. If the Rose Bowl champ is undefeated and BCS champ has one loss, I am pretty confident that AP will award their national championship to the Rose Bowl winner.
F the BCS, keep the Rose Bowl. Let everyone else fight for a BCS mythical National Championship. I dont care. All I want is to win the B1G and play in the Rose Bowl.
Like I said before; a NCAA FB playoff is like a wet dream; its all good when you are asleep, but when you wake up to reality, all you have is a big mess.
I agree with this too. National Championship team with out participation of Big 10 and PAC 12 teams is not credible also.
becuase the Big 10 has dominated the national championship for the past 25 years. Oh wait...
Does not really matter. Things go in cycles. PAC12 and Big 10 has its share of National championship in their history.
Taking your argument further, why not just crown SEC chamption has national champion and get it over?
I am okay with that.
In fact, that scenario is pretty close to what happened in 1997. That year was perfection. Whether Nebraska wants to claim the national championship or not, or whether anybody outside of Michigan believed we were national champs or not doesn't mean shit to me.
The need to have a bunch of voters confirm the greatness of that season is simply a bunch of Facebook era (friend me! like me!) pansy-assnes and I don't subscribe to it.
Double post.
I don't see why it has to be any different than it is now, other than the fact that 4 teams are competing for the national championship instead of 2. You can still have the Rose bowl be B1G Champ vs Pac12 Champ, as long as they aren't in the top 4 which isn't out of the question. If we were to go undefeated now and be either #1 or #2, we aren't going to turn down the National Championship game to play in the Rose Bowl.
Someone getting named a champ by someone is just as mythical as the BCS championship today.
The idea that there is some non-mythical "absolute truth" national championship at anything is itself a myth.
I'd be fine with the B10 and P12 creating the "Research University Championship Series" and declaring the winner of the Rose Bowl the RUCS National Champions." That would satisfy everyone, I would think. After all, it would be as non-mythical a national championship as there is.
We could win the Rose Bowl and be voted AP National Champions. In the history books we would be National Champions and we will have our 12 NC by winning the Rose Bowl and getting enough votes.
My oh my how some old things become new again. I love it.
are not going to go to a school that is pitching they can win the National championship if the AP voters decide to vote for them. They want Monday night last game of the year under the lights. Period.
do you think happend for the past 100 years? Recruits went to the school that best fit their needs (education, career, campus, national exposure). What is different?
All the young guns on the board need to understand that we had the "old way" for years and years. Guess what? the recruits still came to AA.
So I guess Bo was right after all. Recruits want to come to Michigan for a great education, an awesome college life and a chance for the B1G Championship.
I think Harvard and Yale might have thought that players would still come, because they were great academic AND athletic schools back in the day. But somewhere along the way the Ivy League took themselves out of going to bowl games, and now they are irrelevant in football. It could happen if the B1G and Pac-12 took themselves out of possibly participating in the National Championship Playoff.
an MNC game, they're also counting on some lucky scheduling, making it through a season reasonably unscathed in the conference, likely not getting surprised in the conference championship game (hello Sparty), and keeping various poll voters and/or computers and/or committee members happy enough to get named to #1-#4 to just make the mini-playoff, then winning another game, possibly at a hostile location, to get to those shining lights.
The crazy buckeyes around here calling into sportz radio can claim that with Urbz they're certainly going to pull down 3 MNC's in the next 5 years, but that isn't necessarily what the odds say, for any team. Especially without Tebow (or TP #itwasgodswork) on your side...
Back to your main point, though, doing what the WSJ suggests would put the 2 conferences in a separate division almost, for better or worse. There would be less reason to play the other guys (and less room on the schedule with the plans starting in the future to play a non-conf game between the 2).
Or else we have one more Super College Bowl game between the BCS winner and the Rose Bowl winner...and *that* will settle it.
And the AP will still continue to do whatever it wants and pick the best team in their poll's view.
Obviously you need some luck to win the national championship, but if you're that talented and well-coached you are bound to win one. You don't shoot for a rose bowl anymore. You shoot to win every game on the schedule and a national championship.
Playoff fans assume a national title is the goal everytime and that's why that group will never agree with non-playoff people. I certainly don't agree with your statement that everyone dreams of national titles. They're fake and stupid so long as conferences can make playing, recruiting, and roster rules. There's a reason NASCAR has such stringent rules on car modifications; modify the right parts and it's easy to win.
Why bother worrying about winning something when there isn't even a level playing field?
I don't know, but to me that just sounds like someone being pissed that they haven't won something so they try to convince people they never wanted to win in the first place.
I understand the field may not be level, but great teams still try to win it all and overcome whatever disadvantages they have (or people perceive they have). Having played sports at high levels my whole life I can honestly say I have never met an athlete whose goal wasn't to win championships. I just can't believe that would have changed.
It's easy to not want something when it's not an option.
I never said that either.
A more apt comparison to what I said would be buying a slightly less gaudy albeit same-priced car over a Ferrari because the less gaudy car is made by a company that participates in minimum wage, workplace safety and disability benefit standards and the Ferrari is made by a company that exiles workers to Bolivian when they lose a finger or screw parts in too slowly.
Sour grapes is the third-grade version of this argument.
What value do you place on your own integrity - what's winning if you don't do it right? I don't want to get too political but how would you feel if this was about competition among diamond mining corporations determining whether to buy conflict diamonds? Was the United States off the hook for Japanese internment camps because Germany already did it? I'll stop right there before I prove Godwins law haha.
Extreme cases but they prove my point since apparently I don't want a national title because we've never won one....
That's not what I said and is too basic of a lens to view this issue - and maybe that's the problem with this debate. People, in general, want playoffs and any nuanced argument is pushed aside for the mob to brand you as being for or against playoffs. Nor did I ever say the goal is not to win championships.
My point is this: it's not our job to lower our standards to compete with others that currently lack the integrity to police themselves on issues that create some sort of moral paradox and competitive inequality. It's easier to take advantage of poor teenage kids that dream of fame and big paydays and then toss them to the curb when they don't perform but I don't think there's any dignity in winning like that.
Sure, we can "overcome disadvantage" but then what the hell do we have rules for in the first place? If we can overcome this disadvantage, why don't we just set Big Ten football scholarships to 100 to offset oversigning? The SEC should be able to overcome that disadvantage, right?
I am intrigued by the idea of returning to the old way: B1G v. Pac12 (sic) champs in the Rose Bowl. Don't think it will happen; but I am surprised at how much I like the idea.
However, maybe we should ask Bo about overcoming the disadvantage of playing against a USC (or UCLA, or Cal, or even Stanford) team that essentially has home-field advantage?
for a national title, and a lot of recruits who want the opportunity to do that.
Unless we're going to splinter off and call ourselves the Academic Football Subdivision or something that will completely separate ourselves from the rest of college football...
This is an insane idea.
I love the Rose Bowl, too. And I look forward to seeing Michigan play in it.
I would rather have a playoff.
Never again. In a repeat scenario, I would love to see Woodson intercept Frost for the first, second, third and fourth times of his Nebraska career and carry Carr off as the undisputed national champions.
Agreed. In my mind, the current BCS system has already taken an emphasis off the Rose Bowl for schools in the B1G and Pac-100. The Rose Bowl is so "last year" if you ask me (which you didn't).
In fact, just assume the end of every single post of mine is, "What do you think about that, PGB?"
Edit: That's actually a little bit funny to think about now that I consider a few of my past comments on this site.
So what have we learned from the BCS?
- That the sports writers' and commentators' grand plan, insisting that there be a national football playoff and that they'd design a great system to do that, was a pipe dream;
- That the more that you try to wedge college football into an NFL-type playoff system, the more you lose from what made college football special;
- That practically every change that is made to try to determine a mythical national championship results in some unintended consequence that screws up something that we liked about college football;
- That people with ideas for national programs, and systems, and plans, should be kicked out of the room. People thought Title IX would be a nice idea; what we got was more pressure on football to serve as a cash cow to fund a dozen women's sports that nobody cares about, and the dismantling of mens baseball, wrestling, gymnastics and diving teams at dozens of universities.
To all proponents of college football playoffs: be careful what you wish for because you are liable to get it.
You should leave Title IX out of this, for historical reasons if not political ones.
1. Title IX's origins have nothing to do with college sports so lumping it in with the rest of the stuff you list obscures understanding of the political forces that led to its creation and the conditions under which it was necessary.
2. Taken as a whole, encompassing the vast world that exists beyond college sports, Title IX has, for the most part, helped fuel a revolution in American society that has created vast opportunities that were once systemically denied to half the population.
I think Title IX is a wonderful, perfect example of "unintended consequences" with imposing a grand plan on collegiate athletics.
When Title IX was implemented, nobody planned on it forcing schools to give up some historic mens' teams. Nobody expected it to distort things and place even more pressure on football teams to produce income for non-revenue teams. Nobody thought that perhaps entire physical education prgrams for all students would be cut back in order to preserve required funding for specialized and "equalized" women's teams.
I don't really care too much about arguing Title IX politics; the important thing is that no matter how you feel about the future of Title IX, the 30+ year history of the act has been fraught with unintended consequences, just as a playoff system for football will carry with it loads of unintended consequences.
until you started attacking Title IX. I get that it's a mixed bag; I get that it brought unwanted effectes. But it doesn't belong in a conversation about playoffs and bowls. Besides, you don't really want to renounce national systems and plans in general, at least I assume. . .
Funny story, the Big 10 and Pac 10 did this once. The system was called the "Bowl Allience," and it's goal was much the same as that of the BCS: Get the top 2 ranked teams to play each other at the end of the season.
Not wanting to disrupt the Rose Bowl, the Big 10 and Pac 10 opted out of this system. This of course culminated in 1997 when #1 ranked Michigan played Washington State in the Rose Bowl instead of taking on #2 Nebraska, who in turn played #3 Tennessee. This allowed the coaches to convince themselves that Nebraska was better, and handed them the championship. And thus, the BCS was born.
So you may not be happy with the system, but being a part of an imperfect system is still better than being left out.
That old system also resulted in a one-loss Florida team playing FSU for the NC in the Sugar Bowl, while undefeated and #2 ASU lost to OSU in the Rose Bowl without getting a chance to play FSU for the title in 1996. The prior Bowl Alliance also hosed PSU in 1994.
he'd already won 2 in the 90's and went 60-3 over his final five seasons---so he didn't exactly need a sympathy vote --if anything, it would be LC in need of that. But I know that's a popular opinion here of course.
I was surprised,though that any Michigan fan would suggest opting out of a NC playoff to stick with the Rose Bowl, because as other posters have noted, it was a contributing factor to the 1997 results. Likely NU and Michigan would have settled things on the field if the Big Ten was on board with everyone else.
It would have been a great game.
A national championship. And $. Two games bring in more cash than one.
Originally, the Bowls were exhibitions, played after the season was over. They didn't matter at all with regard to who won anything. By the time they were played, polls were already final. I agree that The Rose Bowl was once a wonderful institution. The entire bowl system, however, has become bloated, corrupt and a drain on college football. If you really want to keep traditions, we could change the rules to end the forward pass and make the players wear leather helmets. Even conceding your point about the Rose Bowl, a playoff will make cfb, as a whole, better. Sometimes it's best to scrap the best part of a system in order to make the entire system better. The B1G and Pac12 would be better served with a minimized Rose Bowl but a playoff that brings in greater respect, transparency and the contentment that comes with crowning a less-disputed champion.
I am not really concerned with a national championship
league title and a great exhibition game are enough for me
money grabs lead us down the slippery slope of playing in Dallas to start the season against a team from Alabama
A national championship may not be important to YOU, but it's important enough to many people to make it relevant to the argument. As far as a straw man, when an article is saying that we should opt out of change because it will weaken the best part of something that is traditional but deeply flawed by most accounts, pointing out that this is a bit ludite seems appropriate and far from creating a "straw man". My post may have been unintentionally harsh, but I don't think it creates a straw man. It deals with the argument on its own terms.
I don't disagree with your priorities--they are yours and therefore not for me to question. But they are a matter of personal taste, and I think for most people a playoff is preferable to the current bowl system.
argument over the soul of the game
chasing $ vs. creating student athletes
A college balances both, all the time.
So by your logic, Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore are all about chasing dollars and not about creating student athletes? Division 3 national championship participants play sixteen games.
I'm not a huge fan of a playoff, but you're framing this debate in the wrong manner here.
But I'll be cold and dead in the ground before you catch me wearing a GD zipper!
That's because you'll be wearing a YKK zipper
That is absolutely stupid. Yes, the Rose Bowl is special. But so is a playoff for a national championship. If one must decide between having the Rose Bowl and a chance at the national title, the national title has to be the choice.
Would you prefer michigan chase the SEC and have to deal with their shady dealings and recruiting methods?
Would rather UofM play against schools with student athletes
I agree.
Be fucking blunt. Larry Scott and Jim Delany need to say "We aren't participating in a national playoff until the SEC adopts oversigning and recruiting rules then enforces them. We will not sanction the winner of an outside playoff as national champion until then. People unaffiliated with the Pac-12 and Big Ten that have a problem with that and want to conduct a national playoff can speak to Mike Slive."
They onus shouldn't be on the Big Ten and Pac-12 to adopt the lowest common denominator to compete for this so-called National Championship.