By Sean Haugh.
The BCS is even more of a joke than ever this year.
The Big East and ACC champions still have tickets, while one of an undefeated Utah or an undefeated Boise St. will get shut out. We need playoffs!
The first criticism of the playoffs is the incompatibility with the bowl system. That’s hogwash. All you have to do is use the bowls as playoff sites.
The lower tier bowls can still have their CUSA No. 5 vs. Sun Belt No. 3 match-ups in December.
All bowls would have incentive to improve so they can move into the playoff system or move up a tier to host a later round game.
The argument that more games may interfere with academics is even bigger bunk. The players are still committed to practice while waiting a month to play their last game. Other major college sports play more games with seasons that last at least as long.
And finally, the feeling that there’s too much money invested already in the bowls is absurd. Playoffs would generate far superior match-ups with much more than just school pride on the line, leading to increased viewership, and thus ad revenue.
So here are the rules: It’s a 16-team single elimination tournament.
All 11 conference champions get in, plus five at-large teams. Even though it has taken some heat lately, we’ll carry over the BCS rule of no more than two teams from any conference (which means sorry Texas Tech and Georgia, thanks for playing). Seeding will be according to projected BCS rankings.
I’m going old school with the bowl names, avoiding their more modern and annoying corporate designations whenever possible. Preference is given based on 2008 total payouts. In odd years (such as this one, since these are January games), the Fiesta and Sugar Bowls get the semifinal games, while they would go to the Rose and Orange Bowls in even years.
Given current standings and a number of assumptions of how future games will play out, with homerism breaking all ties, here is how the first round would look:
5 comments Last one added 7 months ago — Leave a Comment
Lou Vozza 7 months ago
Ha ha ha ha ha
You're letting Troy into your playoff and leaving out Texas Tech and Georgia? That's so much more stupid than the BCS!!!!
And you are using the despised polls and computers to select your wild cards?
You have to have a 24 team with 13 wild cards or there will be no peace in college football.
But you guys never propose a 24 team, because you know people don't want a huge playoff in college football. The bowls become a joke, the rivalry games become a joke and the regular season is ruined.
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Football Maniaxs 7 months ago
Howdy Lou!
Part of the reason why I do this every year is to underscore the true joke, that the Sun Belt Conference only remains in the top division so that the power conferences have a larger pool of 1-A opponents.
Having said that, Troy is a better team than the Sun Belt usually produces. I guess you don't watch too much of the NCAA basketball tournament, or find it boring and stupid too what with teams like Butler and Weber State getting bids.
Yeah sure, Duke-UNC means nothing during the regular season since they have such a big tournament, right? What stupid is being in a conference with absolutely zero chance of contending for the national championship no matter how well you do. Which is what we have now but at a higher level.
Setting the bar anywhere leaves somebody on the outside looking in and crying. If you changed the rule to allow three teams per conference, then Texas Tech replaces TCU but Georgia still gets no love.
Don't be a hater, Lou. The problem with being a hater is that pretty soon you hate everybody and everybody hates you. That's not a way to live.
yours -
Sean
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Lou Vozza 7 months ago
Football - if you can't tell the difference between a regular season college football game and a regular season college basketball game, you need to get your head examined. You may have serious emotional problems. You have to point to the biggest regional rivalry in the sport to come up with just one regular season college basketball game that actually means something. Proves my point.
As to their tournament. In the last 30 years since they've been seeding it, the lowest seed to go all the way was Villanova in 1985. They were an 8 seed. More than half of the teams in the tournament have absolutely no chance of winning. Basketball has ruined their regular season to give Iona fans the false hope of a championship.
Meanwhile in football we get 13 straight weeks of playoff atmosphere games, where a single loss means virtual elimination. I don't want to trade that for 3 weeks of real playoffs, even if the ending isn't always satisfying.
The non-BCS conferences should split off into their own division and create their own championship like 1-AA did. You can't give everybody a chance in a 119 team league. That would mean each team only gets to win one championship every 119 years.
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Anthony Marietti 7 months ago
Why Lou? Why? Why shouldn't a team get the chance at the NC if they go undefeated? No matter what Utah, BSU, or Ball State did this year they had no opportunity. If they won out all of their games by 50 points they still wouldn't be there at the end of the year. I hate the "playoff atmosphere" argument, all this does is mislead people. If it's a 16 team playoff what are the chances that the teams in here are any worse than 1 or 2 losses? No different than the current BCS bowls. And even conceding when you say that half teams in the NCAA basketball tournament have no chance of winning, that's 32 teams teams with a shot at the title. How does that compare to football where literally 2 teams have the shot to win a NC at the end of the year? I really don't think you should talk about head examinations with your flawed logic buddy, giving every team in a 119 team league a shot doesn't mean that every team has to win the championship. It means that every team has the OPPORTUNITY.
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Nathan B 7 months ago
This is just a personal comment and not meant as an attack, but I hate getting redirected to another site with no warning. Posting part of an article on Bleacher Report and then making a link to another site where the article continues is a little bit underhanded. If you're going to do that, you could at least warn the reader first, especially since you can't complete reading the article here at B / R.
I appreciate that you're trying to drive up readership at your own site, but posting good articles will do that anyway.
Thanks.
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