SEC Commissioner: "Changes Are Coming to the BCS"

Any change to the current BCS setup would be an improvement, and certainly going to a four team playoff or the plus one is better than nothing. I hope some of the other movers and shakers in college football are of the same mind as Slive. I’d like to see a real eight team playoff, but at least plus one would be a step in the right direction. By the way, firsties.

Can’t wait for final four of Alabama, LSU, Auburn & Florida.

Proposed change:

SEC championship game = National title game

SECSECSEC!

“Can’t wait for final four of Alabama, LSU, Auburn & Florida.”

Doubtless leading to a national outcry over the slight to UGA, noblest of mascots.

Plus 1 system is better than what we have now. I think the Coach’s Poll shouldn’t factor into the rankings either because bias will always taint those results. The NCAA and BCS are actually just a big joke…

Slive is a weasel so there has to be a catch in this somewhere…the SEC is about as dirty as it gets. Second only to the days of OU in the 70’s and 80’s/ SMU of the 80’s

that would certainly be a step in the right direction unless it were to head off what really should have happened about 60 or 70 years ago at the very least.

problem with a final four is going to be numbers 4 and 5. anyone who thinks we can guess the top four teams with any accuracy at all is pretty dopey. any thinking that we can corral the true best team within four guesses is just flat wrong more times than not. especially with our present system of protecting top dogs from extraconferential competition prior to the bowl games.

yes, i made that word up. sue me.

Screw the “Big 10”!!

Bring it on.

Dreaded “P” word -- …ussy?

Would love to see who the top 8 teams were in the BCS era (as per the final AP polls) ….. and then we can see how much debate 4 vs 5/6/7 would have !!!

Two important points:

1. Does Mike Slive have an unsettling resemblance to an aging Gilbert Gottfried?

2. Where did he get all the vintage encyclopedias and World Books? There must be a half dozen sets behind him.

final ap polls don’t mean much more that preseason ap polls. they are still just wags.

than

c’mon, coffee.

He does look like Gottfried!

Having read the article that was linked about how bowl games pretty much rob college athletic programs by requiring tickets be purchased and dictating how long the teams must be in the host city, my sentimental feelings about the bowl tradition have diminished to just about nothing. I would have loved to see either Stanford or OSU play LSU instead of a rematch with Alabama.

I’m ready for something newer than what we have. Hopefully something better, but you never know.

12 game season (Sept - Nov) - Perhaps go down to 11
conference championship games (Nov - Dec)
16 team playoff, 2 playoff rounds (home games for higher seeds)
bowls for eliminated teams (Dec-Jan)
Final Four (Semi-Final at BCS site - Jan)
Championship Game (at BCS site - Jan)
Profit

…which could be put into place in 2014.

Why do we have to play two more seasons before we clean this shit up?

Why do we have to play two more seasons before we clean this shit up?

Current contracts with the BCS and bowls run through January 2014.

I too am ready to drop the bowls, they’re just BAD. Having to wade through 35 games to get to 3 or 4 that are actually interesting is ridiculous. It’s an idea whose time has passed.

As to the “Slive is sleazy” meme, I don’t have a problem with a conference commissioner doing his best for his conference. If the Big XII had one of those 2-3 years ago, we might not be where we are.

I have said it before and I will say it again.

Screw the bowl system, there is nothing noble, honorable, or even nostalgic about them and we have been treated to shitty games no one has wanted to see for well over a decade.

Second, if they can have a play-off system and I mean a true play-off system in every other level of college football there is no functional reason they can’t at the top level.

It is all about power, greed, and control. Pretty much the story of man.

Below are the final (pre-bowl games) BCS Standings since 2000 courtesy of http://www.footballfoundation.org/nff/page/379/bowl-championship-series-archive. I apologize for the amount of space that it will take up, but those of you interested in crunching the numbers and looking at the potential controversies of 4 vs 5 and 8 vs 9 over the years will hopefully find this helpful.

2000
1 Oklahoma 3.3
2 Florida State 5.37
3 Miami (FL) 5.69
4 Washington 10.67
5 Virginia Tech 12.2
6 Oregon State 14.68
7 Florida 14.75
8 Nebraska 18.22
9 Kansas State 24.3
10 Oregon 24.32

2001
1 Miami 2.62
2 Nebraska 7.23
3 Colorado 7.28
4 Oregon 8.67
5 Florida 13.09
6 Tennessee 14.69
7 Texas 17.79
8 Illinois 19.31
9 Stanford 20.41
10 Maryland 21.29

2002
1 Miami 2.93
2 Ohio State 3.97
3 Georgia 8.37
4 Southern Cal 10.51
5 Iowa 10.79
6 Washington St. 16.14
7 Oklahoma 16.79
8 Kansas State 20.13
9 Notre Dame 20.93
10 Texas 21.08

2003
1 Oklahoma 5.11
2 Louisiana State 5.99
3 Southern Cal 6.15
4 Michigan 10.63
5 Ohio State 14.28
6 Texas 14.53
7 Florida State 17.93
8 Tennessee 19.64
9 Miami (FL) 19.79
10 Kansas State 22.73

2004
1 Southern Cal 0.977
2 Oklahoma 0.9681
3 Auburn 0.9331
4 Texas 0.8476
5 California 0.8347
6 Utah 0.8181
7 Georgia 0.6966
8 Virginia Tech 0.6712
9 Boise State 0.6564
10 Louisville 0.649

2005
1 Southern Cal 0.9868
2 Texas 0.9732
3 Penn State 0.9187
4 Ohio State 0.8559
5 Oregon 0.7989
6 Notre Dame 0.7329
7 Georgia 0.7182
8 Miami (Fla.) 0.7037
9 Auburn 0.6747
10 Virginia Tech 0.6715

2006
1 Ohio State 0.9999
2 Florida 0.9445
3 Michigan 0.9344
4 LSU 0.8326
5 Southern Cal 0.7953
6 Louisville 0.7944
7 Wisconsin 0.748
8 Boise State 0.7099
9 Auburn 0.6486
10 Oklahoma 0.6297

2007
1 Ohio State 0.9588
2 LSU 0.9394
3 Virginia Tech 0.8703
4 Oklahoma 0.8572
5 Georgia 0.8392
6 Missouri 0.7763
7 USC 0.7637
8 Kansas 0.7589
9 West Virginia 0.6628
10 Hawaii 0.6468

2008
1 Oklahoma 0.9757
2 Florida 0.9479
3 Texas 0.9298
4 Alabama 0.8443
5 So. California 0.8208
6 Utah 0.7846
7 Texas Tech 0.784
8 Penn State 0.7387
9 Boise State 0.698
10 Ohio State 0.6354

2009
1 Alabama 0.9978
2 Texas 0.9433
3 Cincinnati 0.8878
4 TCU 0.8836
5 Florida 0.8637
6 Boise State 0.8106
7 Oregon 0.7568
8 Ohio State 0.6568
9 Georgia Tech 0.6471
10 Iowa 0.618

2010
1 Auburn 0.9866
2 Oregon 0.972
3 TCU 0.9102
4 Stanford 0.8365
5 Wisconsin 0.8041
6 Ohio State 0.766
7 Oklahoma 0.7297
8 Arkansas 0.7274
9 Michigan State 0.6922
10 Boise State 0.6137

2011
1 LSU 1.0
2 Alabama 0.9419
3 Oklahoma State 0.9333
4 Stanford 0.8476
5 Oregon 0.7901
6 Arkansas 0.7687
7 Boise State 0.7408
8 Kansas State 0.6827
9 South Carolina 0.6553
10 Wisconsin 0.6374

Any playoff involving rankings is a f*cking joke. Get rid of opinionated and biased rankings, put everyone in a conference and if you can’t win the conference or be runnerup then you don’t belong in damn playoff.

It is that simple.

Letting sportswriters and corrupt coaches deciding who is the best is absolutely ridiculous.

Arguments that the 4-5 split or 8-9 split will be just as controversial just don’t hold much water for me, simply because a playoff just seems more naturally fair. Two years ago I thought New England had a legitimate gripe about not making the playoffs at 11-5, but OVERALL, the system is viewed fairly. Maybe CFB is inherently different, but I feel like if we can get over the threshold of playoff viability to begin with, you can always tinker with the formula. BCS does it every year.

Nick,

The controversy for me surrounds exactly what Willow wrote, who is going to determine the manner in which teams are selected for the play-offs.

I think we are eventually headed for the super-conference arrangement similar to the NFL where we will have conference champions automatically getting in and then some system to determine the “wild” card teams.

Let the champions and highest seeds play at home, and then play the title game at a neutral site.

The biggest losers are the power conferences, the bowl committees, and ESPN but screw them. Does anyone really believe going to bowl games keep coaches jobs anymore? They sure as hell don’t bring money into the schools, and once again the ratings have proven that most games really don’t have the interest of the general public.

Cotton needs to be included in any playoff. It should have the ability to host a championship as well. Prob not going to happen if SEC commissioner is running things.

The playoff games should be setup at regional neutral sites just like the NCAA does the basketball rounds….but for single games. You could even still use some of the traditional bowls like the Sun Bowl and Independence bowl as early first round games for teams in those regions and then have the later round games using the Rose, Cotton, Sugar, Orange Bowls, Fiesta, etc. The Championship should be rotated between the Rose, Cotton Sugar and Orange Bowls.

Those of you who think that the power conferences get screwed or should have more participation in the playoff need to remember that if you are in one of these conferences, you have more money and more resources to field a better team and should beat most of the teams in non power conferences in the early rounds so you still shouldn’t participate in the playoff unless you can win or be runner up in those power conferences. Is a participant from one of the non-power conferences going to win it 2 out of 10 seasons? Sure, just like they do in the basketball tournament and this is good as those teams with lower revenue athletic departments will get rewarded with a huge payoff that they never would get from attending even five bowls.

Key is that those same schools from the non-power conferences and the payoffs they would get from the early round exits the other eight or so years. Most of the Non BCS bowls pay out little to nothing and these playoff game payouts would be at least 5 times what any lower tier bowl would pay out.

Again Any playoff involving rankings is a f*cking joke. Get rid of opinionated and biased rankings, put everyone in a conference and if you can’t win the conference or be runnerup then you don’t belong in damn playoff.

It is that simple.

Letting sportswriters and corrupt coaches deciding who is the best is absolutely ridiculous.

You could do what the D-1AA does and have the higher seed host until you get to the championship game, which is at a predesignated site. My GF was raised in Montana and I watched a lot of great D-1AA playoff ball on ESPN3 during December.

But I guess that wouldn’t generate the metric fuckton of cash that everyone seems to need to do anything in CFB these days.

I would have the later round FBS Div 1 and FCS Div 1AA games on the same day at the regional neutral same sites with the FCS being the opener so that the smaller schools could get in on the huge amount of television contract revenue that the big school playoff would generate.

No more than 12 teams. No less than 6. I say 8. no automatic bids.

Bowls become playoffs. So Cotton, Holiday, Gator, whatever are first round games. Rose and Sugar are semis. that kind of model.

They need to keep the small bowls that we all complain about though. They’ve done a whole lot for parity in college football and they mean a lot to small programs.

8 Conference Champions and 8 Runner Ups for 16 team playoff.

Maximum of 4 games taking 5 weeks. Real simple.

Small bowls for early round games and larger more traditional bowls for later round games.

I concur w/ Willow on 99% of his argument. Since we technically have 5 BCS games (Sugar, Rose, Fiesta, Orange, Championship), make those your finals, semi’s, and 2 of your quarter’s. Add the Cotton and Gator/Citrus/other larger new years bowl to complete the quarter final round and call it done.

Take the winner of the Big Six conferences and 2 “at large schools” as your 8 teams. The other 56 schools that normally would’ve qualified for a bowl can still play in the other 28 bowl games to “reward student athletes” for having a successful season.

If you wanna take it a step further and go to 16 teams, play those first round games at the higher seed. You could do away with conference championships and take the top 2 from the big six and four at large teams. The cash that these 7 or 15 games would generate would be amazing because of the TV deal and gate receipts.

Plus 1 has serious drawbacks for years when there’s a team that’s demonstratively superior and has beaten all comers (eg LSU this year) or 2005.

 The thought of Texas having to give the Buckeyes another shot in 2005-6 after the epic Rose Bowl is kind of sickening, not in the least becuase there’s a decent chance the Buckeyes could win (that was a very, very, very good team).

Conversely, giving the Longhorns a shot at Florida in 2008-9 sounds like a dandy idea.

I guess I’m in the minority in that I love the bowl season and watch as many games as I can. Are they all good? No, but it’s, like, college football man and I can’t get enough of it.

I like the plus 1, 4 team playoff idea in general, but don’t want anything beyond that. This year should LSU really have to win 3 (8 team playoff) or 2 (4 team, plus 1 system) games to be the national champion? Should Texas have had to in 2005? Hell this year you could argue LSU shouldn’t even have to play the 1 (playoff) game.

IMO, the absolutely best idea would be to have the plus 1 system only in years when it is needed to sort out #2. IMO it wasn’t needed in 2005 or 2009. If Penn State or Ohio State had gone on to win the plus 1 MNC game in 2005, it would have cheapened it. Obviously it was needed in 2008.

Damn, Arriste said basically the same thing before I hit submit.

Davey, I agree with you (and Willow) 100% on hoping that polling isn’t how members get selected when this comes to pass. But short of automatic bids and some concrete formula for wildcards, I have NO idea how to make it work. There are too many teams and they play each other too seldom for it to ever really work on an NFL style system. (Unless you’re willing to go to a 16 or more team playoff, and that really DOES bring in the objections of the season getting too long, etc).

To me, 8 works as a good starting point. I’m not picky on format so much, in that I don’t care if you create new games, or use the existing bowls as sites. I’d probably advocate using the BCS Bowls on a rotating basis as your quarters/semis, with other sites selected for Finals, but that’s not a deal breaker to me. That would allow you to leave the existing bowl system in place for non-qualifying teams, and though it might further marginalize the bowls, I don’t know how they could get much more marginalized than they were the past few years.

I really don’t care if you scrap the minor bowls altogether. You could compensate by allowing teams with 6 wins or more to have extra practices, either at the end of the season, or as part of Spring. And you can do some kind of revenue distribution from the playoff games to teams that would have otherwise “qualified” for a bowl. My hunch is that this would make SO much money, that there would be very few complaints.

they play each other too seldom

yes. that is the single biggest problem for assessing one team’s strength against another and one conference’s strength against another in the way we do this. we have a perfectly dopey system.

test

TexasWright, those final BCS standings perfectly illustrate UT’s problem. 8 out of the last 12 years, OU has finished above UT in the standings. That is not due to “luck” or bad conference rules as some here would argue. It rests squarely on Mack Brown’s inability to beat Bob Stoops in mid-October. This illustrates perfectly the fallacy of the illustrious 10-win (win nothing) season.

…so we had better find a HC who can beat BS, or no amount of playoff scenarios is going to help us.

Screw the bowl system, there is nothing noble, honorable, or even nostalgic about them and we have been treated to shitty games no one has wanted to see for well over a decade.

I agree with this in theory, but not in practice. I look at the bowl matchups and scoff, but then I find myself getting excited about them. Seriously, I watched so many bowl games this year… and not just parts of bowl games. There were a good dozen that I didn’t miss a snap. I DVR’d Wyoming/Temple and watched it in its entirey. ULaLa/SDSU - still have it on my DVR. So, while I’d love to see some sort of playoff - and would love a Final Four - I don’t think I can quit the bowl season. I’ve come to realize there can never be too much college football.

Nick,

Why is the season not too long for every other level of college football?

Why is the season not too long for D-III that have no athletic scholarships and kids are basically going there for academics?

That argument doesn’t hold water and it is just another in the long line of lies that get thrown out by the NCAA and College Presidents.

Fuck the bowls. They enrich a very few people under the guise of doing good for the communities they are located in yet keep the bulk of the revenues they are paid.

Nothing says tradition like people with nothing at stake and do nothing to generate the product the gets their asses paid a boat load of money.

Smith,

Life has much, much more to offer than shitty games played in stadiums 30% full, with names that change faster than celebrity marriages.

Shocker Zzzzzzzz found another time to Mack bash!

Bowls generate advertising money so they are going nowhere.

Life has much, much more to offer than shitty games played in stadiums 30% full, with names that change faster than celebrity marriages.

And I partake in some of the other things life has to offer. But, college football man. I don’t know. You know you have it bad when that Tuesday in mid to late November comes and goes and you didn’t get any MACtion and you just feel empty inside. I want to see the Rockets or Frank Solich stalking a sideline, dammit. Give me 66-63!

Of course, part of me is glad when football season is over. It’s liberating.

Davey, I’m not saying I BUY the argument, I agree with you totally that it’s crap. But part of the process of getting this done means systematically overcoming the objections raised. But like I said, I’m not married to one idea. If you feel like you need to start with 16, you’ve got my support. 8 just feels more natural to ME, but that’s me.

It seems like if you could demonstrate to every conference that a playoff format spells more money for everyone than the current system, there wouldn’t be any real obstacles. After all, this IS about money, money, and mo’ money. Or perhaps showing that no one could make less than they might in the current setup, with the potential to make much more than the best case scenario today.

Longhorn87,

Bowls fill air time for ESPN and that is about it.

You see the same loop of commercials and we are at a point we switch the channels. The entire system is corrupt and the only way to get close to anything worth the college game itself is flush the bowls, create a true play-off system, and the college presidents and all else admit they truly are the money whores that they deny being.

Objections are real challenges that need to be addressed.

Excuses are the crap we are given such as the Bowl System, educational values, etc…..

They two are not the same and the only one that buys that shit are a few dissuaded college presidents.

“Life has much, much more to offer than shitty games played in stadiums 30% full, with names that change faster than celebrity marriages.”

It probably has more to offer than posting on a college football blog, but somehow we find the time.

I could give a shit what the bowls promise to local communities, why they exist, who they make rich, etc. I just like watching them.

I will never understand how a true fan of college football can argue for less games at the end of the season.

“Any playoff involving rankings is a f*cking joke. Get rid of opinionated and biased rankings, put everyone in a conference and if you can’t win the conference or be runnerup then you don’t belong in damn playoff.”

Agree on the first point, but disagree to the 2nd. Since there are unbalanced schedules and such a variation in OOC and in-conference SOS, excluding a wildcard option is anti-competitive. If a team has a brutal schedule and has to play road games against top opponents, they’ll be at a competitive disadvantage simply by the luck of the draw. For that reason, you’ll find very few team sports who do not incorporate some sort of wildcard system.

If you are the SEC or the Big 12 and you truly feel the best football is played in your conference you push for a playoff system. If the final four is really Alabama, Auburn, LSU and Florida because they beat everyone else then well that’s how it goes.

If I am the ACC or the Big 10 I am terrified of this.

I used to just dumbly go along with the media chant about how the bowl games are noble (bordering on sacred) and the system should be preserved and all that junk. Then I decided to use my own brain, and came away thinking more like Davey. So at the end of the year, some arbitrary committee is going to assign your team an arbitrary game against an arbitrary, not necessarily even comparable (Boise State says hi) team at an arbitrary location, so that someone else can make money off of your football team. Oh and if you’re lucky, they might throw a little bit of cash your way. Cool? Cool. Does that sound like a system that needs to be protected and preserved?! I don’t care if it’s been around for a hundred years or a thousand. Let the Ags worry about protecting arcane, asinine traditions. This is not a system that needs to be protected. This is a useless, broken system, and I’m not talking about the BCS even yet. The bowl system as a whole.

So Texas is 7-5 this season, and 1-0 in the postseason. What does that mean? The Ags are 6-6 this year, and 1-0 in the postseason. What does that mean? Oklahoma State is 11-1 this year, and 1-0 in the postseason. What the hell does that mean!?! No other sport in the world has a system anything like the CFB bowl system. And uniqueness here is not a good thing. There’s a reason nobody else does it that way. A postseason means something consistent in every other sport at every level in the world (sure go dig up some obscure sport in Namibia to disprove that, doesn’t change the point). The CBF “postseason”? Not so much. Heck, it’s closer to the fun-fair-positive model. Everybody gets a bowl game!!!! Yay…

And the argument that a playoff is not fair to the student-athletes? Every level of football other than D1-A has a playoff already. These kids played in playoffs in high school. With luck they’ll play in playoffs in the NFL. With less luck, they’ll play in playoffs at a D1-AA, D2, or D3 school. But God forbid we make student-athletes at the D1-A level play in a playoff!! Give me a break.

All that to say I’m wildly in support of an 8, 12, or 16 team playoff where the first round or two are at the higher seed’s home field. More fan excitement and buy-in. More money into the hands of the schools (not saying they’re necessarily much cleaner) than dirty bowl “non-profit” bowl committees. More fairness, which is good to strive for. Semis and finals can rotate among the top tier of current bowls: Rose, Cotton, Orange, Sugar, whatever. This seems like a far superior system. I doubt we’ll ever see it in action, but here’s to hoping.

I like 16 team playoff with 11 auto qualifiers (all the conferences, and 5 at larges) first round played at home teams stadium, teams ranked by BCS works for me (it’s as good as any criteria imo).

That way everyone gets to enter the year saying they have a chance to win the title, LSU and the rest of the top 5 has a virtual bye when they finish at the top of the standings, and everyone has an incentive to play hard all regular season (you telling me you don’t want to work to get a home game with Arkansas St vs a roadie against Boise as a for example). This gurantees that basically the entire top 10 get in the field (Conference winners and 5 wildcards do this) while allowing everyone there shot. Also, I don’t see how anyone can complain about the 11th best team not getting in- I doubt anyone would care.

All the other bowls like Alamo, Holiday, Independence continue as consolation for non conference champs and non- wild cards (most of america).

I’m actually sold on the “death to the BCS” model where a selection committee seeds a tournament comprised of the bowl subdivision conference champions and enough at large teams to fill out a 16 team bracket.

That’s the best system I’ve heard for putting the strongest teams around the nation on the field where we can determine a champion based on play. If the Sun belt or Mountain west never win any games we can drop their conferences and add at large teams. Short of 4 super conferences that insure every saturday sees real competition this guarantees the best games.

Ah, like Wulaw Horn proposes.

I would be against allowing all 11 conferences get into the playoffs if it were only 16 teams but again those are just details to be argued.

The bottom line is a playoff is the only thing that makes any sort of sense whatsoever.

One of the things I love about CFB is that the regular season really, really does matter (unless you are MEGA AWESOME SEC team or an inadvertent ridiculous tiebreak beneficiary…etc) in terms of defining a champion.

 I don’t like sports that have a huge-mongous sample size to determine who’s better, than microscopically shrink it down to a few games to make room for outliers (MLB I’m looking at you…) which just increases the role of randomness in the ultimate selection of a champion.

 if we’re just tabula rasa-ing this bitch, I’d actually ditch the playoffs/bowls altogether and design some sort of divisional structure based on 20 or so 5 team divisions, with game, broken up into 3-4 game mini round robin seasons, with divisions for promotion, relegation, etc. occurring in between each mini-season each year. Then you could have a separate play-off (or playoffs) if you wanted to as well. WOuld be difficult to administer given the travel, especially, but would be awesome to see promotion, relegatin etc.

8 teams is too many IMO, and a 16 team playoff is simply ridiculous. In a 16 team playoff, the following teams would have just as much of a chance of playing in the final MNC game as LSU, Alabama, Ok. State and Oregon:

Georgia
Clemson
OU
Michigan
Baylor
VT
Wisconsin

4 of those teams had 3 losses going into the bowls. None of those teams listed above has any business getting a shot at the MNC after the season they put together.

I hate auto-qualifiers in basketball, and that’s a 64 team gig. Any theoretical configuration which puts Clemson 2011 into a play-off system is more screwed up than anything we have now.

Winning a conference championship confers zero legitimacy as a sole criteria, IMO. And honestly, it screws Texas more than anyone, if you assume the current system or a slight expansion of it prefers immensely recognizable name brands with a huge, affluent fan base.

I do not care about Cincinnati, Boise State, Maryland, Clemson or TCU. I do not want to watch them run through a Swiss Cheese Auto-League and get drilled in an opening roundor pull of an upset of a team I do want to see play. I do not want to see a star that I DO want to see play injured in an opening round in the name of Fairness. Screw fairness. The system right now is built for Texas, USC, Ohio State, and 2 SEC flavors of the month. Opening it up to everyone else is worse than “revenue sharing,” and we all know where we stand on that one.

Get a grip, people. This is the path that lead to CBB’s current business model, which, last I checked, generated one weekend of compelling TV a year, 380 D-1 programs, and a recruiting landscape which makes SEC football look squeaky clean.

Rant concluded. Be careful what you wish for.

G.O.F.

The one week of compelling TV per year is true, but in my opinion much more related to the number of games played than anything else. MLB suffers from the same problem. If CBB started playing 12 games a year instead of 30-some-odd, I think you would find each game more compelling, as each would have a much larger impact on your team’s postseason prospects. As the number of teams in the playoff grows, that does make the regular season less meaningful though. So yeah, when the NCAA begins to discuss a 64 or 96 team CFB playoff, I’ll get worried. 12 though? I’m all for it.

And I’m curious how you think a playoff vs. bowl system leads to a more muddied recruiting landscape. I won’t argue that CBB isn’t that bad. It is. But I’m curious how you blame that on the NCAA tournament.

how about expanding the top 25 to the top 50 and using this in a points based system to determine who the strongest conferences are? fine i get that the disparity in the rankings is apparent and blatant. however, for say, top 3 teams, you get 50 points, for 4-10 you get 45 points, 10-17/18 you get 35 points, 18/19-25 you get 25 points, 26-35 you get 20 points, 36-50 you get 10 points. these points are added up and the strongest conferences get their champion selected as AQ teams. then the remaining slots can be picked either by runner up or best record or some shit. idk. but ranking the conferences as a whole would seem to give a better idea of what teams deserve to play in a playoff or plus-1 system instead of just mindfucking the whole thing.

obviously, a year like this one the big xii-ii-ii+ii and the secsecsec are going to be top dogs. but what about the other conferences that might have a strong showing and have enough teams in the top 50 to get a slot in the new mythical system?

i think something like this would create a lot more parity for a playoff and would be fluid from year to year so it wouldnt always be the current AQ conferences plus 1 or 2 “at-large bids”

whatsayou BC?

Difficult to determine who I loathe most, Slive or Bill Byrne.

TD/DW (too dumb/didn’t watch)

But I approve of the screen cap on the link. In it, Slive looks like the love child of Mr. Rogers and Gilbert Godfrey.

G.O.F. you are making a lot of assumptions about the smaller schools and how competitive they would be in a playoff format. Isn’t the criticism of Boise that they don’t play a consistently hard schedule? But then you don’t want the Power schools to have to dispatch them en route to a title? If Boise St. won a title in the 16 team format could you really say it was undeserved?
Anyways, I’m not interested in the system that makes it easiest for Texas to win championships, I’m interested in the system that puts the best College Football product out there for me to consume. Then, when texas wins it will be all the sweeter.

Anyways, it would it be easier for Texas to gain entry into a 16 team playoff than it is currently for us to reach the National Championship.

If Boise lost a couple games, then got hot and won out in a tourney, I’d say it was undeserved.

How about if a three loss OU team got in and beat an undefeated LSU? Would you think they deserved it? It would render the regular season much less meaningful. There is a reason more people live and die by college football over basketball despite the exciting end of season tourney.

Every other league in probably every sport has a playoff. In football it goes from Pop Warner to the NFL. Ridiculous that D1 doesn’t. 12 teams, top 4 get byes, and major bowls get the playoffs. Anyone else who wants to have a bowl game and have the other teams play in them, can, just as they do now, kind of like the NIT. Try to convince me that that shit won’t produce a large pile of cash.

If Boise lost a couple games, then got hot and won out in a tourney, I’d say it was undeserved.

So in your eyes the 2007 N.Y. Giants are undeserving of the NFL Championship?

Fuck a committee or rankings—-nothing but opinions.

If you win your conference or were a runner up—-it was decided ON THE FIELD.

That is the only way………anything else is the same bullshit we have now.

Bowl System = Socialism
Playoff = Capitalism

A playoff would make ten times plus the $$$ for everyone involved than the current bowl system and it isn’t even close.

There is a reason more people live and die by college football over basketball despite the exciting end of season tourney.

And it has nothing to do with the postseason format. This is honestly one of the dumber things I’ve seen on here in a while. Is this the same reason college football has more fans than the NFL? Oh wait… shit. Does this also explain the disparity between NFL and NBA viewership? Cause you know, last time I checked, the NFL has a playoff, and yet is a much bigger deal than the NBA. Maybe Americans on average are just more interested in football than basketball, making your comparison meaningless.

The NFL is a restricted league. So is the NBA. And MLB. They have a certain number of franchises that they think can sustain the on-air/in-stadium product. And still they manage to create homogenized crap for the most part, because its all about making the play-offs, which means taking no risks, for the most part, and hoping the blame falls on the QB, power forward, or middle reliever.

The NCAA Tournament, on the other hand, directly spawned 360 D-1 basketball programs with dreams of a Cinderella moment in the sun. You cannot argue that. And 360 D-1 basketball programs has created a watered down, overexposed product that no one really cares about 51 weeks of the year. It used to be a good beer. Now it’s bottled water.

Competitive issues: Why did the basketball coaches at USC and Ohio State directly give money to players or player-reps? Simple — they cannot separate themselves from a gaggle of San Diego States the their own backyard without a superstar or two, and coaches who cannot separate a BCS-school CBB program get fired.

Now, for the finale - check out the number of satellite schools building P-12 size football stadiums. UNC-Charlotte. Georgia-freaking-Southern. I really don’t see how an explosion of schools like South Florida, UCF, Western Michigan, et al makes a superior college football product. It didn’t in basketball. “Oh, it’s different.” No, it’s really not, and a 16 team play-off with auto-qualifiers erases whatever difference remains.

I do not want fairness, and I do not want CFB to follow in the footsteps of CBB in any shape, fashion or form. CFB has a clear-cut hierarchy right now, and Texas is on the top rung. Do not take that for granted and assume that remains true no matter what the competitive configuration.

I am not against changes. I just don’t think people think through all of the consequences.

If you win your conference or were a runner up—it was decided ON THE FIELD.

And you would break the 2008 B12 South tie… how, exactly?

Horncasting,

When I was in college and had no money I thought Pancho’s was good place to heat. Then I realized that for just a little more money you could actually get things like taste and no nausea after eating which were far better than a large amount of shitty food.

I am old enough and seen enough college games to know that college football is not the same as sex. There is actually bad football and we get to see a shit load of bad games each year at the end of the season when ESPN decides to string out 30 horrific games over a month and a half.

If that makes me a college football snob so be it.

Arri,

The problem is that the BCS does not make the regular season meaning because it is only set up for one game and unfortunately we have run into cases where we have more than two teams that could claim to be in that game.

G.O.F.

So you are saying that the cheating in college basketball is a byproduct of the tournament?

If that is your opinion how do you explain the scandal at Seattle University when the NIT was the biggest year end tournament?

How do you explain the cheating scandal at West Point back when Army was a national power in football?

Sorry, but I’ve never bought the argument that BCS or bowls in general make the CFB regular season more meaningful. Maybe for one team, but I’ve watched too many Texas teams get beat in October and not have anything else to play for. Remember how lackluster it was to get into the 2008 Fiesta Bowl? We thought, rightly so, that we deserved a chance for it all. No dice, said the BCS. I say screw that. College football is special week in and week out because it’s FREAKIN’ COLLEGE FOOTBALL!

And when only two teams get a shot (and judging by this year, regular season only matters for one of them), sorry, it’s a crap deal.

Nor do I get the logic that a small tourney will make CFB as watered down as basketball. Even watered down, March Madness is pure gold, and you don’t even need to be a basketball fan to enjoy it! A similar structure for football in Dec/Jan for football would be platinum.

The NCAA basketball tournament was a small tournament, and you had to win your conference. Sound familiar?

I am not saying a small tournament would make CFB as watered down as basketball. I said that the NCAA basketball tournament had evolved into the sole entertainment value of that sport. The sheer number of schools playing D-1 basketball waters down the sport. That’s not a direct result of March Madness, but MM was a key contributing factor that convinced so many schools to jump into D-1 waters.

So the question becomes this: can we keep the good parts of a playoff for CFB while learning from the lessons of CBB? I’ve been vocal here that a playoff system will happen, but that it won’t happen until the “market” defines an upper division (72 schools, +/-) and closes its doors - which is in my opinion the best scenario for CFB in the long run. I have no issue with that or any patience with “little guy” arguments. Little guys need to play in the little guy divisions. I have a serious issue with creating the same sort of market incentive for every university in America to set its sights on an FBS program - the exact same kind of progression we’ve seen in CBB over the past three decades. It’s the exact thing we’re seeing in these “satellite” schools which are rapidly surpassing the state flagships in campus enrollments, gobbling up partial qualifiers, and coalescing into conferences which want equal footing with Texas, OSU and USC. You think AM, Missouri and Nebraska got pissy over revenue distribution? Imagine a critical mass of Central Floridas with enough votes to dictate terms to an NCAA-administered playoff system and enough intelligence to “grow” the playoff system (common financial pot) until it swamps the value of SEC and B12 regular season programming (exclusive financial pot).

March Madness as currently constituted is NOT pure gold. It’s become boring - the same story lines every year with new masks on the stock characters. Just like the NFL, MLB, and NBA - we just don’t care until they reach the finals. Or at least I don’t. I can’t remember the last first round anything I watched. CFB’s system is in many ways a joke, but I have no issue with going straight to the Finals on its own merits while everyone else gets a bowl game. Is it a ludicrous system? Sure it is. But while Texans/Bengals and Broncos/Steelers might not be ludicrous, they’re definitely tedious. Don’t tell me it’s not a trade-off.

I would love to have seen a Plus 1 format this year - but Oregon and Wisconsin would have been the rallying cry to go to 8. Both had substantial arguments over Stanford, especially Oregon. And once we’re to 8, we’re into a pissing match over the relative merits of Arkansas versus conference champions WVU and Clemson.

The novelty of playoffs will wear off in a year or two, and then the powers that be will have to administer the drug in every-increasing doses. I think Delany gets far too much credit for most things, but he takes far too much heat for his opinion on that perspective. He’s right. Name another sport which doesn’t keep incrementally shifting more and more of its product from “regular season” into “playoffs” to “grow the sport.”

Final point — you cannot defend Deloss at every turn for striking the best deal for Texas (screw everyone else) and then turn around and shred conference commissioners for doing the EXACT same thing for their constituent universities. Mike Slive is to the SEC what Deloss is to Texas. Beyond the sound and fury of conference realignment (yawn), they are both trying to set a stage where the B12, SEC, and B10 can exercise real control over their marketplace without legal exposure.

And IMO, they’re moving in the right direction at the appropriate speed.

I’m against a 8 or 16 team play-off! The ugly games in December will only continue with that format… besides, Slive will NEVER approve it! Like Horncasting, I’m all for the Top 4 teams in the last 10 days of the bowl season.

G.O.F.: I find your points valid and well expressed. That said, I just don’t have the fear you do. Mostly because I’m a guy who was primarily a CFB guy, but have come to appreciate the NFL more and more over the past 10 years.

I’m in agreement with you about establishing an upper tier for CFB, but it feels like I’d be more inclusive than you about it. I have no beef with the Boises and Central Florida’s if they can play ball, and they’ve established that they can. For this reason, I’d like to see super conferences come to pass. Weed out the Sunbelt/MAC type programs from contention, and clean out some of the garbage thats already in AQ’s.

I’m not really picky about 4 vs 8, and 16 does feel too big to me as a starting point.

Bob in Houston:

And you would break the 2008 B12 South tie… how, exactly?

Simple—-like the NFL breaks up a three way tie. Eliminate one out of three teams first with points for/points against in the games between the three or in the conference and then go to the head to head result against the final two.

It isn’t hard.

Any playoff seeding based on opinionated rankings or committees is just stupid, but that is what most people are now days—-real dumb.

G.O.F.

Two distinct thoughts to you response.

First, the NCAA tournament in its current form has not seen the level of play drop because of the expansion of the tournament as much as a decline in the overall quality of the product which is much more a byproduct of the influences of the AAU game and players on staying long enough on the campus of some schools to achieve draft eligibility.

Unfortunately, for many schools college basketball has gone the way of the NBA game relying on athleticism more and less on teamwork. As someone who grew up watching and loving the college game in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s I find the college game for many school indistinguishable from the NBA and really not that entertaining.

The expansion of the tournament is less a factor than Big School A changing over half to two-thirds of its roster on an annual basis while Mid School B has a roster full of the 4th and even the rare 5th year senior in college basketball. It is no wonder in the tournament often times the better played games involve these experienced rosters of “lesser schools” and some of the worst games are played from teams from the bigger conferences. That is byproduct of the culture of college basketball and not the size of the tournament.

Second in regards of the potential for a “peasant uprising” in college athletics from the satellite schools. Who the fuck are you or anyone else to infer that any school in this country not draw resources from the already “established schools” and therefore dilute the education system. The very inference reeks of elitism and in all honesty an anti-American sentiment. You came second so you have to be subservient to those who came before you? Just curious, but are you one of those who were frustrated by Mack’s depth chart based upon entitlement and “bleeding for the program”?

The very thing that has me calling bullshit on the entire BCS system are schools that truly don’t try to compete and are carried along merely because they have old age ties to a larger conference.

You want schools who truly belong? Fine, what is the criteria? Bloodlines? Length of conference ties? Tell me how much schools like Minnesota, Purdue,and Indiana contribute to the quality of football in the Big 10. Those schools really belong at the table instead of schools like Boise, TCU, and others.

Unfortunately, you have to have us. The coaches, the AD’s know this fact. To have a super conference of the top 40 schools or so like the NFL is something the college coaches don’t want to have because they know some one is going to be in top half and some in the bottom. They need those filler schools, those schools they provide enough victories to keep coaches in well paid jobs, to keep teams on television so those checks come in to the athletic departments.

Hence the rub, if you have those schools are part of the mix for your benefit do you really expect them to be happy with scraps from the table? Do you really expect them not to try to actually fucking win? Do you really expect them to sit quietly and not at least expect a fair shot at a chance?

You can’t have it both ways.

Boom! Your face!

I agree with O’Brien, the BCS is all about elitism, it doesn’t offer us anything at all save for the preservation of control for the old powers.

Willow: My point was that once you start breaking ties, choosing one team out of three, you’ve left two equally deserving teams behind — if you have to be a conference champ. The NFL easily could default to division champions only, right now, but it has wild cards.

The NCAA basketball tournament was a small tournament, and you had to win your conference. Sound familiar?

That will be news to those east coast independents that got in every year.

If you’re going to have a tournament, you have to find a way to make sure that all potential champions have a chance. That doesn’t mean you have to include all conference champions. I don’t mind making room for the lower-level leagues, but if you do that, you’ll encourage the kind of basketball hangers-on that you don’t care for. I do want — this year — Alabama, probably Stanford, maybe a couple other 11-win teams — not gonna choose between them at this point. But I’d rather have some non-contenders than eliminate potential winners.

I agree with Bob. Allow auto entrees from the conference champions and then use a selection committee to choose at large teams to fill out the field. Any criticism of this system better not be from the “playoffs cheapen the regular season!” crowd.

You would get better games pre-conference because Big 12 and SEC teams would schedule big games to build their at-large resumes with the chance that they miss out on winning their conference championship. Every game would matter because getting into a 16 team tournament with only 5 or so at large acceptances would require careful treading of the schedule.

It’s important to include conference champions because in a given year none of us actually have that strong a sense of which conferences are strongest. It’s impossible to tell. In some years the PAC 10 and Big 12 are loaded with contenders and in other years they are full of duds. Even the SEC was down this year and only LSU’s brutal non-conference slate revealed the extent of their dominance.

At the end of the day a playoff means more big games between teams that don’t normally meet, which is what the BCS prides itself on for bringing us.

Davey — If you want NFL playoffs and NFL parity, go watch the NFL.

Yes, I do expect them to be happy with scraps from the table - because it’s not their damn table. Without Texas football, Boise State football does not exist. Boise State is a tree falling in the forest until it falls on Oklahoma. If a school can build a national brand while running a quality program, more power to them. Welcome to the club. Boise State has progressed to the point that the Big East wants them. It remains to be seen if the structure that replaces the BCS in 2014 wants the Big East. That’s not elitism. That’s capitalism, which is about as American as it gets.

You do not get an equal share because you’re an NCAA member. You do not get an equal shot at a post-season because you’re an NCAA member. Delany et al are in the process of raising standards on academics and program financials, and anyone who can meet those standards can join the new club. It will help (a lot) to be a member of a conference with a multi-billion dollar rights deal, but thems the breaks. Sort of a similar situation to the families who can afford to send their kids to TCU. I don’t see too much hand-wringing over elitism on that front. I do not see how changing the venue to college football changes the basic ethical considerations involved.

No, CFB’s top division does not have to have Central Florida, Western Michigan, or San Jose State. In fact, I would say many of the problems we currently have in college athletics begin and end with a rulebook which attempts to put Western Michigan and Michigan on a “level playing field.” As Rush would put it, the bureaucrats have been busy making sure all the trees are kept equal with hatchet, axe and saw.

And that’s about an un-American as it gets, if we really want to make these arguments comport with flag-waving. Tis the season, I guess.

Horncasting said: January 6th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
     If Boise lost a couple games, then got hot and won out in a tourney, I’d say it was undeserved.

Why? Games earlier in the year matter more than games later in the year? Because it’s Boise State and they aren’t a traditional power? Blue turf?

Doesn’t the context matter? Imagine they lost two games to decent regular season opponents and then absolutely destroyed a series of elite teams in the playoffs. Imagine their losses coincided with critical injuries. Etc.

I don’t understand the Boise bashing. Those guys will go on the road and play anyone. You don’t think they’d happily join any BCS conference that invited them, save the Big East? Same with Utah prior to their finally joining the Pac Whatever. A few years ago they beat Michigan—granted, a down Michigan, but they didn’t know that when they scheduled them—at the Big House and beat #2 Alabama in the same season, went 12-0, and got no shot to play for it all. With the benefit of hindsight, no one can persuade me that they had any chance at all to win the MNC, even if they happened to field the best team and beat every opponent by 25 points. This current system is a cartel. Some may think it’s in Texas’ interests. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. Who knows while the current conference landscape is in such flux. Whatever: It still sucks, for the fans and for the players.

I truly don’t understand what is even remotely controversial about a playoff. It works in virtually every team sport, at every level, including football. Will some hypothetically deserving team get left out of the mix at year end under a 4- or 8- or 16-team system? Sure. But right now you have even more perverse or arbitrary outcomes.

Keep the bowls, either as part of the playoffs or as satellites for the many who don’t make the playoffs, and do 4- to 16-team playoff.

Just another idea. The winners of the 6 major conferences (ACC Big East SEC BiG BigXII Pac12 and two at large ( the highest ranked at the end of regular season play an 8 team playoff. Seeded this year would have been 1LSU2 Bama (at large) 3OK State4 Stanford 5Oregon(at large6 South Carolina 7 Wisc 8 W Virginia.

Round 1 December 17 WVA@LSU Wisc@ Bama Cocks@ OK State Oregon@Stanford
Round 2 Dec 31 LSU vs Stanford (Fiesta Bowl) Bama VS Ok State ( Sugar Bowl)
January 6 MNC game LSUVS Bama Jerry world….

Rotate the playoffs to warm or domed stadiums after first round. Rest of bowls go off as usual..Home teams get a real advantage by winning regular season and better interest for fans .

Yes, Dan Mohler, that would be a huge improvement over the current system, except I’m not convinced conferences should get an automatic. If someone wins a major conference, odds are they’re in the top 8 anyway. If they’re not (due to horrible out-of-conference performance, for instance), perhaps they shouldn’t play. But that’s a detail. Basically, you can make the bowls relevant beyond simply end-of-year ranking.

Lost in the anti-BCS scrum—and to be clear, I’m anti-BCS—is that it is an improvement over the old bowl system, which was even more arbitrary and capricious in having the end-of-year #1 and #2 not face each other quite often. Would a playoff be arbitrary and capricious to an extent? Yes, any system will be flawed. But it would be vastly less stupid than the current setup.

G.O.F.

Fuck you. I worked my way through TCU and it is arrogant asses like you that give anything associated with Texas a bad name. 25-35 hours a week, but thanks for proving that being educated at UT doesn’t always result in someone being devoid of lazy intellectual posturing.

Quick history lesson dickhead.

It isn’t purely Texas’ table because didn’t build the table alone. It started as part of the SWC and in the early stages when the conference first gained national attention it was as the school carrying their weight. It was a very, very long time in the making of the Texas brand and there were a lot of other schools who helped build it.

You want pure capitalism? Fine, have UT pay back every fucking cent from the public fund that went towards builiding the athletic department from the beginning. I mean from the start you arrogant ass. That is what is forgotten. Texas hasn’t always carried it’s weight because no one did in the beginning. Dollars from the state went to building that program and not just contributions from alums and or revenues from ticket sales. You truly believe that money from the state have never paid for the revenues needed to run that department?

To become the program it is today took money from the state and I still remember not that long ago when Texas was freaking giving away tickets to their home games because there was no waiting list for those tickets. See, Texas didn’t build the identity purely on its own, but part of a group, the SWC. It was when those members started to act in their own best interest that the conference went to shit. Don’t need anyone else? Cool.

Think you can stand alone without even the slightest concern for anyone else great.
Be careful what you ask for though because this isn’t a business you can stand alone and for some odd reason every other major conference has figured out a way to put their differences aside and benefit from it.

Why not this one?

Wow. “Fuck you” and “dickhead.” Put me in my place, didn’t you?

It’s lazy inconsistencies in your arguments that are driving you crazy. Curse me all you like for pointing them out, but you started this pissing match with assumptions in the self-evident righteousness of your position. I go out of my way to avoid getting personal in these threads, and I rarely, if ever, call out someone directly. I will point out what I consider to be consequences of positions, but those consequences are never four-letter words or insults.

Congrats on working your way through TCU. Most of the people I meet who went there come from incredibly privileged backgrounds. They also don’t tend to see them as privileged, but that’s an entirely separate argument, and an anecdotal one at that.

We disagree. Have a nice day.

“Most of the people I meet who went there come from incredibly privileged backgrounds. They also don’t tend to see them as privileged, but that’s an entirely separate argument, and an anecdotal one at that.”

I would prefer a system close to the NFL’s in that I would prefer some certainty in who gets in over allowing voters to decide anything. Give me autoqualifiers and an RPI system that uses overall SOS perhaps even with an OOC SOS multiplier for seeding and for picking at-large teams. It would be nice to know exactly what your team needs to do to be in the playoffs before the season starts (other than being one of two undefeateds).

If we want good OOC games then the system needs to reward scheduling quality games so I would like to see that be part of the formula. Autoqualifying conference champs would also allow for more aggressive OOC scheduling since losing to an OOC team doesn’t become a virtual death sentence to a team’s playoff hopes. It will mean a quality team gets left out over a lesser team most years, but if you take 12 we are talking about teams #11 and 12 being the likely teams trumped for a lesser team. I’d take that over any system we have seen or has been talked about.

Put me on Davey O’s side, simply because G.O.O.F. is consistently one of the most idiotic posters here.

“If we want good OOC games then the system needs to reward scheduling quality games so I would like to see that be part of the formula. Autoqualifying conference champs would also allow for more aggressive OOC scheduling since losing to an OOC team doesn’t become a virtual death sentence to a team’s playoff hopes. "

This. Which is why that bullcrap about playoffs hurting the regular season was just a red herring.

Why does the Coaches’ Poll count in the BCS? Allowing a head coach to vote his team No. 1 and actually having it help his team? That’s like the president having an Electoral College vote.

Sergi,
The polls are stupid. Who cares if the coaches vote or not? The AP poll is just as silly. Have you ever looked at the ‘other teams getting votes’ at the bottom of the poll? The journalists are just as insulated and just as likely to overrate their local programs and conference teams as a coach. The polls need to be removed as part of the equation.

Shit, I would be happier if the NCAA put up website and let fans vote on the at-large teams over a journalist or a grad assistant (who actually does the votes). To me that is another reason why having conference champs get autobids is fundamental. It at least guarantees that some teams earned their spot on the field, even if they earned it by upsetting a “better” team.