January 9, 2013 · 7:47 AM

It’s January 13, 2020. Do you know where your playoff game is?

College football’s new playoff rotation results in the longest football seasons ever.

I guess Bill Hancock’s gonna have to find a new talking point about academics.

15 Comments

Filed under BCS/Playoffs

15 responses to “It’s January 13, 2020. Do you know where your playoff game is?”

  1. Macallanlover
    January 9, 2013 at 8:39 AM

    Come on man, basketball runs from early November until April and has dozens of mid-wweek games, Complaining about a handful of teams playing until mid-January is just a smoke-screen for opposing a playoff,

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    • Senator Blutarsky
      January 9, 2013 at 8:42 AM

      You’ve missed my point. If college football were a year-round sport, I wouldn’t complain. It’s the hypocrisy of folks like Hancock I’m riffing on.

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      • Macallanlover
        January 9, 2013 at 9:47 AM

        I am no defender of Hancock, in his position he has been the person defending the BCS system for years, but there is no denying any playoff system will have conflicts with exam schedules, even the current bowls bring conflicts for involved teams. It seems like that can be worked around, and again, it isn’t like all teams are involved. 1AA has been dealing with this for decades.

        From an academic standpoint, why is so much weight assigned to “final exams” anyway? The entire semester is the learning experience and exams/interactions to measure progress should be spread above the total time period, imo.

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        • Always Someone Else's Fault
          January 9, 2013 at 10:55 AM

          That works for formative assessments over the course of a semester, but that final summative assessment exists primarily (in most courses) to separate As from Bs and Bs from Cs, etc. (the achievement hierarchy). It’s the “playoff stage” of the course for a lot of professors, if you want to think of it that way – sort of a “settling it on the field” approach to assigning final grades for that GPA you carry with you the rest of your life.

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          • Macallanlover
            January 10, 2013 at 10:00 AM

            That is a fair, and solid, assessment, imo. My problem with the heavy reliance on a final (only exam given in many cases) is it seems to put most of the weight on the student. I feel the professor should have more on-going interaction before the exam date to see how well he/she is doing in comminicating and teaching. All the grades for success are placed on the student, not enough on the educator. I also dislike the overload of measuring a whole semester’s effort for 3-5 courses being crammed into a one week period.

            In summary, I just feel the measuring process is out of balance with the learning process. I have much deeper concerns with the approach to education in this country, the exam issue is more an outgrowth of our need to keepscore and rank.

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      • Cojones
        January 11, 2013 at 1:22 PM

        My wife thinks it’s a year-round sport.

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        • Senator Blutarsky
          January 11, 2013 at 2:18 PM

          In a better world, it would be.

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        • Macallanlover
          January 11, 2013 at 2:21 PM

          Wonder what has her so confused? Mine has already questioned my honesty about CFB being over. I told her the difference is I am much more relaxed while I plan our strategy for next season, not intense at all. The pets are no longer afraid to approach me. I won’t be too escited again until I hear the tinkly music of The Masters theme, then it is “game on” again as I await the pre-season magazines. Hopefully there will be a non-Masters weekend Spring Game to attend too.

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    • Gravidy
      January 9, 2013 at 8:46 AM

      I’d be on board with this comment, if it had been directed at Bill Hancock.
      🙂

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  2. Gravidy
    January 9, 2013 at 8:44 AM

    I’ve seen this fancy new term floating around: access bowl. Am I correct in assuming that those are the six bowls which are eliglible to host semi-final games? In any given year of the new system, two of them will host semi-final games while the other four scramble to cobble together their traditional matchups as much as possible – except that one of them will be forced to take the highest ranked “group of five” champion. Is that it? Or am I missing something?

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  3. MGW
    January 9, 2013 at 9:20 AM

    Please stop the weeknight bowl games. They should all be on an holidays or Saturdays, no exceptions. That’ll fix your attendance and the ratings will be just fine. And it will just plain be better.

    Instead of waiting a few weeks to start bowl season, how bout just start the crappy bowls the first Saturday after the conference championships. Then have a few more the next Saturday, then a couple the days before and the day after Christmas, then new years eve and new years day you wrap the bowls/semi-finals up and have the championship Saturday week after that.

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  4. Decatur Dawg
    January 9, 2013 at 10:15 AM

    Senator – you are overlooking that the new set up will shorten the season for more teams than it will lengthen. There will only be 2 teams playing beyond NYD rather than 8.

    I agree with MGW that the weeknight games are the pits.

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  5. Bryant Denny
    January 10, 2013 at 6:49 PM

    I just don’t see folks travelling to the semifinal sites and then turning around and heading off to the finals.

    What am I missing? How is that supposed to work?

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    • Macallanlover
      January 10, 2013 at 7:06 PM

      I think there is a two week break (week off) between the Jan 1 semis and the finals. In my 8 team playoff scenario I proposed the finals always be in a mid-continent dome ( Indy, St. Louis, Dalls, San Antonio) to prevent mega-travel problems for any school’s location. Also felt the bid from the winning city should guarantee “X thousand” hotel rooms for each school, and have airlines willing to offer charter flights. Isn’t perfect but would eliminate some of the horror stories if they don’t include those guarantees. Any city awarded the finals is going to make millions off the visiting fans anway. (Also would suggest Detroit be eliminated from consideration for the finals for obvious reasons.)

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