Michael Elkon beat me to the punch this morning with this, but that’s okay, because he says it better than I would have.
And as somebody who based part of his decision on where to attend college on getting to see live ACC basketball, I couldn’t agree more with his last sentence.
Get The Picture 
We see the future of football with playoffs in Calipari’s remarks.
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You guys don’t understand. CFB has too much tradition and too many rivalries for this sort of thing to ever happen, where as CBB skipped the tradition part and went straight to March Madness. There were never rivalries in CBB to destroy in the first place. Just March Madness. From the beginning. Ever.
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You’re playing a chicken and the egg game. Did the playoffs expand because there were no rivalries, and thus the regular season never meant anything? Or did the playoff expansion kill the rivalries and regular season? I believe the latter.
I’ll give you that football rivalries are generally more intense than basketball rivalries. But football doesn’t have an extended playoff, so the regular season still means something. The day UGA plays GT and it has no effect on our post season seeding is the day I stop caring (so much) about beating the jackets.
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I think you missed the tongue in cheek part of that.
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Three points-
– The ridiculous finish between UCONN/L’ville yesterday, which was the last act in a tight struggle between two bubble teams, was what you’d call a meaningful regular season game. It’s not entirely black and white.
– There are some examples of throw-the-regular-season-out that we can be OK with. Georgia’s run in the ’08 SEC tournament is one of them. And not because we’re Georgia partisans, but because that was pretty much awesome. Again, not entirely black and white.
– Of the national champions in basketball in the 00s, I have qualms with two: ’03 Syracuse, a decent team who caught fire at the end and who played its regional finals in friggin Albany, and ’06 Florida, who pretty much played the easiest bracket ever (a mid-major in the Final Four!) and avoided Duke and UCONN, who would have likely ground the Gators into a fine paste. Of the national champions in football in the 00s, I have qualms with…three: ’02 anOSU and ’06 Florida, who Houdini’d their way through lousy teams left and right and benefited from turd-witted coaching from the MNC game opposition, and ’07 LSU for all the obvious reasons. So.
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You were OK with #2? You mean that fluke SEC tournament run that gave us another year of the hell that was Dennis Felton?
It’s laughable to me that people fail to recognize that one of the reasons coaches want a playoff/expanded playoff is to keep their jobs despite mediocre performance. Please don’t tell me that just because of that ridiculous run in the SEC tourney that you truly believed Felton had earned another year.
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Actually, the SEC tournament didn’t give us another year of Felton. It gave us part of another year. Damon Evans gave Felton enough rope to hang himself, and when the deed was done- losing Favors, barely cracking 40 points some nights- that was that.
“Please don’t tell me that just because of that ridiculous run in the SEC tourney that you truly believed Felton had earned another year.”
He hadn’t earned it, but I didn’t mind the extension. FWIW, Felton in the ’08 SEC tournament is the greatest college basketball coaching performance of the last decade. Really. It was flukey as all hell, sure, but name me another coach that won a ring allocating *those* sorts of resources.
Additionally, it wasn’t that inconceivable that Georgia would have sniffed the bubble in ’09, given forward momentum and all. But then Dolla Bill got in trouble with the law, and it was game over from there.
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Also: In Georgia’s history, it has won *three* SEC tournament championships, and one of those is only recognized because UK had to vacate their ’90 crown. So yeah. Dennis Felton is responsible for half of Georgia’s SEC tournament championships. Don’t discount that, whatever else you say about him (and believe me, I’ve said a lot too).
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The point of the post is that with a (extended) playoff, the regular season doesn’t matter as much as it would without a (extended) playoff. It only matters for seeding. In 2008, UGA hoops won the title despite sucking in the regular season. Are you comfortable saying you think UGA was the best team in the SEC in 2008 because they “proved it on the court” over four games, despite being horrible for the regular season?
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That was my point in my post. Once we retained Felton after that run I decided that I would never support a playoff format that rewarded mediocrity. Sadly, the NCAA tournament does this and so does the wild card in baseball and so does the wild card in football and so does the Eastern Conference in the NBA. Playoff expansion and dilution of the regular season is inevitable. I, for one, do not welcome our playoff overlords.
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SANCTITY OF THE REGULAR SEASON, BAY-BEE!
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Nice try, but no. The Tigers were ranked seventh the week before the end of the regular season.
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We don’t consider the SECCG the “regular season,” as you recall it has SUPER BOWL-LIKE IMPORTANCE, rising us from #7 to #2.
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Well, the Pitt-West Virginia game, which tossed everything back up in the air, was a regular season game.
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“I decided that I would never support a playoff format that rewarded mediocrity. Sadly, the NCAA tournament does this and so does the wild card in baseball and so does the wild card in football and so does the Eastern Conference in the NBA.”
Hi!
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Outside of the title game, the BCS isn’t a playoff. I thought that’s what everybody’s been arguing about. 😉
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I don’t remember you playing for the BCS championship. I do remember you getting your ass handed to you by Oregon State/Ohio State/LSU in games that were not for the national title, however. Nice try though.
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My point being, of course, that the BCS *certainly* rewards mediocrity.
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How does Notre Dame making an exhibition bowl game relate to a mediocre team winning a conference and/or national championship? I missed the connection.
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’08 Georgia wasn’t the best team in the conference. They were, however, the NCAA-recognized automatic bid. I’m OK with the difference. It is what it is.
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Agree to disagree. I don’t get any satisfaction from knowing a shitty team is the “champion” just because they got hot for a few games.
Side note: the winner of the BCS NCG is the NCAA coaches-recognized champion. That, too, is what it is.
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Actually, it is. That game was between two teams not ranked in the Top 25, one of which has a losing conference record. The only reason the game had meaning (outside of the school’s own fanbases, of course) is because of the 64-team tournament.
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Reasons Nos. 7, 234 and 7,235 mid-major hoops is superior:
1. No John Calipari.
2. People give a crap about regular season titles, because anything more than a single first-round upset is pretty much a no-go.
College hoops is fine in the silent mid-majority. Maybe not as healthy as it’s been in the past, but fine.
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Why not, two more points, again in bullets as I’m lazy:
– I don’t really have a problem with Cal’s statement. The SEC this year is UK and everyone else, a couple of road boners notwithstanding. The conference was won when Wall and Cousins signed their LOIs. The regular season was rendered more meaningless by other programs not having their stuff together.
– Elkon: “You make me feel better about no longer caring for a sport that excited me as a kid.” See, Rogers Redding and the Krazy Krew are doing that for me.
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Senator, why are you always trying to draw the analogy between two different sports (CBB & CFB) to make an argument against the playoff in CFB?
Are you suggesting that if there were a playoff system in college football that coaches would suddenly stop caring about conference titles?
Because Conference Titles mean so much now in CFB.
Those BCS Exhibition Games Sponsored by (Fill-in-the-Blank) offer big time bucks. And goody bags for the participants! Everyone wins when it’s an exhibition!
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Because I’m not making an argument against a playoff. I’m making an argument against an extended playoff.
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I’m not inferring anything or trying to put words in Blutarsky’s mouth, but the argument against an extended playoff may as well be an argument against any playoff. Name me a sport with a playoff, any sport, which said playoff has not ballooned since 1945.
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touche, gotcha.
keeping it real @ 64,
jerome
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JC is a politician. He is just saying what Big Blow Nation wants to hear. It is truly a national title or nothing in Lexington.
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