Doesn’t he get this whole “settling it on the field” business?
Q: Why do you support the BCS?
A: I’ve got an easier road to win a national championship than I do going to a playoff. Five years ago, people said the TCUs of the world, Boise and Utah would never play in a BCS game and be successful. Now we’re doing that. It’s only a matter of time before the other stuff’s going to happen. You’re going to find a team that’s going to get a chance to be there.
Q: How does that happen?
A: Keep winning. Start high in the polls, play good people. People are figuring out the Mountain West Conference is a tough league. We gained the respect, and that helps us with the respect down the road with the computer rankings. There’s only one way you can make a point and that’s not to whine about it, not to complain about it, just to go out there and prove it on the field. That’s what we try to do at our program. I think that’s why people around the country have taken TCU as one of their favorites this year because we tried to do it the right way. That’s what it’s all about, trying to do it the right way…
The man obviously doesn’t have a clue. Maybe Hatch and Barton can talk some sense into him.
Get The Picture 
Whatever worked for Patterson’s grandfather, and all that.
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Puffdawg FTW!
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Well, he will change his tune when a 2 loss SEC team gets in before his undefeated Horned Frogs.
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No, I don’t think he will. Patterson is right. Playoffs don’t favor non-Big Six teams. Especially, if as the Senator fears, the playoff gets expanded.
If you only have a 4 team playoff it lessens TCU’s chances to get in.
If you expand it to 8 or 10 or 12 0r 16… 0r 96 teams, that just adds more games that TCU has to win against very tough and usually better stocked teams.
If you had an 8-team playoff last season and took the 6 conference champs with the top 2 remaining teams (TCU & Florida) and seeded them in a bracket, TCU would have had to have beaten Florida, then Bama, then probably Texas to win the title. Patterson realizes that is much harder than getting lucky by being picked over a 2 loss SEC team.
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The scenario he depicts is far from transparent.
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The second-best team in the NFL won!!! Playoffs are a sham, I tell you!
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Last night wasn’t a good one for certain people around these parts…
The second best team won the head to head game with the ‘best team’ and now makes a sham of the title because of it..
And, for all the fuss and uproar from the pro-abortion side of the arguement that Tebow ad made their ire and outrage look foolish and little more than hair-trigger paranoia.
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The Denny’s chickens need Tim Tebow’s mom to make a commercial for them.
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It’s all a matter of perspective, innit? 🙂
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UGA blogger poll:
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Not sure the point of linking a site we have to register for (unless you are a bot), or whether you are supporting SB or dogging him, but feel free not to visit this blog if you don’t like its contents. It is a free country, after all. 🙂
The way I see it he is presenting the facts supporting his case, none of which have been repetitive. I will assume by “We fonkin’ get it already” you concede the issue?
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Actually, I don’t think you do.
But I’ll keep trying. 😉
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Once again, Senator, you astound me.
Winning a season’s championship should be about that season. It shouldn’t require a long process of steady escalation in order to START the season in position to be invited.
This only further illustrates the subjective nature of determining D-1 (FBS) champion.
Geez!
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I guess I don’t understand your point here. Are you saying there’s something wrong with building a program into national contender status? Isn’t that what guys like Beamer and Bowden did at their schools?
If you’re complaining about subjective playoffs being inferior to a conference-only champ setup, I’m with you there, though.
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No. I agree that is how you build a competitive program. What I do not agree with is the importance placed on being ranked high to begin the season (“Start high in the polls”).
As I have often stated, I would be fine with a conference champ only playoff. At least everybody had their shot at it. We both know that conferences are not created equally, still it would be better than the current system.
My football utopia would require re-classification. There are simply too many teams.
Back to Patterson, he knows his best shot is to luck into a one and done scenario. Winning four games in January is probably more difficult than winning the hearts and minds of voters.
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I think you’d have to tweak the conferences to make a CCO-playoff work. The best first step towards an improved postseason would be to lop off the bottom third of D-1.
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Agreed!
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We could call it the “sure it will never happen, but wouldn’t it be great if it did” playoff system.
FWIW, I agree that a reduction in 1-A coupled with constant conference realignment would be most fair, but see above.
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And you want to make it “objective” by including Boise 2009 and excluding Florida 2009 in a playoff, just because Boise won its conference. Nothing about that is fair.
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Florida had its shot in the SEC Championship game. I agree, Florida would probably beat Boise St. but that is subjective. Any proclamation of one undefeated team over another undefeated team is subjective.
If you want to retain the subjectivity of the process, get prepared for CREEP.
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I totally agree. UF should not have been eligible. But nor should Boise. They need to do exactly what is at the core of this post, which is build up their credibility over time. Play a better schedule than 90th in the country.
Honestly though, I don’t think the process can ever be totally objective and fair unless you follow the reduction and realignment proposal. And in my mind, that will never happen. You are dead on in that the best way is to have conf champions only, but in the current setup that would be complete bs. To me, the WAC is not a good enough conf to be considered national title worthy.
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Except that Florida had its shot and lost. On the field. Not on paper, not in someone’s head. They lost.
Lost. Did not win. Came in second.
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So a win over UC Davis counts the same as a win over Georgia, but more than a loss to Alabama. In essence, playing in the SEC becomes a handicap.
Should head-to-head matchups between SEC and WAC teams involve spotting points to the WAC team? If Boise State started a game with a 10-point lead over an SEC team, we could still call it settling it on the field, right?
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My point wasn’t that Florida should’ve been eligible for Nat’l Championship. It was that simply being a conf champ should not justify Boise St as a contender. The conference strengths are so out of balance, that is an unfair approach.
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Your opinion of who is a better team dictates fairness for you. You don’t think Boise St, or their conference, is good enough so you do not want them to even have a chance.
That type of subjectivity and control is what is wrong with the BCS and any similar system.
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I guess at the end of the day, the way I feel about it is there are too many teams in college football to ever truly determine a national champion fairly and objectively without watering down the regular season that I cherish so much. People have become so fixated with having a national champion, they’ve come to completely ignore what, to me, makes cfb so special. Why can’t we be satisfied to beat our rivals, win the conference, and win a bowl? These are goals we can control all while keeping the regualr season more than just a seeding exercise. For those that say the season is currently devalued if you can’t make the MNC game: would you rather go to the Independence Bowl or the Citrus Bowl? There are incentives to win in the current system.
Even the “perfect” system SB has devised has errors – eventually, 8 conference champs will not be enough. We’ll have to invite more teams (look at his current poll). And I guarantee you he knows that and has thought about it.
There is no perfect solution to naming a true champ in CFB. There will never be one. There will always be a debate. That fact, coupled with the fact that we have the best regular season in organized sports, is what makes cfb so special. At least to me.
Our society is obsessed with instant gratification. GOTTA HAVE WHAT I WANT NOW! We fail to look for the downside. I know the BCS isn’t perfect. But I know whatever playoff format is eventually chosen will not satisfy the masses. So we’ll change again. And then again. And eventually we’ll have 64 teams playing in a post season just so that we can include the little guy to be fair. F$#& fair. Go out and build your reputation and eventually people will come around to you. Gary Patterson gets that (original point of this blog post, BTW). Once we open that playoff door, there is no going back. CFB will never be the same.
I know I come off as hardheaded on this blog, but I respect your guys opinions. I really do. I appreciate what your trying to do, in theory. But I think your proposals are all so varied that inevitably we are going to wind up in that situation where the regular season is merely a seeding exercise. And I like what we have. That is why I argue constantly against your proposals. Eventually you will come to see the light!
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> The man obviously doesn’t have a clue.
You are right. He doesn’t.
You could have saved yourself time and simply used that as your entire blog post.
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I believe him. Seems like a much more difficult road to beat 3-4+ top 8-16 teams (depending on the format) en route to the championship versus handling his regular season opponents and keeping fingers crossed that the rest of the top teams have sub par seasons (like ’07).
Though I would suggest upping the ante’ a bit when it comes to OOC scheduling, because that is where the strength of schedule issue seems to bite most of these undefeated mid-major teams.
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It’s a catch-22. Harder schedules make losses more likely. As it is, Boise State can play the #89 schedule, then scream about being excluded from championship consideration. But if they had to play Alabama’s schedule, they would probably lose 2 or 3 games.
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Hatch and Barton…or Obama. Congressmen are one thing. The friggin president is talking about getting involved now.
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