Death To The BCS

I am not interested in a playoff unless it clearly would not jeapardize the cash flow presently enjoyed by The University of Texas.

I do not care about fair or about closure. Nor do I care who wins the NC if it is not Texas. All I care about is how Texas does on game day and the financial superiority of its sports programs especailly football.

Any Longhorn fan that feels otherwise really isn’t.

To paraphrase: If you and I disagree on something, YOU are not a Longhorn fan.

Maybe I’m missing the sarcasm something, but what do fans care how much Texas makes. Regardless, a playoff system in addition to a bowl system would = profit. There’s a whole lot of dead air in late November – early December to sandwich 2-3 weeks of playoff football before the bowl games. Then play the BCS championship at its normally scheduled time and place.

An 8-team tournament based on today’s rankings would give you:

Ohio State vs. Alabama
Oregon vs. Auburn
Boise State vs. Oklahoma
TCU vs. Nebraska

Half of those games (the middle two) would be blow-outs. But the other two would be fun.

The conference championship games are Dec 4, and the New Mexico Bowl is Dec 18. I know it feels like a long time, but we’re actually down to a single dead weekend (except for Army vs Navy) between conference championships and bowl games. To coexist, playoffs would have to run concurrently.

Maybe I’m missing the sarcasm something, but what do fans care how much Texas makes.

Under the current system, it’s more important to Aggies how much Texas makes.

Anything that gets us to a playoff would be awesome.The current system with it’s bias to larger conferences and preseason rankings is a sham. You only need look at March Madness to see that it doesn’t matter who is in the mix it will generate interest from everyone. People love underdogs and upsets and this would lead to plenty as well as compelling TV. Frankly I’m sick of shitty games in crappy cities that cost an arm and a leg to attend.

I’m always amazed when fans want their particular team to get this or that bowl because “we’ll get $3.1 million instead of $1.4 million”. It doesn’t fucking matter unless you think your band and athletic department should have a 6 day trip to California instead of a 4 day weekend in San Antonio. The actual revenue your school receive will not be that much different than Baylor’s cut. The less crappy bowls your conference goes to and the more BCS bowls you land equate to the biggest conference payouts per school.

Wrong triplehorn.
 We are generally Republicans over here so we care about balancing our own budget and applaud your success in capitalism. If we could get a decent coach maybe we can emulate you and eventually surpass you.

A playoff would deminish the regular season. Ticket sales and tv revenue would decrease. The fans are important, but fulfilling their sense of closure at season’s end is not a priority.

If you want closure above all else, become a fan of a FCS college. My preference is any system that maximizes interest in the regular season and maximizes revenue for Texas. Right now that is the FBS.

AL – You probably haven’t been reading other comments here closely enough over time to know what I am getting at.

I totally agree with this! But let’s not quit at just a playoff. There are several other things college football needs as badly:

1. Fans that wear spray-paint-and-aluminum-foil Road Warrior costumes

2. A jet-pack guy descending on the field to perform the coin flip

3. Salary cap

4. Halftime show extravaganzas, featuring Aerosmith lip-syncing a medley of their most commercially-accessible tunes while hundreds of disadvantaged youths, dressed in color-coordinated outfits, spell out aspirational slogans like “SACK HUNGER,” “TACKLE CANCER” and “FORCE TONSILLITIS TO PUNT” with coordinated placards

5. Four-team divisions, in which one of the four teams is guaranteed a playoff spot.

6. Maybe a little splash of pink on the uniforms, to show we care about your tits

7. Five words: AC/DC. Over. The. Loud. Speakers.

8. Three more words: Between. Every. Play.

9. Post-game awards based on Phil Simms’ mundane grooming habits

10. Would it hurt for the players to go on strike every once and a while?

Hey, now.

I promise to read the book (Joe Posnanski has a good review of it on SI for anyone interested) and constribute my thoughts. I will say that I generally don’t care for nonfiction that has so clearly chosen a side already, however. Promises to be a fair evaluation….

My general stance on this is that the grass is always greener. I hope the author’s have applied the same intellectual rigor to criticizing their own solutions. I suspect they haven’t.

“We are generally Republicans over here so we care about balancing our own budget and applaud your success in capitalism.”

Is that why your football program had to secretly borrow $16 million from the Aggie general fund? That’s how Reublicans balance their budget?

Wow. What Brickhorn said.

Here’s the funny thing. Everyone who matters knows the BCS isn’t on the level. No one cares. College football isn’t a special entity in and of itself. It’s a means to an end. The college presidents know this. They know football exposure is one of the best academic recruiting tools available. They know that a top-flight football program can single-handedly fund an entire athletic department. Most of all, they know that despite all the bitching and moaning about the BCS, people still watch en masse to see the latest BCS rankings release. They still watch the games in ever increasing numbers. When it stops being insanely profitable, it’ll stop.

Whistling’s approach is approximately that of the presidents of the schools profiting. “My job is not to make ‘the little guy’ more equal. My job is to make my university better.”

Boise and TCU would kick some ass in a playoff this year.
I think Oregon would win it all—probably against Boise or TCU.

“I will say that I generally don’t care for nonfiction that has so clearly chosen a side already, however.”

These are investigative journalists. They already have an understanding of the history of college football. It’s tough to offer a balanced view on an issue when one side only brings talking points, and does not publicize the real reasons why there’s no playoff.

There simply is no viable argument in favor of the current BCS system. Otherwise, you’d see it adopted by other sports. The closest system is pro boxing.

Essentially the BCS offers a two-team playoff (out of 120 teams with unbalanced schedules and D2 opponents), determined by a hodge podge of computer formulas (at least one factors in the previous season’s performance) and biased voters (who factor in pre-season rankings). The remaining teams play post-season exhibition games for consolation prizes. That sucks.

Brick – That was awesome.

And I’m just glad you didn’t add the word pendulous. You know what I’m talking about.

A playoff would be fun, for sure — and the 2010 Texas team is a good example of why a playoff system would actually ADD drama and excitement to the regular season, not detract from it.

Under the current system, Texas 2010 has no chance of winning the national title anymore. That dream is out the window. However if there was a playoff, you guys would have a fighting chance of climbing back into the picture and making the final 8 or 16 or whatever, and thereby get a chance at the title.

The argument that a playoff would remove excitement from regular season games isn’t quite right. It’s true that battles between Top 5 titans would lose some meaning, but dozens and dozens of other games would become more important and interesting along the way.

The argument that a playoff would remove excitement from regular season games isn’t quite right. It’s true that battles between Top 5 titans would lose some meaning, but dozens and dozens of other games would become more important and interesting along the way.

It’s difficult to resolve that question by logic alone, as both sides have good arguments for their respective views. Thus, resort to the empirical data is necessary. The only data we have on football playoffs comes from the various professional leagues and the lower divisions. Are NFL regular season games even half as dramatic as college games? Of course not. The same goes for non-D1 college games.

Of course, that’s not a fair comparison, since numerous differences besides the existence of a post-season playoff separate the NFL, D1 and non-D1. But, it’s the only empirical evidence we have of the effect of a playoff on the allure of the regular season.

Sailor -

And I’m just glad you didn’t add the word pendulous. You know what I’m talking about.

No idea. But it sounds like you have some Freudian issues to work out. Good luck with that.

Are NFL regular season games even half as dramatic as college games?

How are you measuring this?

I realize that I haven’t really had a problem with the BCS because my team hasn’t gotten screwed out of anything yet, or been on the outside looking in undeservedly. Now that we’re unranked, I think playoffs are a great idea. Next year, if we go to the NC, I will love the BCS. Don’t give a shit about anyone else.

“Are NFL regular season games even half as dramatic as college games? Of course not.”

Brick, I’m not sure this argument works. To generate a fair NFL/CFB comparison, we would first have to imagine the NFL with a 12 game season. Some incremental NFL drama, there.

Then, we would have to pluck comparable games out of the NFL and CFB season and speculate about which is more dramatic. Is Tampa Bay/Seattle week 4 more dramatic than Florida/LSU? No. But is Chicago/Green Bay in the second to last game of the season more dramatic than Cincinnati/Stanford? Yes. The scale slides wildly.

And more to the point, I think the “postseason drama vs. regular season drama” thing in college football is a false choice. When undefeated Michigan played undefeated Ohio State a few years ago, only a portion of the drama related to the national championship implications. Pride, rivalry, etc. was most of it. I can’t imagine the players or fans would have relaxed much before/during the game based on the fact that they would have made the tournament regardless.

That isn’t to say that some of the drama wouldn’t be sapped out of games like that with a playoff system — I fully recognize that it would be. But I’m saying that loss of drama would be more than made up for by the new drama would be injected into dozens (hundreds?) of otherwise random college games, where the fan bases would hold out hope of making the big dance in football.

As it is now, halfway through the CFB season the national championship dream is limited to what, 6 or 7 teams? That’s absurd.

I’m not saying that a playoff would give many more teams a realistic chance of winning the title. I’m saying that many more teams would think they would have a chance — that is, if they could just win their last few games, they could make the tourney, where anything could happen. And that seems more fun to me.

Brick, how is that empirical at all?

How are we defining “exciting?” As Farmer pointed out, you can cherry pick the games and get the results you want on either side of the argument. If you compare ALL of the games, perhaps on a TV ratings/per game televised rating you’d see that the NFL wins hands down. No one gives a damn about OSU vs Ohio outside of a small group.

Also, there is a huge difference between 12 teams out of 32 making it and 16 teams out of 120 making it. Even with 37% of the NFL teams making the play offs, it still isn’t completely decied going into week 16. There is no way that more than 2 or 3 teams would have things locked up after only 11 games.

Who’s fired up for the drama of Georgia-Vanderbilt this weekend?

Stanford-Cal?

Iowa-Michigan?

Florida-Miss St?

Arizona-Oregon State?

Because ain’t none of them winning the title this year.

If you gauge of excitement and drama for a college football game is its impact on one or both of its participants’ chances at the national title, I hope you have a lot of things to occupy your Saturdays after early October or so. Because 95% of the games no longer mean dick.

So in a playoff scenario, would the selection process for the 8th seed (or 16th or whatever last seed number you want to look at) be that much better than the current system of selecting #1 & 2?

It seems like you would run into the same problem with picking that last team (or more likely the last few) that you have now, but it would be even more difficult because there would be more teams that have relatively equivalent records/resumes.

NCAA basketball can avoid this by making the field so large that almost everyone deserving gets included in the tournament, but there is no way to have a football tournament that large (unless you consider the regular season the actual tournament).

The JoPo article Gene Claude was referring to is here:

http://joeposnanski.si.com/2010/10/12/death-to-the-bcs-a-eulogy/

Brick, how is that empirical at all?

It involves real world data. I actually prefer college football regular season games over NFL regular season games. My subjective preferences are the only empirical data that matter to me. Ergo, we should not institute a playoff.

If you guys gambled, none of this would be an issue. Temple/Bowling Green can be your Super Bowl this weekend if you wanted to be.

The argument that a playoff would turn college football into the NFL falls apart when you recognize that college basketball has a playoff and has not turned into the NBA.

The argument that a playoff would turn college football into the NFL falls apart when you recognize that college basketball has a playoff and has not turned into the NBA.

First of all, I believe that you overstate the argument. No one honestly believes that college football will “turn into the NFL.” I do believe that some people – mainly NFL fans – would like to see that happen. But it won’t.

Second, if you offered your basketball analogy to show that a playoff will not diminish the regular season, you picked probably the worst possible example. No one watches the college basketball regular season. I would argue that a big reason why is that losses don’t matter very much, so the outcome of regular season games is often irrelevant. I know that’s why I watch a large amount of the tourney, but almost no regular season games.

Third, the NCAA tournaments, NBA and proposed NCAA football tournaments are quite different. There’s something exciting about the single-elimination format, and the significance of upsets in the NCAA B-ball tourney. That is entirely lacking from the NBA, both in the post- and regular season. In NCAA football, the “meaningful upset” function is filled during the regular season. Really, would anyone care about the SC-Bama game if Bama was still in the driver’s seat for a spot in an 8-team playoff? SC played the role of Cinderella / spoiler. There is no such equivalent in an 8-team football playoff. And the #1 team being upset early is, I believe, more exciting than the #8 team suffering a playoff-hope-ending second loss late in the season.

Damn, that was a rambling mess of an argument. Fuck it. I’m leaving it as is. You get the point: NCAA football, as is, is the best sport on the planet. Stop trying to make it more like other sports that suck.

bizzle,

once you realize there are no arguments against a playoff, you’ll be more happy – or depressed. It makes you happy when you stop engaging in arguing absurd talking points from BCS proponents.
 
It makes you sad, when you realize that, not only do you not have control over the situation, but no teams have complete control over their destiny in college football. External forces dictate the two playoff contenders. You could win all the games. You could have the toughest SOS. It doesn’t matter, two teams could still edge past you based on style points or Lord knows what else.

Really, would anyone care about the SC-Bama game if Bama was still in the driver’s seat for a spot in an 8-team playoff?

If South Carolina beats Florida on 11/13 they will most likely go to the SEC Championship Game. So their win over ’Bama would indeed have an effect on any playoff scenario.

I have always understood your side of the argument, and have even noted in these discussions that a playoff makes it less likely the best team wins the national championship. But I still side with a playoff because at least then the scales are tipped more in favor of the players and coaches deciding the championship. Yes, you still have to pick teams for the playoff, but I don’t think anyone denies that leaving the 9th or 17th best team out is less likely to remove a team that “deserves” a shot at the championship than removing the 3rd best team.

I have always understood your side of the argument

If you understood it better, you’d agree with me.

But I still side with a playoff because at least then the scales are tipped more in favor of the players and coaches deciding the championship.

I see this argument, but honestly believe accuracy in champion-crowning is (a) only an illusion, and almost more so with a playoff, and (b) secondary to the other things that make college football unique and, thus, great.

You really prefer votes and computer programs to actual meaningful games? That’s what I’ve never understood — if you like college football, it shouldn’t bother you to see games matching the best teams. Even if you don’t consider point-in-time to be the way to decide a championship, you still get to see more of what you like.

I think your comparison of the value of the college basketball regular season to the tournament as it relates to college football is faulty in the sense that, as you note, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. You say that you watch the basketball tournament but not the regular season. You say that’s because the season is rendered less meaningful by the playoff. I infer that you just don’t care for college hoops like you do for college football.

I watch college hoops from November until April. The day after the championship game is a day of mourning around my house. If there were a college football playoff, I wouldn’t watch less college football. Besides, there’s no difference in the postseason impact of a football match of 7-3 A&M vs. 7-3 Tech, or 4-6 KU vs. 5-5 CU (although it’s conceivable under a 16-team scenario that the winner of the former would consider itself alive for the tournament). My point is that during college hoops season, the equivalent games don’t have any more value than the match-ups of football leftovers — you’re just more likely to not watch the hoops.

We need srr50 to weigh in on this, but my hunch is that the results won’t favor Brick’s argument:

Is the ratings difference greater between NFL and NBA regular season games or between NCAAFB and NCAABB regular season games? I know it’s tough to get apples to apples, it would have to be ESPN NFL games compared to TNT NBA games and Sunday NFL games against the occasional weekend NBA game on ABC or whatever station plays those now. And for college, just ESPN games against each other.

I would think that the difference between the pro leagues is at least as large if not larger than the difference between the two sports in college.

The fact that the rampant and egregious abuse of the funds from these bowl games is ready to be spilled from this book makes me laugh at bowl purists. You embrace a corrupt system. I’m a diehard Horns fan…but they and Alabama were not more deserving of a #1 vs #2 showdown over Cincy at season’s end. Regardless of what happened with Cincy and Florida…three BCS conferences, 3 undefeateds plus BSU and TCU. Arbitrarily anointing two programs to “play for it all” is ludicrous on every level. If they regular season meant so much, East USC would be ranked ahead of ’Bama right freaking now.

The current system is a completely indefensible joke. I have little doubt that it is also ridden with corruption at every level.

Heard DeLoss speak to the local Longhorn club 5 years or so ago on this very topic. Said he had served on an NCAA appointed committee to study a playoff. Said the current bowl system generates about $100 million and most playoff formats would generate several times that. Had a similar (though more diplomatically worded) explanation for why we stay with our current system: the heads of the BCS conferences and those running the bowl committees control the current revenue split and aren’t about to give up that control even for a shot at a big piece of a much larger pie.

Is the ratings difference greater between NFL and NBA regular season games or between NCAAFB and NCAABB regular season games? I know it’s tough to get apples to apples, it would have to be ESPN NFL games compared to TNT NBA games and Sunday NFL games against the occasional weekend NBA game on ABC or whatever station plays those now. And for college, just ESPN games against each other.

Huck it is impossible to get apples to apples, for a lot of reasons. For one the limited amount of games played in CFB and the NFL compared to CBB and the NBA. Inflation of the amount of games played has to dilute the attraction of any single game. But here are some numbers.

NFL regular season compared to NBA regular season:

ESPN-Monday Night Football
The Patriots-Dolphins game is the lowest-rated MNF game of the year so far — with a 9.0 rating and 13.9 million viewers. The Jets-Vikings game this week pulled the 6th largest viewing audience in cable history with 17.3 million viewers.

The NBA on TNT during the regular season averaged a 1.4 rating and 2.1 million viewers.

As far as the NFL on NBC, the Eagles-49ers game drew the smallest audience of the year so far on Sunday night – 10.3 rating and 16.9 million viewers. The NFL on NBC on Sunday nights is averaging a 13.1 rating and 21.1 million viewers this season.

The NBA on network prime time during the regular season is non-existent.

ESPN College Football Saturday Night
The Oregon State-TCU matchup earlier this year has a 2.3 rating and 3.6 million viewers.

ESPN College Basketball Saturday Night
On Feb. 27th the WWL had a great matchup — Tennessee upset Kentucky on ESPN — and telecast garnered a 1.4 rating and 2.4 million viewers.

I would think that the difference between the pro leagues is at least as large if not larger than the difference between the two sports in college.

The difference between the two pro leagues is off the chart.

The Titans win over the Cowboys drew a 12.7 rating and 20.7 million viewers — and is the lowest rated game in the Sunday late afternoon slot for CBS this year.

ON ABC a late season NBA contest between the Celtics and the Cavaliers pulled a 2.4 with 3.9 million viewers.

Complete and utter bullshit.

There is no valid reason for not taking the winners of the BCS Bowls and playing them off. Host the next round (s) on campus with a neutral site championship game, the tickets of which would be in such great demand that it wouldn’t hurt bowl attendance one bit. Or hell, play even the title game at the #1 ranked survivor’s home field, giving even more weight to the regular season.

For example, let Jerry Jones and another bowl buy into being the 5th and 6th BCS bowls, creating a 12-team playoff. Not too many teams, but 99% guaranteed to include the actual best team in the country. Conferences can keep their existing bowl tie-ins, fill the other 6 slots with wildcards determined by the BCS selection committee system. Let the bowls choose the matchups to protect their revenues. After New Years seed the 6 winners and have 3 host 6 and 4 host 5 on campus. Winners of that game play at 1 and 2. Thus no school has more than 1 extra game on campus (or perhaps 1 has two if the championship game is also on campus) so bowl attendance won’t be reduced. That format could start with just 8 teams or ultimately evolve to 16. Easy, simple, and a no-brainer.

The One Playoff Problem You Cannot Get Around: It Makes the NCAA All-Powerful

1: A playoff system instantly makes those playoffs the crown jewel of CFB television packages — and all that loot goes to the NCAA. NCAA negotiates the package and distributes the loot. At that point, you’ve got a rotation of 12 to 16 programs generating huge revenue for all member schools and NCAA bureaucracy.

2: Regular season contract values become subsidiary to the playoff deal’s value in several ways I won’t detail. They’re obvious. Even more power in the NCAA hands.

3: For example, what happens when the NCAA starts packaging post-seasons no one wants to buy with the CFB package? They’re already doing this with basketball. That’s even more hands grabbing at the pie.

“Death to the BCS” equals “NCAA Bureaucrats as Supreme Masters of the College Sports Universe.” That’s why I oppose this even if you could prove sufficient additional revenue to make life financially better for everyone involved.

And for the record, you can’t do that. No one knows where the law of diminishing returns kicks in here.

Final thought: Let’s pretend ESPN tells the presidents tomorrow it will pay $20 billion for 20 year package of an 8 game playoff format while extending current conference deals based on their average annual revenue, including rates of increase. through that same time period. Problem solved, right? Everyone wins, right?

You tell me how long and bitter the fight over that revenue would be.

We’re not getting a playoff until the conferences and schools that supply the viewers get all the money. Simple as that.

As it is now, halfway through the CFB season the national championship dream is limited to what, 6 or 7 teams? That’s absurd.

So????

Why is this absurd to you? The entire season in college football is like a playoff. Texas has been eliminated. Deal withit…it over. You still bleed orange..yadda yadda yadda. They don’t DESERVE to play for a championship this season under ANY circumstances. If you believe otherwise, put don’t he pipe, step away from the orange Kool Aid and get real. THIS is exactly what makes college football the greatest sport of all.

Do you REALLY want to see a world where the top ranked teams enter a 16-team playoff and in round one, 3-4 top players go out with injuries and some 3-loss team is crowned champion? Really?!??!! Now THAT’S ABSURD!

So as predicted, college basketball’s regular season ratings are closer to college football’s than the NBA’s regular season ratings are to the NFL’s.

There’s some more empirical evidence, Brick, and it doesn’t support the idea that the college basketball regular season is less exciting or interesting because it has a playoff whereas football doesn’t.

It just seems like football is more popular than basketball.

No one is stating the obvious, so I’ll do it.

College FB has the worst post season of any sport, in any country. It’s not even arguable. There are 30 crappy bowl games, 4 or 5 mildly interesting BCS games, and only one actual game that counts for anything. The CFB postseason is unwatchable and meaningless outside of the NCG and whatever bowl the ’Horns go to. Contrast that to the NFL, where every single playoff game is a great matchup with actual consequences and meaning.

@Dood: You think Boise vs OU is a blowout? Are you F’ing kidding? Unless you’re saying BSU would mop the floor with OU, which I think is a distinct possibility. There IS evidence that BSU can hang with the sooners, you know.

The FBS is the best football going anywhere in the world. The dweebs that need season ending closure on their terms should become divorce lawyers and stay away from FBS football.

There’s some more empirical evidence, Brick, and it doesn’t support the idea that the college basketball regular season is less exciting or interesting because it has a playoff whereas football doesn’t.

I’d probably also argue that the at-large arguments spawned by the tournament increase interest. If there were no tournament, there would be less reason to watch.

Huck -

So as predicted, college basketball’s regular season ratings are closer to college football’s than the NBA’s regular season ratings are to the NFL’s.

Here is the only empirical data that matters:

Brick’s interest in NFL regular season: 50%

Brick’s interest in NFL post-season: 70%

Brick’s interest in NBA regular season: -18 points

Brick’s interest in NBA post-season: 0 interest-units

Brick’s interest in NCAA BBall post-season: 8.0 on sports interest Richter scale

Brick’s interest in NCAA BBall regular season: 1/4 cup

Brick’s interest in NCAA football post-season: 999 on 1,004-point scale

Brick’s interest in NCAA football regular season: Infinity, irrespective of unit

See, your study has ignored the only perspective that matters: mine. And it has ignored a lot of other things, like the difference between the various leagues other than just the sport they play – things like number of games in a season, number of games on TV, competing sports on TV during the season, the nature of the playoff for each league (they all have different playoff formats, with college basketball and the NFL being the most similar pair).

Even though I place little to no value on your opinions, y’all seem to care about college football almost as much as I do. So I will ask you the following question:

In which sport are you most likely to enthusiastically watch regular season games that – and this is key – do not involve your chosen team or teams?

For me, the answer is “college football.” In fact, in almost no other sport do I watch regular season games that don’t involve my favorite team. I often will go weeks without watching an NFL game at all, despite my general preference for football.

But I almost never miss an autumn Saturday, and typically spend the whole damned day in front of the TV from 9 AM when Gameday starts through the end of the West Coast games at around midnight. Why? Because, on any given Saturday, a team’s entire season can be made or broken in one fucking game.

My interest in NCAA Football post-season exhibition games not involving UT = Friends Re-Runs

College football is awesome not because of the bowls, and surely not because commentators talk about style points. A playoff would make this sport go from goodness to greatness. This isn’t only about fans enjoyment, it’s about the integrity of the game.

2008 will repeat. Texas may have had the best team and suffered a bitter defeat on the road in the last seconds. Watched two teams they beat, one on a neutral site, play in the conference title game and watched OU lose by the exact margin they lost to Texas – both on neutral fields. That is unacceptable. And, that scenario plays out almost every year due to 120 teams playing unbalanced schedules, which makes it impossible to select two teams to be fairly selected to play in the two-team playoff.

“Why? Because, on any given Saturday, a team’s entire season can be made or broken in one fucking game”

This is B.S. You watch it because college football is a great product on the field. In a scenario where you must win your conference to clinch a playoff berth, you’ll see teams bust their ass. You make a lot of irrelevant comparisons to other sports with real postseason tournaments. What you don’t cite is Texas High School football. Each Friday night, rabid fans turn out all of the state. And, it’s exciting. And, if you lose to a rival, the fans place “For Sale” signs on the losing coaches’ house. Do playoffs lesson the experience for rabid high school fans?Hell no. And, if you think otherwise, you’ve never lived in Texas.

Save the circular logic, BCS talking points and your own misguided beliefs out of the equation. If any of what you said made sense, we’d see other leagues adobt a two-team playoff. It only makes sense from the financial perspective of the select few that benefit from the BCS.

I know I’m not the first person to say this, but jeez that Whistling guy is a moron.

College FB is the best football around we agree. But it is very imperfect and has several warts. People who want playoffs do so because it would make CFB BETTER.

This is B.S. You watch it because college football is a great product on the field.

Oh, you know what? You’re right! All these years, I’ve misinterpreted my own subjective views. Instead of asking “Why do I like this?” I should have been asking “Why does Eskimohorn think I like this?”

What you don’t cite is Texas High School football. Each Friday night, rabid fans turn out all of the state. And, it’s exciting.

Not to me which, as I have mentioned before, is all that matters. High school football’s regular season was much more exciting, to me, when fewer teams made the playoffs. And it would be even more exciting, to me, if the polls operated to pick match-ups for the state final, because a single loss would end a team’s season.

Now, the post-season wouldn’t be as fun in that scenario. But that’s not what this debate is about – it’s about whether a playoff-based post-season diminishes the excitement of the regular season.

All Hail Indy,

Which is why you keep the BCS and simply play out the games afterward to crown a Bowl Championship Series winner. The BCS has already talked about considering a +1 after the bowls, as have some of the BCS conferences. So clearly there are ways to create a de facto playoff using the BCS format without the NCAA mucking it up for the BCS conferences the way you suggest. If they can do a +1 and keep those conferences happy, they can also do a +3, +4, +5, or even a full +7 (16 teams playoff.)

Which is why I’ll be satisfied if the BCS simply goes to a +1. Once that wall is breached, evolving into a full 8 to 16 team BCS playoff is inevitable.

I love watching Brick Horn argue.

Common Sense:

Not going to happen. Just as there are clearly ways to balance the national budget, the reality remains that you’re never going to align successfully the various interests to achieve that scenario.

Brickhorn’s right. The fact that playoff proponents would prefer to watch 7 winner-take-all post-season games doesn’t change the fact that the rest of us would prefer to watch 7 (or more) winner-take-all regular season games. The words “post-season” do not magically confer some special status to your argument. At the end of the day, a post-season radically restructures CFB as we know it – for what, exactly?

No thanks.

Brick,
One question for you:

Would you be more interested in your horns this year if they still had a shot at the playoffs?

If the answer is “no”, you’re very much in the minority.
But, God Bless You.

I’ll be in the luxury booth “selecting” my teams for my bowl game if you want to get in touch and talk more about this, you know . . . . make sure we keep it like it is.

Come see us.

Tradition. Very important to keep that, you know. We’d hate to lose the luxury box invites, these great jackets and most importantly, our ties to the parade and seats on the floats.

Anguilla is like a dream.
If you never been to Anguilla, it is time to make that change.
Anguilla is a lot more then beaches and hotels and villas.
I love Anguilla.
I can not wait to get back to Anguilla.
I wish I cound stay in Anguilla all year.
Anguilla is a great place to vist and the worst place to leave.
Why can I not find more info on Anguilla.
I need a trip to Anguilla.