BCS Championship Ratings Down -- Changes May Be Coming

Ummm, srr, and they say audience size doesn’t matter!

How does the elimination of AQs impact the viability of the Big 12?

Is the elimination of AQs a political move on Delany’s part? If yes, doesn’t it also undermine his opposition to a play-off by making it easier to feed a one-plus set up?

Ummm, srr, and they say audience size doesn’t matter!

In terms of audience - for ESPN - its not that important. They are still delivering a larger audience to their cable providers than was there before they began telecasting the BCS games. Overall content is ESPN’s strength and the BCS fits in with the all the other College Football, NFL, NBA, MLB, College Basketball, etc in their attractiveness to distributors.

s the elimination of AQs a political move on Delany’s part? If yes, doesn’t it also undermine his opposition to a play-off by making it easier to feed a one-plus set up?

I believe that Delany’s idea is that if there are no AQ’s, then it would be easier to freeze out the (formerly) non-AQ programs from the Bowl System, making it more profitable for the Big 10 and others and more willing to stop at a Plus-One system and not expand it.

The proposed plus one system will lead to more rematches which will lead to more boredom which will lead teams to not have any incentive to schedule fun early season games. The more tweaking that happens the worse the system gets. Let’s get back to Conference tie ins to bowl games and incorporate the BCS point system to have a plus one game all bowl games are played on New Year’s day. Let’s have multiple bowl games have national title implications where upsets on New Year’s day made for riveting theater. Let’s have New Year’s Day mirror the best regular season in sports. The sport has been ruined by conference realignment which is the result of television contracts. There is a reason why college football is so riveting and people talk about this sport for a full 4 months. Rivalries and the importance of the regular season. Didn’t much happen this year. Bama had the best team this year but LSU had the best season and neither was properly punished or rewarded for their seasons. We should never have to watch two teams from the same conference play for all the marbles ever again.

Does plus 1 model require unanimous vote?

I don’t have ESPN and don’t plan to get it just to watch college bowl games!

I understand Delaney’s anti-AQ rationale within the BCS bowl system as described by ssr50 above. But what about a playoff ? Is Delaney just being consistent in opposing a larger playoff system than having a plus 1 because he knows a system for qualifying couldn’t be maintained as the current beauty pageant ?

He opposes the Plus 1 on the grounds that it will inevitably expand. Perhaps all he’s really intimating is that he can be bought.

If we have a plus one, then people will complain about the number 5 getting snubbed. I agree that bowl tie ins with conference affiliation maybe the way to go. With the winning teams advancing to the larger bowls. Have the championship game rotate based on who is still playing. Rotate between the Rose, Cotton, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta. If a Texas or Big 12 team is number one have it at the Cotton, ect. Draw the line at top 10 teams and conference champions. The other bowls can fill the rest. You would have the SEC winner host an at large in the Sugar, winner of PAC 10 or Big 10 come out of Rose. The winners advance and seeded based on ranking. Hell you could have the larger bowls bid on hosting the championship every year.

Groundhog,
Not sure what to make of your post. Under your system we probably would have seen a rematch in the plus one just the same. LSU would have faced another top team since they were the conference champs, so their road to the championship would have gotten even more difficult, while Bama would have gotten some patsy Big 10 team in the SEC’s second choice bowl. Would the voters have still left out Bama if they destroyed Nebraska, while Okla State squeaked out their win against Stanford? No. The bowls with their tie-ins are just as likely to create horrible match-ups as the current system (the Orange Bowl hasn’t put up a nationally compelling match up in forever). Using those horrible match-ups to then determine who gets to play for the title is barely a step up from the current system.

Just adding the plus-one would also ruin your hopes for fun early season games, since it is basically the same set up we have now. A beauty pageant still determines the two teams that get chosen for the final game and being undefeated is still going to make you the most beautiful come selection day. So why risk perfection by scheduling tough games in September?

I think it is now a minority who find the regular season so riveting that they would not want to see a playoff because there is some hypothetical evidence that it might change the regular season. A playoff with automatic qualification for conference champs will help free up early season match ups since winning your conference is more important to reaching the playoff than being one of the most ‘beautiful’. If you really want to see teams trying to improve schedules then also make the seeding and at-large playoff spots determined by an RPI ranking that puts a premium on OOC game.

Every year is different, but a playoff will absolutely ruin the sport and with each tweak we get closer and closer to one. Let me sum up the season for you. We essentially saw the LSU/Bama game twice. The difference in the two games was Bama’s ability to make fg’s and LSU pounced on Bama’s mistakes (turnovers). Bama moved the ball on LSU in the 1st half of the first game. Anyone who is surprised with LSU offensive performance wasn’t paying attention the first time around and certainly didn’t pay attention to their game against Georgia. However, LSU went to Tuscaloosa and won that game. They won it with special teams and some opportunistic play. They had the best season and what is their reward? Playing a team that wasn’t penalized for losing to the same team at home earlier in the season. They weren’t penalized for playing a sloppy game. You see college football historically rewards perfection or the closest thing to it and it rewards teams that have the best four months in that particular year. That’s what makes the sport great and that’s why people tune in.

What have we seen in the BCS era? We saw a two loss LSU team win the NC. We saw a rematch from a game played earlier in the year. We saw a team play for the NC who didn’t win their own conference and got blown out by 40 in their last game. But we saw a Ohio State team that wasn’t the best team when they beat Miami in the Fiesta Bowl have the best season that year and get rewarded. Should we tell tOSU to suit up and play Miami again? Is that fair?

My only point is that New Year’s Day used to be really special and the powers that be should go back to that incredible day. We saw some damn good games this bowl season that could have been fun to watch and could have had NC implications. If we had conference tie in’s, we most likely would have seen LSU play Stanford in the Sugar Bowl and Okie State play Bama in the Fiesta Bowl and you’re right we could have seen the same outcome, but is it a certainty? Could Boise have been in the mix as at large team? They did beat up on big bad Georgia this year.

There are years when we could have had some great theater on New Year’s Day. Take last year for example only because its most recent in everyone’s mind. Auburn goes to the Sugar as the SEC champion, Oregon plays Wisky as the Big 10 and PAC 10 champs, VT goes to Orange Bowl as ACC champs, and Oklahoma goes to Cotton as Big 12 champ. That’s right. That’s where our champion should play. Keep the fiesta open for two at large teams. Fill in the blanks from there and watch it unfold. Ohio State plays Auburn in the Sugar, TCU plays Stanford in the Fiesta, Oklahoma plays Arkansas in the Cotton, and pick whoever you want to play in the VT in the orange. Most likely it was going to Michigan State, LSU, Bama, or Boise. You could even flip tOSU for Stanford. Incorporate the BCS point system in this plus one model. It forces teams to play great regular season out of conference teams to build your resume. This system also allows for many teams to still have a shot at the NC going into New Year’s Day. It’s riveting and exciting. Go back and look at all the years when teams were ranked 4th or lower on New Years Day and because certain things broke correctly won the NC. ND was ranked 6th when they played Earl Campbell’s longhorns and won the NC.

I’m in favor of the plus one model but only if college football goes back to what is consistent with the regular season and what makes the sport great. If you’re interested in a team getting hot in the playoffs, I suggest you stick to pro sports. I like the best 4 months in any sport, but I want the game to be true to itself and go back to its roots.

1. I don’t care about improving season schedules. All I care about is winning as many games as possible. I go to Austin to see Texas win, not to see the band from Ohio State or USC. If we can’t beat KSU, why do I want to see us lose to some Enormous State University?
2. I pesonally do not have any need for the closure of a perfect playoff system. People with that hang up are in another world.
3. I also see no entertainment value to all the discussion of how a playoff system could be designed. It is as pointless and mindless as all the discussion on talk radio of who should the Halfastros trade and who should they trade for.

Well, Groundhog, get used to disappointment! Most of us found New Year’s Day and the aftermath in voting the champion to be a useless and annoying exercise. It was tiring to see the same teams from the same conferences playing in the traditional bowl games. We got tired of seeing teams like BYU get a slice of the MNC because they were ‘perfect’. The conferences and the bowls realized that it wasn’t passing muster any more and they gave us the craptacular BCS. It has generated more overall excitement for the sport but the curtain has been pulled back to reveal that it too is largely a sham.

In your system you just keep the same tired old bowl tie ins which also means you still end up with asymmetric schedules. Why should a top team have to face the #2 team in a bowl game when the #3 team gets to face an unranked opponent just because the bowl executives have traditionally lined their pockets from certain conferences? How will the plus one be any better for having missed on #1 vs. #2 because some suit in Tempe can make more money by picking #1 and #2 in his bowl game prior to the plus one?

Why would anyone even want to see a team ranked 4 or below get crowned champion because ‘certain things broke correctly’ except because it falls into the theater of the absurd? I would be more than happy to see the #10 team at the end of the season crowned champion if that team beat three other teams ahead of it in a series of games that pit all those supposedly top teams together to determine who really was the top team.

Bells can not be un-rung. The old system is gone forever. If enough demand (money) is deemed associated with playoffs, we will ease into them starting with a plus one. The old system rewarded having the ball bounce your way on a few key regular season games. Playoffs would reward having the ball bounce your way in a few key postseason games. D1FBS FB may be the best sport in the world, and it might be so in part because of its nearly unique lack of a playoff. Or it may be so in spite of the lack. We may just find out.

I would also add that Delany’s proposal of eliminating the Automatic Qualifying bids is probably an admission that some kind of play off is coming. The biggest fear among the BCS conferences isn’t a playoff — it’s about the money distribution of said playoff.

They fear that it would look like March Madness — where everyone gets a slice of the money pie. By eliminating the AQ’s any system that incorporates the bowls the BCS conferences will get more of the bids and more of the money split.

Ground Hog,

I ignored your ramblings, so I’ll concentrate on this, “I’m in favor of the plus one model but only if college football goes back to what is consistent with the regular season and what makes the sport great. If you’re interested in a team getting hot in the playoffs, I suggest you stick to pro sports. I like the best 4 months in any sport, but I want the game to be true to itself and go back to its roots.”

The sanctity of the regular season argument misses the point. When winning your conference doesn’t give you a ticket to a playoff, then your system is flawed and your regular season is diluted.

When teams schedule out-of-conference patsies to stock-pile “wins,” your system is flawed and your regular season is diluted.

When voters determine who out of 120 teams is worthy of a two-team playoff, then your regular season is meaningless, especially for the vast majority of teams.

When a one-loss team with a Top 10 regular season schedule gets leap-frogged by a one-loss team not in the Top 40 SOS (Alabama), then your system is flawed and the regular season is diluted.

The bowls have killed their tradition by expanding to 35 and selling out to any corporate brand (GalleryFurniture.Com). The past is lost and college football fans no longer care about post-season exhibition games.

Flash,

 I like your point on the talk of the playoff system, but disagree on the schedule. I really enjoyed our home and home with Ohio State. The 2005 game was one of the most exciting games I’ve been to outside of the USC game. I don’t expect us to schedule 3 traditional powers every year, but I expect one along with an Ole Miss type team and a patsy. Seeing Wyoming, Fla Atlantic, and N Mexico State doesn’t do it for me.

Ricky,

Why would we want to see Miami get crowned in 83, why would ND get crowned in 77? Both teams ranked fourth or lower to win the NC. We will agree to disagree. A playoff will take the luster away from the regular season games and the urgency in those games. I thought the old system needed tweaking and a plus one does the trick. It would be an absolute bonanza for the bowls on New Year’s Day and the game to be played a week later. Bowl Games today are not consistent with what goes on in the regular season in college football. How many games are watched each saturday because of potential national title implications and the upsets that take place? Upsets, rivalries, and the emphasis on the regular season makes it the best sport today. Look at the ratings. The public is telling you they don’t like the to watch meaningless bowl games and they certainly don’t like rematches.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_football_national_championships_in_NCAA_Division_I_FBS

Click on the link above. It’s a pretty fun exercise if you click on each team. Start with the 70’s and go through until the BCS started. Two trends you see. 1) Powerful out of conference games were the norm until the BCS started and 2) A plus one would have solved a lot of issues back in the day while preserving the excitement and tradition of the old bowl system.

Well written, Eskimo.

Eskimo,

If hadn’t “ignored” my ramblings you would see that we are in complete agreement on paragraphs 2-5 in your response.

There isn’t a perfect system. But usually, all you have to do is follow the money.

It seems that a playoff, of some sort, would bring relevance to more games than just one. These bowls being preliminaries as such for the big game would yield lots more viewership and relevance to the games. $ will flow.

All I know is that any system that allows a team with a 2-6 conference record and a sub .500 team and many .500 teams into bowl games is already broken. I didn’t watch more than a half of any bowl game other than Texas this year. And I am a college football diehard. There is no pageantry, the stadiums are half empty, the matchups suck, and they don’t mean a damn thing.

The champion is still mythical. They should either go back to the way it was or have a playoff. We have the worst of both worlds right now.

I definitely don’t have any interest in arguing the finer points of the old system. Its flaws were apparent to most of us and, more importantly, to the powers that be. They are now seeing their latest tweaks have lost their luster and they are now inching again towards what fans want to see.

I still don’t understand the sanctity of the regular season hypothesis and how that is damaged by a playoff. We had teams like BYU win the title by playing no one in the previous system. We had OU win a title by not even playing in a bowl game due to cheating. We are still going to be picking probably no more than 10% of the teams eligible to make the playoffs. I don’t see how that is going to dramatically change how teams approach the season, especially compared to the old system where winning your conference was the only route to the ‘big’ prize and winning a title wasn’t in any team’s control on the field.

If you want to go back to great OOC games then you need to reward teams for scheduling them. That means you will need to lower the performance threshold for being crowned as champion. The old system was already floundering in ‘perfection’ issues that have only been exacerbated by the BCS. Teams scheduled tough games in the bowl days because they needed the income either by getting a rare TV spot or by guaranteeing ticket sales. Today conference TV contracts have rendered quality OOC games moot, at least on a financial scale.

I think Delaney and the powers that be are delaying on a playoff in hopes of seeing things like player stipends take hold. The power conferences want to get major college football down to at least half its current size. As ssr has noted, they want to maintain their hold on the money, but I think this would be a great way to help increase the quality of play, especially if restrictions on playing lower level teams is continued and/or strengthened. Lowering the number of teams will help consolidate a finite amount of talent and will lower the variability in strength of schedule since teams will have to fill their schedules from a smaller number of options, all of which are at a similar standard of quality.

Groundhog,

“If hadn’t "ignored" my ramblings you would see that we are in complete agreement on paragraphs 2-5 in your response”

So you believe we need a playoff system?

I am like Barton Creek, might have watched 5-6 bowl games and don’t watch more than a couple of games during the season.

Groundhog you made the comment that there is a place for those of us who want to see a true play-off and the inference is the NFL. Fair comment and as I sit and think about it I can tolerate the NFL more and more compared to college football because the NFL want deny its a whore for the television money. There are no pretenses what the goal of the league is and that is money.

College football on the other hand continues to give us the same bullshit about scholar athletes, has a puppet oversite organization, and a system designed to reward nothing but being part of the old boys club.

The simple fact that Jim Delaney, the commissioner of the conference with easily the worst bowl record among the 6 AQ schools, the conference who has had a horrible past 5-10 years of off the field incidents/ probation/ programs out of control, and has a conference that contains more truly non-competitive members that simply feed off the reputation of a few than the Big 10.

Nothing smacks more of false pretenses and overblown hype than the Big 10. They have done less on the field and take more than anyone else in a system designed to protect those who have been around the longest.

The Wizard is dead on in that the college game of the past is dead, the system as we know it now is broken, and there are too many people with too much at stake to truly get a system worthy of the potential of the college game.

Eskimo,

How would you structure one? Is it just conference champions? Is it the top 4 or 8 in the AP poll. How would you choose the at large teams? Do you have a committee or is it done by some formula? The conferences will never go for a system that is not inclusive of every single champion and will that yield the top 4-8 teams in the land? Will a playoff water down the regular season?

So the simple answer is No, I’m not in favor of a playoff.

Ricky, you make some fine points on why certain things are happening, but I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement:

“I don’t see how that is going to dramatically change how teams approach the season, especially compared to the old system where winning your conference was the only route to the ‘big’ prize and winning a title wasn’t in any team’s control on the field.”

Why do you think people are so upset this year? Alabama didn’t win it’s conference, it lost at home to the team that had the best season, so therefore LSU didn’t control play on the field. They had to go back and play a team it had already beaten. They lost. What the hell does that prove? That Alabama with a poor schedule can avenge a loss at home. Let me know when the rubber match takes place.

Groundhog, I am not defending the current system. Sure, the old system would have likely precluded a rematch and Bama’s loss would have likely consigned them to a different bowl game. (Don’t actually know if this is true, could the old Sugar Bowl have taken Bama as an at-large?) But would the results of the championship been any more satisfying? I don’t know. LSU could played any number of teams in the Sugar Bowl, but they assuredly wouldn’t have played the next two best conference champions Ok State and Oregon, both of whom would be contractually obligated to other bowls. So we still would have ended the season with a champion crowned by not playing another one of the top teams.

If you had added the plus-one then it is still possible that Bama and LSU could have faced off based on your ‘if certain things broke correctly’ model, so the old system with a plus-one doesn’t guarantee a conference-champion is also the national champion either, so give me a more satisfying competition that pits several top teams against each other. If Bama still gets the crown at the end, then they would have done it by beating a slate of quality teams most whom would be from other conferences and regions.

Most fans have no interest in returning to having voters deciding who the champion is, because it is the same problem that current system gives us, except at least the current system has an on-field competition to award the trophy. The problem with the current system is the one that plagued the previous one and if voters are too involved in the next system it too will end up with problems, but the more teams you add the more the complaints (because there will always be complaints) will be consigned to the fringes.

Am I the only person here that realizes stronger 2010 and 2011 schedules would have meant Texas would have been 2 - 9 and 5 - 6 and not even one bowl game? Are you guys really in touch with why people buy season tickets? Get the fuck out of here!

Damn! Make that 2 - 10 and 5 - 7. I am showing my age, but FUCK all you strength of schedule pumpers!

For all the “traditionalists” in favor of the BCS or the old Bowl system, can someone explain to me why Div I college football is the only competitive sport in the world that does not have a playoff model to determine its champion?

Flash, you like what you like. If blowouts against inferior competition makes you feel good then so be it. I happen to love the college game and happen to love the opportunity to visit other historic football stadiums during home and home series. Call me crazy and all.

Stevo, can you explain why nobody gives a rats ass about college basketball until February? Can you explain why nobody cares about NBA hoops or MLB Baseball. There is more passion in the NFL regular season but just remember there is a reasons why fantasy leagues were started for professional sports.

People watch college football for the historic rivalries and the drama that unfolds every weekend for four months out of the year. Do you think I would have stayed up late to watch Iowa State defeat Oklahoma State in a meaningless game had we been subjected to playoffs? There’s your answer.

Groundhog,
Nobody cares about a single hoops or MLB game because they play a shit load of them. I imagine a Yankees-Red Sox game probably draws a decent number of viewers as compared to the average major college football game.

Why would the Iowa State game have been meaningless with playoffs? OSU wouldn’t have been guaranteed anything. They still had to either beat OU or hope OU lost several games even before the loss just to win the conference. If they lost to OU on top of the ISU game they probably don’t make the playoffs. Under the old bowl system it would have been just as meaningless or even more so since there was no way OSU would ever get to play LSU should they both have managed to finish undefeated. And OSU knows they would never get the nod from voters over LSU in today’s football environment. Their only hope would have been for one of your ‘if certain things broke correctly’ shituations.

People still watch ND-USC even though ND hasn’t been a major player in decade. How does a playoff change that in a way that the current system hasn’t already? Are people going to stop watching Ohio State-Michigan? That game hasn’t even determined the Big 10 champ in almost a decade, but I imagine it continues to garner good ratings no matter where the two teams are in the national title hunt.

The only thing that changes in a playoff is that you have more than 2 teams being involved in choosing the champion. If you give conference champions an auto bid then the conference races are even more important. At this point no one gives a flying fuck about the Big East champion, but if you know they are going to be in the playoff it might make some key games down the stretch worth watching. The current system puts the Big East squarely in the TV to be avoided camp.

Anyway, there is no point in arguing this further. A playoff is coming, probably too soon for your tastes and not soon enough for mine, but the public has spoken and the majority want a more equitable system and that means a playoff.

Ground, I love blowouts. I went to Texas because they won an MNC while I was in HS. I loved watching Texas destroy Oakie Lite and not so much seeing USC kick our ass. I rest my case.

You’re right, Ricky. There is no need to debate this any further. College realignment has taken away Nebraska/OU, TX/A&M, KU/Mizzou, etc. That’s not good for true fans of the sport. And yes, you’re probably right some sort of semblence of a playoff is coming and when it’s all said and done, the product will be so diluted with 16 or 32 teams nobody will give a flying fuck about the regular season. That’s exactly what happened in college basketball many moons ago. There was a time when the CBB season with around 25- 30 games carried plenty of weight. Those days are long gone……

So if you think a football playoff wil start at 4 and not grow to 8 or 16 soon thereafter, you are fooling yourself. So all that time spent watching early season games or midseason games would be better served watching wet paint dry. Have fun! The good thing is I can find other hobbies to fill my saturdays and can turn on the television in December to the 3 or 4 week season without having missed a thing. Much like college basketball is a 4 week season. Catch my drift?

Ricky,
Fuck a bunch of equity and what the public wants. Let them eat cake. Delany and Dodds are the 1% and have no intention of sharing any of it with the 99%. That is as it should be and I stand with them. You socialistic football fans can go occupy Jerry’s World for all we care.

So if you think a football playoff will start at 4 and not grow to 8 or 16 soon thereafter, you are fooling yourself. So all that time spent watching early season games or midseason games would be better served watching wet paint dry.

Never understand this reasoning. Scarcity matters. Seeding matters. And if it’s truly only 8 teams, there are a lot of non sure things. I think Death To The BCS has a pretty good section refuting this reasoning.

The takeaway here is that the ratings dropped significantly for the BCS Championship Game as well for most of the other BCS games. Given that live football is the French Truffle of TV ratings it should be a wakeup call for the powers that be that they are letting the golden goose get fat and less attractive.

You are watering down the regular season and the sport with arguments like seeding, etc. Death to the BCS has an agenda.

People are losing sight about what makes college football so great. Here’s a great question for people? If you hate the current system ( and there seems to be plenty of hate) why do you continue to watch and be so heavily invested in your favorite team and sport? I used to be a diehard college basketball fan along with a diehard Rockets and NBA fan? Guess what, I found it boring and stopped watching.

No wonder ND stays independent. They get the same amount of votes as an entire conference. DAYUM.

And I’m not a BCS proponent. I hate the BCS. I’m a proponent of the old system and a plus one. People watched and people filled stadiums. Art, makes a great point, but are people really going to care in playoff system where more often than not there are teams that have played each other during the year. No, they will not.

Groundhog,

I think we all love the “old” traditions of College Football. Alabama v. Auburn, Ohio State v. Michigan, USC v. ND, Texas v. TX A&M. Pittsburgh v. Penn State (great example used by srr50 which went away years ago). Unfortunately money, greed and other factors are killing tradition in College Football. Tradition is now more selfish. Today it’s about what traditions and accomplishments my team has more so than the traditions of who my team has always played in the past. It’s sad but true. It’s akin to the analogy (stretch) I used the other day with the Olympics. It’s not so much USA versus Russia anymore. Today it’s USA over everyone and let’s create a story around the USA winning in a shitty sport no one cares about, versus broadcasting a truly compelling competition between two foreigners. True fans of the sport would rather see a compelling competition between Oklahoma and Michigan for the right to move on to play the winner of Alabama and USC, versus watching Oklahoma play Iowa for the right to spend a few days in Tempe.

I think the argument that most of us BCS haters (now the large and vocal majority) are making is that we don’t want more fake drama (Beef O’Brady Bowl, BCS “system”, etc…) we want real drama which is best represented by teams actually playing each other in a tournament. Actual competition should be the focus, not a college football post season that we have today which is the equivalent of a fixed Quiz Show/American Gladiators.

I can’t believe I didn’t reference PSU/Pitt. Not to mention that the backyard brawl is soon to go away as well.

100% agreed Art. I used last year as a perfect example on how the old system can be used with a plus one while maintaining the integrity of the regular season. I just happen to disagree that a full on tournament is good for the best regular season in sports.

“Here’s a great question for people? If you hate the current system ( and there seems to be plenty of hate) why do you continue to watch and be so heavily invested in your favorite team and sport?”

Because it’s my alma mater. Like I said above, I watching every minute of the Texas game. It didn’t mean anything though. I love watching football. High School, Pop Warner, college, it doesn’t matter to me. I didn’t watch 2 quarters of any one bowl game other than Texas this year. Why? Because they are a joke. I watched multiple Texas High School Football state championship games from start to finish. Why? Because they mattered.

Nine games a season for whatever you want - conferences, rivalries, fun, scrimmage, whatever.

Four games for a full playoff of the sixteen teams in your “region”.

Those 13 games (or fewer - your school’s call ) are over at the same time the current regular season is over.

The eight regions have a champion each, and the eight champions continue with a three-game playoff to the championship. Alternatively, the one-loss runners-up might be included, and the National Playoffs could include them.

Some of the playoff games can replace the existing big-ass bowls.

There will still be plenty of bowl play available, and the eight champions may or may not participate in bowls.

The point: conferences can return to what they were, and every single team in Div 1 has a chance at the Championship. The non-playoff games will be a lot more fun, since they have no real bearing on the playoffs - try those trick plays, let those bench-sitters get some PT. Play your big rivals, win or lose, you could see ’em again in the playoffs.

Well Barton, you missed some mighty fine games. You missed a great Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, as well as a pretty good Cotton Bowl, and couple of lesser bowls on New Year’s day. But I agree, those games should have some meaning as well. And they could with a plus one system while also restoring the tradition of the game.

Do you watch games during the regular season or just Texas? I’m just asking.

Let me weigh in here. Current system is horrible, not only is it little more than a beauty contest, but we don’t even get good match ups in many of the major bowls. Secondly the current BCS bowl leads to the big programs scheduling easy non conference foes so they can beat them up with high scores. I know points are not suppose to count but, I guarantee you they do. No other way OU beats out Texas in 2008 if they were not out there running up 60 points a game while Mack is calling off the dogs when he gwets a 4 TD lead.

I think there are two acceptable solutions; 1) have a true play-off where the play-off teams are not selected by any polls, computers, or votes. All play-off teams make it based on playing their way in by winning their conference or division or placing second etc. This brings back emphasis on the regular season and how well you play in your conference only. This means schools can schedule those big intersectional games that were common in the 40s, 50s and 60s. A Texas could play an Alabama in the second week and not have it effect their chances at making the championship play-offs. 2) Return to the old days where bowl games are purely exhibitions and are meant for entertainment value and a reward to the players after an outstanding season. Have no pretense that someone is a NC because they were voted into the game by a bunch of people that never even saw the teams play.

Any criteria is going to be a subjective criteria. Does Clemson, which won the ACC, have a better claim to participate in a playoff than South Carolina, who beat them by 3 scores? Than Arkansas, who beat South Carolina by 2 scores? Kansas State? Oregon? Alabama? What about 2008 Virginia Tech (9-4 regular season) versus OU, T-Tech and Texas? 2008 Cincinnati, who lost to Oklahoma 52-26 to Oklahoma and 40-16 to UConn?

I just don’t like regional equivalency. The B12 and SEC simply have better teams on average than P12, B1G, ACC, or Big East. “Winning your conference” sounds nice, neat, and quantitative, but it’s as relative as anything else out there.

I actually prefer the current BCS formula, with the SEC tie-breaker for playoff inclusion — if you’re within 5 spots in the rankings, and you beat someone head to head, you move ahead of them in the pecking order. That would have moved Oregon ahead of Stanford this year for a Plus 1, which to me seems more fair. They deserved it more than Stanford, if for no other reason than they beat Stanford convincingly head to head.

The least fair and equitable way to select teams for a play off is using votes, rankings and computers. All three are so full of biases that a blind monkey could do as good a job of choosing the participants.

Playing your way in by winning something or finishing in a specified position within your conference has no bias. The results were determined on the field. There will be some really good teams left out, but they had the same chance of qualifying as all the other teams. Right now unless you play in the SEC or go undefeated with a huge victory margin in the Big 12 or PAC 12 you have no chance of getting picked to play for the championship.

The play-off system in Texas HS football should be the model. I would like to see a 4 game play-off, that would be 16 teams, but would settle 8 teams and 3 play off games to start with.

With the parity in college football today there is no fair way of picking the two best teams to play for a NC.