Remember back in 2005, when the NCAA voted to expand college football’s regular season with a twelfth game and visions of sugar plums danced in our heads of schools using that extra game to swing a good matchup?
It turns out at the time that Georgia took that stuff seriously.
“I don’t even remember how this thing happened,” Richt said. “We made a decision at Georgia. ….We said when we go to this 12th game we’re going to add another BCS opponent, mostly somewhere out of the Southeast region. So the Arizona States we played and the Oklahoma States we played, and we did a little bit of that kind of thing and we also, Clemson got put in during that time. It was still another BCS opponent out of our league.”
That was then. This is now:
“Periodically, it’s good to play these kind of nonconference games,” Georgia AD Greg McGarity said a few weeks back about Notre Dame. “Whenever we schedule a game whether it’s them or someone else, it’s just periodic in nature. Does that mean every three or four years? I don’t know. It’s just what feels right and what’s best for our program.”
Time will tell, right, Greg?
At least now Georgia can get back to the basic reason the NCAA added that twelfth game in the first place.
The prospect of extending the season had raised the concerns of the reform-minded Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which urged NCAA officials to reject the 12th game until the impact of rigorous new academic standards had become clear. ACC officials unanimously opposed it, arguing that an 11-game season was sufficient for college students. The American Football Coaches Association also lobbied against it, fearing the physical toll it would take on their squads.
But with millions of dollars of untapped revenue at stake, NCAA board members met behind closed doors yesterday and voted, 8-2 with one abstention, in favor of adding a 12th game.
For football powers such as Michigan, Ohio State and Tennessee, which play in 100,000-seat stadiums that dwarf the typical NFL venue, an extra home game could mean more than $3 million per year in additional revenue.
Kansas Chancellor Bob Hemenway, chairman of the NCAA directors, said in a conference call after the vote that “there were a number of issues” that argued in favor of extending the schedule. “It was not just money,” Hemenway said.
When they say it’s not about money…
Get The Picture 
How’s that working out for Tennessee now?
LikeLike
Yeah — pretty hilarious contemplating a world where Tennessee is a “football power.”
LikeLike
Southern, Louisiana-Monroe, and Georgia Southern. Not to mention Kentucky.
Yee-ha. Can I go ahead and pay for those season tickets now?
LikeLike
Is it just me or does all this schedule hoopla seems kinda pointless? Do you think the SEC Champion will be one of the four play-off teams every year? Do you honestly believe that politically and economically the selection committee will choose a second SEC team into the top four?
One SEC team will likely be in every year regardless of how many “quality opponents,” (conference or non) they play The schedule critics should just get over it and concentrate on beating whoever they have to play.
LikeLike
What if a 9-3 Georgia team upsets an 11-1 sec west team in the conference championship?
LikeLike
Then Alabama will get the bid.
And no, the schedule “hoopla” isn’t pointless. I am paying big bucks to my school for something other than that 2015 joke of a schedule. And to some of us, 3 months of College Football is at least as important as two weeks of January madness.
College Basketball’s March Madness is great. But they traded 3 1/2 months of boredom for 16 days of excitement. Don’t want to see that happen to CFB, but is well on its way.
Check out the 1980 Georgia schedule. Major Conference or major independents completed the OOC schedule. Not a Coastal Carolina in sight.
LikeLike
I agree with wanting to see the Dawgs play teams worth watching. I was simply speaking in terms of whether not having a ninth conference game would make much of a difference in getting a SEC team into a four-team playoff format.
I like having the ability to play the Clemsons, Arizona States, etc. and see how we match up without having to wait for a bowl game. A ninth conference game would preclude those opportunities (unless we dropped Tech). UGA will always want a couple of teams on the schedule to whom we don’t have to reciprocate a home game. We already lose one home game every other year to Jax.
LikeLike
They have said being a Conference Champion is very important. A 10-3 Champion gets the bid over the just beaten in a head to game.
An 11-1 non division winner may also get a bid…but not over the 10-3 Champ.
LikeLike
It is a good question, but to my way of thinking each power conference is determining their own way to crown a champion (some with round robin league play, some with title games) and each should get to send a representative. Who is to say a 9-3 UGA isn’t better than an 11-1 Western winner? Because they didn’t play all the opponents the other played, who is best is subjective. It is no different than a PAC12 or Big 12 team feeling they should have had representation in the BCS title game, and why a playoff should accommodate those 5 teams every single year because we simply cannot play enough games to say conclusively one conference is better than the other. Let’s take the subjectivity out of that part of it by giving them a shot that no one can take away from them. That satisfies most of the “everyone had their chance” complaints, and the 3 remaining spots gives enough room for other voices to have their say.
I don’t buy the importance of a who subjectively gets the 8th spot and who is left at #9. You may have a Hawaii complaining, or a conference runner-up from the ACC whining but they will be drowned out by the “you had your chance” crowd. Does anyone really remember the 65th teams in the basketball tourney’s complaints from 5 years ago? How about March of 2014? Now I might remember if it is Notre Dame fans whining on the street corners in New York and Chicago.
LikeLike
You want the subjectivity removed by guaranteeing 5 slots to Power Conference Champions, then entirely dismiss how challenging and subjective it will be to determine slots 6, 7 & 8…that makes no sense. First, you’ve got 5 runners-up in the Power Conferences that will feel deserving, plus champions of non-Power conferences, and other teams with probably only 2 losses. Instead of arguing about 5 – 8 teams for 4 slots, you’ll have 6 – 10 teams arguing for 3 slots. As to your basketball analogy, it was a 7 and 8 seed in this years’ final. An 8th seed team in a CFB playoff can definitely win it all, so it would be vitally important to have a “fair” approach to selecting those last 3 slots. You’re damn right #9 is going to be whining…and rightfully so. There is no “fair” way to do this.
The only thing that comes close to “fair” is to re-align Div 1 into 4 conferences, 8 divisions and create NFL lite. Regular season would need to be shortened by a game and if your alma mater misses the playoffs, it’s a looooong winter (although some non-playoff bowls could still survive for entertainment value).
Fortunately, we know nothing logical, fair, fan-friendly or for the children will ever be enacted by current leadership.
LikeLike
I think the 4 conference / 8 division recommendation makes by far the most sense.
But why would you have to shorten the season? Conference Championship games essentially become the first round of an 8 team playoff, and then you have the same number of games you are going to have this year to complete the final 2 rounds.
LikeLike
I’ve always liked that approach, but the Division would have to shrink a bit first.
LikeLike
If anything resembling Div I football survives these lawsuits, I suspect a “top tier” system will be in place for those who can afford it. They may find it hard to get 64 schools to be able to pay the freight unless the WWL foots the entire bill.
Hopefully they’ll have the decency to call it something other than college football. Labor Day Weekend circa 2016…You’re looking live at the opening game of the Tostido’s Football League where each week teams will play for a donation to their sponsoring university. And here come the Coastal Cats of South Carolina playing for the Clemson University Foundation…and now the Peach State Bulldogs take the field, playing for the University of Georgia Hartman Fund.”
LikeLike
Shorten the season by one game because:
– think of the children (and 15 games into mid-January is absurd IMHO unless we are going to call them professional athletes and treat them accordingly)
– Wildcards!! So you’ve got to make room for an extra game
– You would still have a holiday bowl season for non-qualifiers
LikeLike
First of all, I have no issue with the 4 conference, 8 team division concept. I am all for a limited, earned playoff to give us our first true National Champion. But I feel the loss of traditional games from such an alignment, and arguments about which Division is out of line competitively would get us right back to where we are today: arguing about screwing up the game we love and strength of schedule. But that does provide a neat, clean path.
I wouldn’t say my proposal makes “no sense” but admit it isn’t perfect, nothing I have seen is. Yes, there is subjectivity in to the 3 wildcard positions but the point is all conference runner-ups give up most of their right to bitch by not earning their conference title and putting themselves in the winds of subjectivity. That is far different from winner your championship and being not good enough because your region of the world isn’t deemed worthy. I would expect those three spots would go to two very good runners-up who have had national respect all season long, and one mid-major/independent who might have to go unbeaten against competition similar to what the 5 conference winners faced. I hope that forces more interaction of good teams during the scheduling decisions.
Not perfect, but a damned strong field where everyone worth of consideration would get their shot….either during the season or by am impartial jury. Currently, we yet to see anything that good. Not perfect, but the best I have seen proposed yet.
LikeLike
Before we go all blaming McGarity for the schedule issue, I distinctly recall Coach Mark Richt doing quite a bit of complaining about the difficulty of traveling multiple time zones to face Arizona State or Colorado and then play an SEC opponent then following week. Don’t forget, Richt wants the cupcakes too, per his comments from that era.
AD Red Panties at least scheduled games we’d actually like to see instead of the shiite Richt and McCheapity want to throw at us.
LikeLike
All coaches are like that…absolutely all of them. Even Saban, who pontificates about the 9 games, only does so knowing that he is only going to play one major OOC game anyway. He prefers neutral site game to having to go at it home and home.
ADs are paid to add balance, not mirror image what the coach says. I expect Richt to want the cupcakes in light of the fact that just about all of the rest of the conference plays even weaker schedules. Play Florida home and home and you alleviate some of this problem.
LikeLike
Of course, it didn’t hurt that our previous AD had key personality traits such as impulsivity and high-level risk-taking working for him.
LikeLike
I actually can’t even remember what the non-revenue related “arguments” for the 12th game were. I certainly don’t see any.
LikeLike
“Kansas Chancellor Bob Hemenway, chairman of the NCAA directors, said in a conference call after the vote that ‘there were a number of issues’ that argued in favor of extending the schedule. ‘It was not just money,’ Hemenway said.”
Mostly because Chancellor Hemenway thought they had too much time on their hands. The idea came to him while in a gentlemen’s club at an NCAA Directors retreat when they were all making it rain too much and needed an infusion of cash money
LikeLike