Et tu, Brian Cook?
… I’ve become a playoff guy over the past decade or so but even BCS proponents in the blogosphere (of which there appears to be one, the guy behind Get The Picture) have to wince at statements like this:
College football was one weekend away from Boise State participating in the BCS National Championship Game because of what happened on the playing field — not in a chatroom, a boardroom or a newsroom.
For the record, I, “the guy”, didn’t wince at Hancock’s lame attempt at a defense. I laughed. But why I am getting dragged in as Exhibit “A” to Brian’s smack down in the first place? I’m not pro-BCS. I’m anti-extended playoff. Those are different positions, right? Or did I miss a meeting?
Get The Picture 
Now that they don’t have THEGENIUSFORMERLYKNOWNASURBANMEYER to kick around, they picked you?
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No such thing as bad publicity, right?
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Actually, why would a Michigan fan be pro-playoff? It would just take their AD that much longer to fire their coach.
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This is the same argument that I always propose. The BCS is broken, but it’s the best thing we have going, college football fans. At least we get to see Oregon v Auburn. If it wern’t for the BCS Oregon would be playing Wisconsin in the Rose and Auburn would be playing Ohio State in the Sugar, and we’d have 1997 all over again.
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I suppose I’m one of the real crazies because the old, conference tie-in approach is what I’d rather see.
What’s wrong with having debates about who would’ve beaten who for 50 years?
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Good point. You’ve won me over. There is really nothing as fun as debating who was #1 . And if it wern’t for the old system GTU may have won a NC in the 90’s. We really dodged a bullet there, huh?
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Don’t know if you noticed, but the BCS hasn’t exactly stifled the debates over #1. LSU vs. USC in 2003. USC vs. undefeated Auburn in 2004. Undefeated mid-majors being left out of the picture in 2009 and ’10. If this is all we get from the BCS’ ridiculous mishmash of computer rankings and decimals, what the hell’s the point?
My personal “playoff preference” involves going back to the old pre-Coalition days when bowls could invite whoever the hell they wanted, then having a “plus-one” between #1 and #2 after all the bowls are finished. But even that system minus the plus-one, i.e. what TomReagan seems to be proposing, would be preferable to the BCS. Maybe a split national title isn’t the tidy Hollywood ending a lot of people want, but to my mind it’s still preferable to computer geeks and coaches’ assistants having a say in who gets to play for the big one.
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I could go for this one.
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Just remember, it doesn’t matter what they say about you, as long as they spell your blog right.
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Nothing against 2004 Auburn but can i go ahead an throw out there that we can say with 95% confidence they would’ve gotten steamrolled by USC had they tangled in the BCS cahmpionship in 2004, same goes for UF in 2006. I love how Auburn fans always forget that USC beat them like a drum in 2002 and 2003 on the road and at Jordan Hare. Also in 2006 everyone forgets how USC opened at eventual SEC west champ Arkansas and hung 50 on them.
I’ll give USC under Carroll their due. They might have forgotten to show up against some PAC 10 teams but out of conference they were an absolute juggernaut, usually blowing out a marquee OOC opponent who had that thier date with USC circled several months in advance. i’ll need a fact check on this but i think carroll’s only OOC losses were to to KSU in 02 and Texas in 05.
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I wasn’t trying to win anyone over. If I were, I’d just propose that you try to figure out which system would be the most fun to watch for you as a fan and go with that. To hell with what is best at picking the national champion.
So what if there is no clear champion. That may be important to the players and coaches, but I’m just a fan, and I want the system that’s most satisfying to me. In my case, it’s the traditional bowl system of my youth. A clear champion doesn’t really matter to me because I’m more interested in the rivalry games and conference championships. National championships are gravy.
Maybe it’s different for you. If it is, great, but I think everyone should think about the reasons why college football is their favorite sport before doing something that would radically change its character.
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+1, sir.
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-100.
I totally disagree with not having a clear cut champ. This is America. Do we have a clear cut president? Yes. Are there 50 states? Yes. There is no debate about that. We don’t need no stinkin debates about our champion. Anybody who believes otherwise must be commie!
Seriously, college baseball is a great sport too. There are plenty of passionate fans of that sport and it has a playoff. I just don’t get it. Why, if there is a playoff, will college football lose its passion and still not be a favorite sport. And, you want to talk about radically changing its character? The BCS didn’t do that? We went from having all bowls over on Jan 1 and now we stretch it out to what Jan 10 this year? We have a bunch of keyboard pecking dweebs not only determining our champion but making mistakes while doing it. There’s your radical change right there. Not buying this argument either.
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My major concern with the playoff is that it will continue the move in college football to focusing solely on who the national champion is, which has not always been the case in college football.
For me, college football is different from other sports because individual games/rivalries stand on their own. The Auburn, Tech, and Florida games have meaning totally seperated from how we or those teams do in the season. The more focus that is put on the national championship, the less those games mean.
I look at what has happened to NASCAR since the Chase for the Cup. That was NASCAR’s playoff. NASCAR’s search for a better way to find a true champion.
Since they put in the Chase, individual races like Darlington, Bristol, Talledega, Daytona, etc. have lost a lot of their meaning, and it has hurt the sport.
Having a clear national champion may be a good thing, but I don’t want to risk diluting what we already have to get there. You may be willing to take that risk, but I think you should recognize that there is a risk involved with moving to a playoff.
And you know as well as I do that the moving of games from January 1 is a product of TV and not the BCS.
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“For me, college football is different from other sports because individual games/rivalries stand on their own. The Auburn, Tech, and Florida games have meaning totally seperated from how we or those teams do in the season. The more focus that is put on the national championship, the less those games mean.”
National titles are more important than those games. However, national titles can’t/shouldn’t be won if you can’t win those games. Their meaning is multiplied if you factor in national championship ramifications i.e. AU vs Bama this year. I must be missing your point. Having a playoff would not demean the value of those games it would enhance it.
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My favorite part is when Hancock drops the “NFL Style” playoff system. I assume Mr. Hancock has never paid much attention to, you know, the other NCAA sports and their wonky looking National Championship trophy.
By the way, this line is patently false.
“The fact is the BCS accomplishes its mission with a stunningly popular national championship game.”
It is in fact, not a national championship game. The NCAA doesn’t award a national championship for D-1 football. It is a popular BCS championship game…but national championship? No.
And can someone please tell me why would have to get rid of the ‘widely popular’ bowl games if we had a playoff? Am I missing something or would there still be 44+ teams that could go to bowl games if they didn’t make the playoff?
(As another aside, if you started a playoff with a round of 16 on the first weekend of December, the 8 losers could get a bowl invite, the 8 winners could play the second week of December with the winners and losers being split among the ‘final four’ on New Years in the 4 BCS bowls and play the national championship the week after at about the same time as the national championship game is now played. And don’t give me ticket sales…the national championship game would be akin to the super bowl. Sold out years in advance with a small allotment to alumni and fans.)
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I agree. It’s quite possible to design a playoff that doesn’t hurt the bowls or the regular season.
Now whether the designers have the sense God gave ’em not to screw that up is a totally different issue. 😉
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The true “plus-one” format preserves the existing bowls and still gets the national champion out of a pool of the top 4 teams. That would capture the true “best” team almost every time (gotta be one of the top 4, right?) and preserves the integrity of the regular season, which is the method that teams play their way into the thing.
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I’ve always thought that the bowls could easily be part of the playoff, with “lesser” bowls hosting early rounds of games, and moving up the ladder until we get to the “major” bowls (which, in my mind, goes back to the Sugar, Orange, Rose and Cotton – that’ll never happen though). The championship can rotate through those four every year.
We’ve got 35 bowl games right now. That basically covers a 16 team playoff (and then some).
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You won’t get fans of a school to travel to multiple bowl games, though.
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I will give it a try.
Start with 8, 10-team conferences (old school I know) and they are the BCS conferences. The other schools are split into 4 conferences regionally. That gives 80 of the 119 teams a legitmate shot. Every team plays a their whole conference and must play at least one other game against another BCS school. They must also play one of the non-BCS schools with standardized home game only pay out for everyone say $700,000 or the poorer BCS schools could home and home or nuetral site with the sisters of the poor. With 80 BCS schools and roughly 40 non BCS schools, the non bcs teams would play their conference and at least 2 BCS schools a year – more on that later.
The 8 conference champs play are seeded, similar to the BCS and play in four neutral site games during what is now championship week. The 4 winners move on to the semi-finals in two rotating bowl games New Year’s Day. The Championship game is played a week later, again at a rotating site. Conference Champs who eliminated in the first round still go to their regular bowl tie-ins and all the other bowl games stay intact. Although I wouldn’t mind a few of them going away.
Additionally, every five years teams from the non-BCS conferences could petition to replace BCS conference teams who had not had winning records in at least 3 of the previous 5 years. To petition, a non bcs school must have won its lower conference title in the past 5 years and have a winning record against the BCS schools it played over the that period.
Regular season and conference championships matter, no wierd tie breakers to determine who plays in the conference championship, only one additional game for the two finalists, championship week TV money is replaced by the first playoff round, bowls in tact and little guys can play in to the big leagues – Are you worried Washington State?
That’s my take although I believe someone else has proposed this.
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I love the arrogance of anybody who argues that, since they don’t agree with the method of awarding a national championship, said national championship does not, therefore, exist.
Hard to argue with that “logic.”
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It amazes me how people, like Brian Cook, that hate the BCS and want playoffs design playoff systems around a ranking system (even if it is a committee style, it is still a ranking system). That’s the most fundamental aspect, and yet they carry it over, despite they claiming it being so flawed.
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Yes. This.
I am for an 8-team, conference champ-only playoff, but that would require specific & dramatic conference re-alignment which is never going to happen so why do I even bother…
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I don’t know about “never.” Before this year, I never thought 14- or 16-team superconferences would be a possibility, but now I wonder if we’ll see them within the next decade.
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It’s a subtle distinction that get’s lost on a lot of people, but you can be against a playoff and not necessarily be for the BCS. One of the frustrating things for me in these discussions is how hard it is to explain that the problems playoff proponents have with BCS are going to be the same in an extended playoff, plus a bunch more.
This is a rerun anyway. College football put this show on 20 years ago. “Just get 1 & 2 to play in a bowl!” Spoiler alert, it’s not that easy.
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Playoff proponents are just as bad as hardcore Democrats or Republicans. They choose the facts that help their cause and let everything else go by.
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Check the mirror, Pogo.
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I am quite fetching.
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It’s the whole “If you’re not for us, you’re against us” thing, Senator. Cook knows you aren’t a BCS guy (if he doesn’t, he hasn’t read enough of your stuff), but it helps his point to paint you as the lone kook who supports the BCS, as opposed to a guy who is against an extended playoff. It’s all about the spin.
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Just curious Senator, I know you referenced a small part of his work the other day, but have you read Jeff Passan’s book “Death to the BCS”?
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No. I’ve read a lot of what Wetzel has to say about the BCS at the Yahoo! sports site, though.
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I’m reading it now. Compelling stuff.
Maybe when the season comes to a close and all the final ballots are in, you can host a book club here, in the doldrums of the off-season. Say, a chapter a week.
Might be a good forum for looking at the various merits of each argument.
And your Internetz legend may grow…
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I like this idea. I’d sign up. (Of course, I also said I’d do the Mumme Poll this year…)
Bluto’s Book Club! Suck it, Oprah!
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Hope Bluto has enough light in his mom’s basement to read books. 😉
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Cryin’ Brian is at it again. He always take swipes at the good blogs. Apparently he has developed a christmas time blog crush on you Senator.
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Damn, Bluto I guess you are “movin’ on up”.
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Oh yeah, Fuck him, and the War Chikens, Cok Eagles, whatever.
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Isn’t Kyle anti-playoff, pro-bowls?
I know that isn’t a “BSC proponent”, but I would say he prefers the BSC to playoffs.
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“anti-extended playoff”? What the hell is that? You cannot extend that which doesn’t exist. We have no playoff, we have no National Champion. We have a BCS title holder, and that is an appointed position. After looking at the methodology of the “appointment”: computer geeks, pollsters of various degrees of awareness, and coaches who politicize the process, or delegate it to an underling. Beautiful!
I can agree, that frivolous process should not be extended.
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That kind of reasoning doesn’t seem to stop you from being a playoff proponent. 😉
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No, I don’t even pretend my proposal would be an extension of anything. It is a “revolutionary concept”, only to D1 football of course, designed to provide a purpose beyond conference championships. I am OK with ending at conference titles, not logical to me though, I am just against us pretending we have done anything beyond that. If we didn’t have MNC declarations, I would be less outspoken about the need for a playoff.
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Has this ever been propsed for a playoff? a five team playoff, where there’s a play in game between 4 and 5 to play the # 1 seed, and a game between 2 and 3. winners of 2 and 3 and 1 vs 4/5 play for the championship. the current BCS bowls could then rotate between play in game, two semifinals, and the championship game. example this year: Orange is play in, Sugar and Rose are semifinals and Fiesta is Championship.
Keep the BCS standings and the conferences. Doesn’t devalue the regaular season. Am i missing something?
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No offense intended, but since most of your posts on the subject are arguments against a playoff I assumed you were against a playoff in any form. Maybe you should post what your ideal scenario is. I’m also opposed to a 16 team playoff, BTW
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If I were the god-king of college football for a day, this is what I’d come up with.
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Super conferences are my only chance, so I am supportive. Hard to believe how close this came to being reality over the off-season. From out of no-where to one more domino……damn!
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