Tucked in at the very end of the Bulldog Hotline show from last night comes this pearl of wisdom from Georgia’s head coach:
William in Augusta said CMR has made it easy to be a Georgia fan the last seven years. College football is the greatest sport but the only one where the championship is not decided on the field. Presidents need to decide whether their loyalties are to their schools and teams or to a stodgy old bowl system. CMR – you may not like the answer .. the regular season is more exciting than any other sport ..because there is no playoff system. [Emphasis added.] If you had a playoff system, some of these games wouldn’t be as meaningful since teams that lost knew they could make the playoff.
Well said.
Now, if we could just get him to see the light about keeping the WLOCP in Jacksonville…
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UPDATE: Dan Wetzel, on the other hand, is about as clueless as a man can be. The “Wetzel Plan” (cool name, hunh) manages to combine just about every bad playoff concept ever conceived into one overarchingly stupid concept. So I guess it does have the virtue of being economical.
It’s not just the appearance of all the usual dumb ideas – 16 team playoff with all conference champions qualifying (Central Michigan, come on down!); the elimination of all of the major bowl games; the automatic assumption of massive increases in revenue; Cinderella and brackets (aka December Madness) – that makes his “Plan” so moronic. It’s the relentless, cheery detachment from reality that elevates it into something truly special. Such as when he writes
… Does anyone without direct rooting interest really care if USC wins the Pac-10 Saturday? How about the Virginia Tech-Boston College ACC title game?
Since when did “direct rooting interest” become dirt under our shoes? Christ, that’s the essence of college football.
My favorite part – after Wetzel complains that the current system is “illogical”, he goes on to say
… For even lower-rated conferences – the Sun Belts, the MACs – allowing annual access to the tournament would not only set off celebrations on small campuses but it would encourage investment in the sport at all levels. Suddenly, there would be a reason for teams in those leagues to really care. This would improve quality throughout the country…
Dude. No. Look at your brackets. You’ve got a 7-5 Central Michigan team playing in a tournament that excludes schools like Tennessee and Texas. However you may want to characterize that, logic ain’t part of the equation. Or your article, for that matter.
Get The Picture 
A four team playoff would not quell the excitement one bit. Three of the four teams in the conference championship games this weekend would still feel they were playing for something besides a conference title.
We wouldn’t be wondering if we’re gonna let a team play for the championship who at present hasn’t beaten one top 25 team and lost to the only one they played.
WVU would have to play someone besides that team who hasn’t beaten anyone and you’d have some reason to believe that the team that won it all is in fact the best team.
SB, this season is actually starting to make me think an expanded playoff is better than what we now have. Although I’d prefer to go four team and keep the bowl system in place.
The problem is that college football, more than any other sport, needs at least a couple of games to sort it out at the end because the schedules are so different.
As I’ve stated many times before, some want to point to the SEC’s many championships as proving that our conference doesn’t hurt our chances. I instead want to point to the fact we’ve drilled almost every opponent we’ve played in the championship game since 1992, though most of the time being the underdog. That suggests to me that Auburn may have taken it to USC, UGA might could do the same this year, UGA may have been the best in 2002, etc. etc. etc. I have no problem with a rule forbidding a non conference champion from winning it all, but you tell me what OSU has done to earn a spot, aside from being named OSU. If OU wins Saturday, that’s who will be there. And they’ll be playing another team who isn’t much more tested than themselves.
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SB, this season is actually starting to make me think an expanded playoff is better than what we now have.
In a nutshell, this is the mindset that fuels my antagonism towards playoff advocates – not playoffs per se.
There isn’t a “one size fits all” solution to your neurosis, my friend. To let the prevailing wind of how a single season has played out determine how you think a postseason should be structured going forward is short term thinking of the worst sort.
That’s why I have a problem with even the four team playoff proposals such as what you previously advocated. It’s not the specific format that bothers me. It’s that people like you won’t be satisfied with it over the long haul and we’ll wind up with something much worse than what we have now.
And what we have now, warts and all, is still pretty damned terrific, if you ask me.
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kckd~
1) Isn’t playing for the conference title enough? I do believe that for most good programs, winning the conference is — and should be — the main goal each and every season. Control what you can, and put yourself in a position to be called the best your league has to offer. Reaching the MNC game seemingly requires meeting a different set of criteria every year, so it’s not a realistic goal. I highly doubt the kids at Boston College, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, LSU and Tennessee think they’re being shafted by having to ‘settle’ for a shot at the ACC, Big XII, and SEC titles.
2) When you state that “We wouldn’t be wondering if we’re gonna let a team play for the championship who at present hasn’t beaten one top 25 team and lost to the only one they played”, I assume you’re talking about Ohio State. I agree with you and I’d like to add to your point by saying that the general feeling of “I guess they’re good but they haven’t really proven it” about this year’s Buckeye squad adds further strength to the argument that each conference should have a title game. The Pac-10 and Big East at least have a suitable round-robin compromise in place so it’s hard to be too mad about their champions’ designations. In contrast, the Big Ten is the stubborn old codger still using a rotary phone while yelling at the dang kids and their text messaging.
Instead of declaring a legitimate champion who earns it on the field every year, the Big Ten instead has given us some gems recently. Remember 2002 when Iowa and Ohio State were co-champions at 8-0 in the conference? That’s right, 2 undefeated teams who never had to play each other. Or how about the ridiculousness of having 3 co-champs (1998, 2000) or even 4(!) co-champs (1990).
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The deal is Senator, that at least teams would win it on the field. Every argument you have made against it, comes just as true in the current scenario.
You don’t want some team just to get hot at the right moment and win it. How is that any different from a team not playing anyone, losing to the only decent team they’ve played (a team you have made fun of constantly on here due to their coach) ? How are they any more deserving?
The four team thing fixes the problem for me. It will at least give me one team I can respect and if that team loses to the others then I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Telling to me is what Kirk Herbstreit just said on Cowherd’s program. He is an OSU grad and said that for OSU’s respect to be restored, it’d be much better for them if MO won Saturday and OSU went to the Rose Bowl and found a way to beat USC.
Think about that for a moment. He just said they’d garner more respect if they won a game that wasn’t the national champion. What exactly is good about that?
And you think this has been a great season? Some nice upsets but it sure looks to be ending on a downer.
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Hobnail
1) Doesn’t really concern me here. I’m not arguing for UGA to be in the NC game. I’m saying there has to be a better way than a system that places a team in the NC game with one loss against a top 25 and not a win against one anywhere.
They’d have a better argument if they were Hawaii. The only decent team they played they couldn’t beat. Hawaii maybe hasn’t played anyone but we don’t know for sure if they’d lose to anyone either.
I agree with 2 but there is no way they will change that unless the other conferences man up and say FU. If more of what happened in 2003 would occur again, we’d see some tunes change.
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Here’s why the playoffs are a bad idea– because college football isn’t about playing to win a national championship.
College football is about regionalism and rivalries, and that’s what makes the passions so great. It’s the one sport where beating your rivals has always meant more than national titles.
Just because ESPN tells you that the crowning of a ‘true’ national champion should be the goal of every sport doesn’t make it so. College football gets this. College football is more fun than the simple process of whittling everything down to one team.
That should be every sport’s goal–to give fans as much fun as possible, and that’s exactly what college football does. There are a lot of reasons that college football is our favorite sport, and the bowl structure is one of the biggest.
Who needs a definitive answer? Not me.
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College football may not be about playoffs, sure it is about regional rivals. But lets all be honest. Who doesn’t want a shot at the national championship? Auburn should have had their chance after an undefeated season. If that would have happened to UGA or any other team which you pull for, then yes you would be pissed and want to have a playoff.
4 teams or
8 teams
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No to playoffs. It would end up just as controversial. Why does every team but one have to lose a game to prove the NC? Let us just win our bowl game and be proud of our great season.
As far as moving the FL game from Jax. Please don’t EVER sign another home/home with FL. We play them in Jax b/c we don’t want those slimy lizzards to even set foot on our campus. They are disgusting.
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Richt wasn’t talking about moving the game after he beat the Gators….either time.
The contract lasts til 2010. If he wins 1 more in the next two years, I think he’ll shut up about that.
BTW — if UGA really wanted to enhance its competitive position and make an invest that would improve the program we wouldn’t throw away $25-40 million on an indoor practice facility. We’d work with Athens-Clarke County to lengthen the runway at Ben Epps Airport.
You want to change the competitive landscape…get the team in and out of Athens 4 hours or more faster each road game weekend. Get the coaches back in the film room faster. Get the players into the books sooner. Get rid of some of the jet / travel lag we experience.
That’s how you change things up. Not make yourself soft by practicing indoors for a game played outdoors.
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Hey Paul, get in line and hit the hip. CMR wants an indoor practice facility. Nuff said. Pony up boys!
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PWD is right (as is usually the case) on the practice facility. Although there is little chance the airport will expand the runway right now, it would produce exactly the benefits PWD indicates, all of which are 100% more important than not getting wet two or three times a year.
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The four team thing fixes the problem for me. It will at least give me one team I can respect and if that team loses to the others then I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Now you’re back to the four team set up. Which is it for you?
And you think this has been a great season? Some nice upsets but it sure looks to be ending on a downer.
That’s your problem, man. You keep obsessing about respect instead of kicking back and enjoying the week in and week out drama.
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The ending is important Senator, maybe most important. It makes a great movie average when it really sucks.
Seriously, why don’t you read my entire post instead of a couple of sentences. I said in that first post that I still prefer the four team playoff, but with the way things look to be going this year, the eight team is better than what we have now. Do we have a four team playoff now? I don’t think so.
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I will be voting for a ticket of Sen. Blutarsky and Jason Davis in ’08.
Keep it up Senator. I feel like the only opinions I ever hear or read are pro-playoffs, but a lot of people love cfb just the way it is (certainly I do not want playoffs). Jason’s comment was sublime; I also blame ESPN and their insultingly moronic and simplistic “FACT OR FICTION”outlook for driving this debate.
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If college football isn’t about the national championship, why did they ever tweak the system in the first play. Why not just go back to setting it up weeks in advance before the season is complete like when we won in 1980?
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