If “college football has reached new highs in recent years”, why does it “passionately, frantically, desperately need a playoff system“?
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“We remember the Sugar Bowl, I think it my junior year of high school, we let Alabama beat us twice,” Brinson said of a team that also lost to the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship game. “We’re not letting Alabama beat us twice. In the Sugar Bowl in 2018, they… thought they should have been in the playoffs and lost to Texas.” -- AB-H, 12/27/23
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Get The Picture · Bloviation for the Dawgnation
Get The Picture 
Senator
In terms of evaluating the basketball playoffs, I don’t think you are a guy anyone should listen to. I’m a bigger football fan than basketball fan, but I still love basketball and March madness. And irregardless of what you think, so do many others.
Do I want that in football? No. But your constant arguing of how bad the basketball system is falls on deaf ears because it’s continually obvious that you don’t care much for the sport, nor would you even if they had a two team tournament like they do in football.
Again, I’d just rather hear from someone on this who enjoys both sports a great deal.
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You’ve missed the point badly, I’m afraid.
Look, I’m not evaluating March Madness with this post. College basketball is what it is. I enjoy it on a certain level very much, like I do most college sports (all of which have playoffs, by the way). I go to Athens and watch several games a year; I always catch Virginia when the Cavs play Tech at Alexander. Going back to my college days, my bet is that I’ve seen a lot more college basketball in person than you have.
Absolutely none of which has any bearing on the question I asked, which in essence is why is March Madness a good template for college football playoffs. You seem to indicate that it’s not, but rather than deal with my question on the merits, you prefer to create a straw man to knock down.
That’s weak.
By the way, did you even read the linked piece? It’s little more than an attempt to dress up an “I like brackets” argument into something more noble.
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Maybe on this question you’re right, but I’ve seen you several times put down the tournament on here. Indeed arguing that teams like NC State or Villanova winning a title would be a travesty.
The funny thing is, despite the fact that it should be easier now with the best freshman in the game normally leaving after one or two years, you would think we’d have more NC States or Villanovas. We don’t.
I will say this, college football probably has a better argument for using a multiple team playoff than basketball.
Basketball has the schedule and the time of game that would be conducive to matching multiple out of conference games to better determine who really is the best team during the regular season.
College football does not have that capability. Thus you end up with an OSU team playing in the championship game despite not beating one ranked team (on the date they played them) all year. And the Michigan team UF played was a far cry from the banged up one OSU played in November.
I’ll say this, UGA is gonna play a booger of a schedule next year. Yes, if there is only one undefeated BCS team and we lose just one game, win the conference, we’ll get in. On the other hand if there are two undefeated BCS teams (no matter how crappy their schedule is) we don’t with one loss.
When people are saying that LSU got in with two losses and one will mean the SEC champion automatically goes with one loss now they are dreaming. LSU was the best choice of two loss teams and that’s all we had after OSU.
Again, I’m not for a 16 24 or 32 team tournament. And it may expand if and when they start a four or eight teamer. But there is absolutely nothing fair about the process and the schedules that each team plays. And I’ll guarantee you if the Big 10 were as competitive as the SEC, OSU wouldn’t be scheduling USC and Texas. With the way the Big 10 is going, they almost need that game now to validate their season.
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Maybe on this question you’re right, but I’ve seen you several times put down the tournament on here. Indeed arguing that teams like NC State or Villanova winning a title would be a travesty.
Again, you continue to misconstrue my position. I’ve never said anything about NC State or ‘Nova winning the tourney.
The “travesty”, to use your word, is that March Madness is set up to allow a 16-20 team like Coppin State to have a chance, however weak, to play for a national championship. Once you’ve crossed that point, it’s hard to take any talk about letting the best team prove it on the field as serious.
You don’t say it flat out, but I suspect you feel that having a Coppin State in a tourney is ultimately something you could tolerate to avoid another Auburn 2004 situation. Me, I think that’s a situation where the cure is far worse than the disease.
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“like”, that would mean you didn’t say that about those teams directly, but it’s pretty easy to see where you’re going with it.
A team like Coppin St. would never make it in football. We don’t have conference tournaments in football and never will. That’s why I said that basketball is in better position to decide who is the best team in the regular season than football. You can play more games and have more out of conference competition to widdle it down.
In football you have UGA playing a horrendous schedule this year and OSU playing a weak one like last year.
You have OU and USC playing one to two teams who could possibly challenge them in 2004, meanwhile Auburn plays two top ten teams, and a few more top 20 times. How could anyone complain about their out of conference schedule when their in conference one is loaded compared to the weaker Big 10 and very top heavy Big 12 and Pac 10.
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irregardless is not a word. Regardless would suffice.
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Senator, all I can say is the BCS is still a mess. Check out the article by B.J. Bennett of Southern Pigskin entitled, Playoff anyone?
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http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irregardless
It’s a word, often used in casual speech or writing (this is casual writing BTW, Bob Costas says so) for emphasis.
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A team like Coppin St. would never make it in football. We don’t have conference tournaments in football and never will.
Sure it could happen. All it would take is (1) a conference that plays a championship game – which is nothing more than a one round tournament – and (2) a playoff for which conference champs get an automatic berth.
If all the teams in one division go 4-4 in conference play and have a losing OOC record, one will be selected to play in the conference championship game. If that school wins, you’ve got a team with a losing record in the tourney. Far fetched? Absolutely. But so is having a 20 loss team playing in March Madness.
The point, again, is that it’s what the rules allow. I don’t see how you can ignore the fact that permitting schools with losing records to be eligible to play for a national championship debases the regular season.
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Senator, all I can say is the BCS is still a mess. Check out the article by B.J. Bennett of Southern Pigskin entitled, Playoff anyone?
Um… I did. That’s why it’s linked in my initial post. You honestly find what he wrote makes sense?
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You have OU and USC playing one to two teams who could possibly challenge them in 2004, meanwhile Auburn plays two top ten teams, and a few more top 20 times. How could anyone complain about their out of conference schedule when their in conference one is loaded compared to the weaker Big 10 and very top heavy Big 12 and Pac 10.
You’ve changed your tune a little bit here, haven’t you?
Aren’t you the guy who wrote this?
I’m not sure what you’re advocating here. If it’s that the BCS is unfair because it doesn’t take strength of schedule into account, I couldn’t agree with you more. If you’re saying that an extended tourney would fix the problem, we’re back to the cure being worse than the disease, IMO.
By the way, I don’t think your factual argument holds as much water as you’d like (to be fair, I took a similar position in the linked post). I went back and checked Sagarin and CFP.com for the three schools’ strength of schedule rankings in 2004. USC was ranked 25th by CFP and 7th by Sagarin. Oklahoma was ranked 6th by CFP and 13th by Sagarin. Auburn brought up the rear: 46th in the CFP rankings and 60th in Sagarin’s. There’s some merit to the criticism Auburn took for scheduling a pretty heinous OOC schedule that year.
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My point is that the thing is screwed up. No matter how you want to look at it. I still stand by the idea that no one could’ve said for sure which two teams belonged in that game in 2004 before it was played.
On the other hand, Auburn played a tougher schedule and while they didn’t blow teams out the same way the other teams did, they didn’t just have one big game on their schedule to get up for. Honestly, had OSU beaten Illinois last year they would’ve been undefeated and it would’ve been impossible to say for sure they were not deserving. The fact that they lost one game at home to a decent but not outstanding team, sorta revealed that don’t you think?
I think it’s possible to say between the three teams that it was impossible going in to say who was most deserving. On the other hand, I could’ve still said the scheduling didn’t help us in that area and Auburn definitely had the toughest row to hoe.
I don’t see conflict there.
Regarding Coppin St., argue all you want but it’s very, very far fetched.
In the history of football I don’t think there has ever been a conference, maybe in any sport, where all the teams ended up .500. Secondly, you have to qualify for a game, there is no qualification for the basketball tournament in conferences. You get in because you are a member of the conference. Coppin St. would not have qualified if it had been football.
Nice try, but I ain’t buyin’ that one.
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What I can tell you is that there has been a plethora of years where all we can do at the end is guess which team we think is no. 1. Many years where more than one team won all their games and never got a chance to show they were better than the other team.
That’s happened a lot. But we’re scared a conference is gonna end up with every team at .500.
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