LMAO listening to ESPNU Bracketology – they’re all bitching about RPI and who beat who and who should be in and who shouldn’t… while Bobby Knight thinks the NCAA should just expand the tourney to 128 teams to make sure the best 64 get in.
Of course, that’s all being blamed on the automatic conference tournament winners like Georgia. Pretty ironic, considering what the talking heads said about why the football team didn’t deserve to play for the MNC this past season, isn’t it?
And let’s hear it for Coppin State – the first 20 loss team to make the tourney. That’s one reason they call it March Madness, I guess.
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UPDATE: Groo has a succinct comment about the bastion of consistency that is ESPN.
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UPDATE #2: More thoughts about mission creep and the inevitable consequences of an expanded tourney at College Football Resource. It’s not like any of this concern is new, by the way – see what I posted on this subject exactly one year ago.
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UPDATE #3: One more point from Groo:
… Cowherd had a great point today – if we’re this hung up over the 65th seed to the basketball tournament, how bad will it get when we’re talking about the #8 or #16 seed in a football playoff?
Bad enough to look at adding more, IMO.
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UPDATE #4: So this is where it’s gotten to.
We don’t need to revamp one of sports’ most treasured events by diluting it so much that participating in it feels like going to the local YMCA for a pickup game.
Hey, show up and you qualify!
Keep the tournament at 65 teams. Let common sense prevail.
Permitting a 20 loss team to participate in a national championship tourney is “letting common sense prevail”. I’m obviously an idiot, then.
Get The Picture 
Dear various complainers on the bubble:
You should have won your conference championship. Like we did.
Yours,
Georgia
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+1
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Haha, I love it. The current system worked out awesomely for the Dawgs, while also emphasizing why “playoffs don’t undermine the regular season” arguments are just nonsense.
Now, the way to REALLY prove it would be to win the whole thing. A sub-.500 national champion? That’s what I call Madness!
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I was waiting for that to come up. Funny, how it works – the thing that everyone harped on about the football team, came back to work out for the basketball team. Karma?
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That’s as good a reason as any.
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I assume the ironic title carries with it the usual argument.
I’m still not sure the two sports are analogous though. The nature of CFB makes it impossible to allow the field to creep too far, and the brevity of the regular season makes it impossible for those games to loose meaning.
If nothing else, these tournaments just remind us of how much more fun it is for a team to be able to prove doubters wrong in a way that’s meaningful, something that rarely/never can happen in CFB.
After this basketball season is over, no team other than the crowned champion will be able to make a case that it deserved the title, the games will be fun to watch, and that champion might come from anywhere thanks to the dramatically reduced influence of media bias, school size, and conference affiliations as compared to CFB.
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I agree with ladydawg. Karma is a funny thing. However Herbstreit can still eat sh*t.
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The nature of CFB makes it impossible to allow the field to creep too far, and the brevity of the regular season makes it impossible for those games to loose meaning.
Honestly, I don’t know why you think either of those are valid statements.
By my count, there are five weeks between the conference championships and the BCS title game. That’s enough time to put on a 32 school tourney. Junk the 12th game or the conference championships and you can squeeze 64 teams in there.
Don’t underestimate the forces of greed and the desire for coaches to have some postseason honor, slight though it may be, to add to the resume.
And once you’ve got a big enough postseason, a regular season loss means very little for the top teams, other than seeding.
Again, you like the excitement that an extended playoff generates, and that’s OK with me. But I don’t think you’ve assessed the consequences carefully, or they don’t matter very much in your analysis because you prefer a playoff format.
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Good points, Senator. I think greed/economics may actually be a potential limiting factor on the size of the CFB post-season, though.
Aren’t the logistics of getting a fanbase to travel to and sell-out a 70,000 seat football game prohibitive of playing 4 or 5 such games at locales around the nation in consecutive weeks?
The local draw and casual fan appeal may be enough to overcome that and still sell out the games (though I doubt it), but the expense and logistics that would faces the teams themselves would be perhaps even more daunting.
Traveling 100 players vs 5, far more equipment requirements, far more injuries, far more stringent requirements for facilities/venues, far more likelihood of a thunderstorm causing a game to be postponed and screwing up the entire operation, etc..
See what I’m getting at? Football is the equivalent of a wedding whereas basketball is like going out to dinner. I can’t fathom a 32 or 64 team playoff, but you very well might be right that they would find a way…
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I said 100 players vs 5, but I should have said 24 vs 5 or 100 vs 20.
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Also, in response to Cowherd’s point: Nowhere near as bad as trying to decide which of 3 undefeated BCS teams gets to watch from home.
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Aren’t the logistics of getting a fanbase to travel to and sell-out a 70,000 seat football game prohibitive of playing 4 or 5 such games at locales around the nation in consecutive weeks?
Some of that can be overcome by playing the first round or two of the playoffs in the home stadiums of the higher seeded teams.
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Simply put…every team on the bubble was lousy this year. Arizona over Arizona State looks like a screw job, but the Sun Devils should have scheduled someone OOC.
VT’s best win was a loss. No dice.
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I agree with what Groo said overall about Bob Knight’s comments. But the comparison of the Herbstreit to Knight quotes was pretty lame.
1. They are talking about two totally different sports who have two totally different ways of deciding championships.
2. They are two people who ESPN hires to express their opinion. That’s not a bad thing (bastion of inconsistency), that’s a good thing (letting people express their opinions). ESPN hopefully is not telling Knight or Herbstreit what to think. My problem is when a guy like Herbie says you have to win your conference this year, but just a year ago said no conference title Michigan should play for it over conference winner UF. Now that’s inconsistency.
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