The BCS finally totally fails!!!

[BaltimoreTerp]

It's not that I don't understand. I do. I just don't believe it would ever work. You're basically turning the Rose Bowl into a meaningless exhibition game among losers that nobody will care about. The NFL used to have a Consolation Bowl for two division runner-ups. The old Colts beat the snot out of Dallas after the ref's stole their tie-breaker game with the Packers. Nobody cared, so they quit doing it. Nobody wants a consolation game. The Rose Bowl is way better off being in the playoff mix, and getting the NC game every three or four years, than they are getting stuck with some consolation game between losers.

No' date=' it's different. Even for the non-championship bowls you're talking about fans that haven't seen their team play in a month or so travelling to see them matched up against a presumably (unfortunately not always) equal team. It's a chance to see just how good they are and it generates enough excitement for them to buy tickets and travel. In your scenario, the fans will be too disappointed and apathetic to do that right after being eliminated from the national championship playoff.[/quote']

Then let the big bowls become like the rest of the bowls are now.

The fans will still come. How many of the ones that travel are already the rich booster types? They will go to another game.

[Birds of B'more]

Then let the big bowls become like the rest of the bowls are now.

The fans will still come. How many of the ones that travel are already the rich booster types? They will go to another game.

Do that and you either have to eliminate some of the current lower-level bowls (fine by me, but the powerful committees/sponsors of said bowls won't go quietly) or you have to start taking losing teams in order to fill all of the available games, which is even more unappealing.

And as a former Terps football season ticket holder who has traveled to see them play in a couple bowls (although my group and I are by no means "rich booster types") I can definitely say without hesitation that I would not pack my bags for Miami, or wherever, to watch them play one more game after just seeing them eliminated from a playoff, nor could I imagine any other fans doing so.

[RShack]

Then let the big bowls become like the rest of the bowls are now.

The fans will still come. How many of the ones that travel are already the rich booster types? They will go to another game.

The rest of the bowls don't sell out. Most of them have more empty seats than the seats with somebody in them. Except for the big bowls, most of them are TV shows more than anything.

[geschinger]

I don't see why it wouldn't work to still have bowls and a playoff. If you have 16 teams, play the round of 16 and the round of 8 at the home field of the higher seeded teams. Play these games at this point in the year and then any teams not in that final four can fill up the bowl calendar.

Rotate among the existing BCS Bowls for the semifinals with the championship game being equivalent to the new extra BCS bowl. Every other year the Rose/Fiesta/Orange/Sugar host semifinal games and every fourth year the championship game. When they don't have either, they setup the whatever matchup they want of the teams not in the final four.

In a system like that I don't see much of a difference for the teams that get eliminated from a playoff from what we have now.

[Birds of B'more]

In a system like that I don't see much of a difference for the teams that get eliminated from a playoff from what we have now.

Like I've been saying, I think there is a huge difference between traveling to a bowl game when you haven't seen your team play in a month, and have already known for the same amount of time, or longer, that you won't be playing for the NC vs. traveling to a bowl game immediately after you've gone to see your team eliminated from the playoff and the disappointment is still very fresh in your mind. It would be like having had the Patriots and Saints play a game in Miami the Sunday before the last Super Bowl for the right to say "We're #3!" Guarantee the stadium is more than half empty for that one, and TV ratings/sponsorships aren't much better.

[geschinger]

Like I've been saying' date=' I think there is a huge difference between traveling to a bowl game when you haven't seen your team play in a month, and have already known for the same amount of time, or longer, that you won't be playing for the NC vs. traveling to a bowl game immediately after you've gone to see your team eliminated from the playoff and the disappointment is still very fresh in your mind. It would be like having had the Patriots and Saints play a game in Miami the Sunday before the last Super Bowl for the right to say "We're #3!" Guarantee the stadium is more than half empty for that one, and TV ratings/sponsorships aren't much better.[/quote']

You could get around that by playing the round of 16 and round of 8 immediately after the regular season and there would still be a lengthy gap like there is now to make bowl arrangements, etc..

[RShack]

You could get around that by playing the round of 16 and round of 8 immediately after the regular season and there would still be a lengthy gap like there is now to make bowl arrangements, etc..

Whoa! We don't need to be building in lengthy gaps. That's one of the things that's wrong now: Everybody gets all ready for more football, we finally know who should be in the playoffs that we don't have, and then right when everybody's ready to rock'n'roll, everybody stops playing football for a month? How crazy is that?

The more we talk about this, the more I find myself thinking, "If this is the kind of alternatives we get to the BCS, well, the BCS is looking better and better to me" ;-)

[Birds of B'more]

You could get around that by playing the round of 16 and round of 8 immediately after the regular season and there would still be a lengthy gap like there is now to make bowl arrangements, etc..

That might help a little bit, but then you have teams playing during exam time.....and we all know how busy big-time college football players are during exams.

Honestly, in my perfect scenario every game of a playoff would somehow incorporate an existing bowl. Not only does it add more drama to current bowl games that don't really have much, but it also means that we'll see much better teams that just missed the playoff in the lower-tier bowls. No more 6-6 or 7-5 teams.

Imagine actually being interested in watching the New Mexico Bowl? The only reason I'd have wanted to watch that game before was to escape to the den during one of those insufferable family holiday gatherings. "Gee, sorry Aunt Gertrude, I'd love to sit here and talk to you about why I haven't found a nice girl to marry yet, but I've got a lot of money riding on this Northern St/Eastern Tech game and I feel like if I don't watch every play my team won't win."

[geschinger]

Whoa! We don't need to be building in lengthy gaps. That's one of the things that's wrong now: Everybody gets all ready for more football, we finally know who should be in the playoffs that we don't have, and then right when everybody's ready to rock'n'roll, everybody stops playing football for a month? How crazy is that?

The more we talk about this, the more I find myself thinking, "If this is the kind of alternatives we get to the BCS, well, the BCS is looking better and better to me" ;-)

Getting rid of the gaps is certainly preferable but I'd settle for anything that makes college football a sport where championships are decided on the field. I'd be all for scrapping the entire bowl system and going to a straight playoff system if that was a possibility.

[square634]

Whoa! We don't need to be building in lengthy gaps. That's one of the things that's wrong now: Everybody gets all ready for more football, we finally know who should be in the playoffs that we don't have, and then right when everybody's ready to rock'n'roll, everybody stops playing football for a month? How crazy is that?

The more we talk about this, the more I find myself thinking, "If this is the kind of alternatives we get to the BCS, well, the BCS is looking better and better to me" ;-)

I think the justification for the gap is that finals are right about now. They have to at least pretend the athletes are students too (actually that's not fair, a vast majority of them are students, but you know what I mean). Also, some schools have finals after winter break and some as early as the first couple weeks in December, so it really screws things up.

[mweb]

Anything more than 8 teams greatly hurts the regular season imo. I prefer 6, but 8 would be fine. And I am very opposed to mediocre teams from mediocre to bad conferences making the playoffs. I don't care to watch LSU play Yale.

[geschinger]

Anything more than 8 teams greatly hurts the regular season imo. I prefer 6, but 8 would be fine. And I am very opposed to mediocre teams from mediocre to bad conferences making the playoffs. I don't care to watch LSU play Yale.

If matchups like LSU vs. Yale is what troubles you about a playoff, I can allay that concern. Under no scenario that I am aware of would you be subjected to an LSU vs Yale matchup as I don't think anyone anywhere has ever thought adding Division I-AA teams to a playoff makes any sense whatsoever.

The teams that would have made it this year are Troy, Hawaii, BYU, Central Michigan, and UCF. Are those great teams? Hardly. Would any of those teams be capable of pulling an upset? Absolutely.

[BaltimoreTerp]

Anything more than 8 teams greatly hurts the regular season imo. I prefer 6, but 8 would be fine. And I am very opposed to mediocre teams from mediocre to bad conferences making the playoffs. I don't care to watch LSU play Yale.

1) The "hurts the regular season" thing has always bothered me, because it makes absolutely no sense. Every other team sport at every other level has playoffs: do they hurt the regular season?

Especially in Division I-A football, which would be 16 out of 120 teams, or 13% of all teams.

2) "Mediocre-to-bad conferences"?

If the NCAA feels fit to give those "Mediocre-to-bad conferences" the privilege of participating at Division I-A, then why should they not have the same chance at a championship?

Do you think the basketball tournament is cheapened by George Mason making the Final Four, or a 15-seed beating a two-seed?

[BaltimoreTerp]

Here's a good question:

Why are we so worried about propping up a system that obviously cannot stand on it's own?

If the bowls can't adapt, then they should fail.

With what is being proposed by some, we are already making the bowls into "name-only" games (which I doubt a bowl like the Rose would ever accept), so why even bother with it?

I'm all for tradition, as long as it works and does not get in the way of continued improvement. The bowl system doesn't work, so why keep it at all?

[Flosman]

As a proponant of a 24 team playoff, i am surprised to hear many of the opinions here. Nothing is going to cheapen the regular season. I currntly think the current system makes 90% of the games during the season meaningless. For the aurguement that at 24 teams some three loss team might win the national championship, well that in football is highly unlikely. Some medocre team is not going to win 5 consectutive games against the top 23 teamsin the country. Even if theysomehow went deep into the playoffs so what. Is the fact that George Mason makes it deep into the basketball tourny some how hurt basketball? One it won't hurt and two it will not happen.

We sit around on message boards debating who plays in a good conference and what not and this is an opportunity to prove it on the field. I firmly believe that a team like HI or boise state(recently) deserves a chance to prove it on the field. But in saying that I do not think HI is a better team than say Florida and unless you include enough teams someone deserving is not going to get a shot at it.

I actually like the idea of having the 11 conference champions getting automatic bids. So maybe I would do a 21 team playoff. With the 10 at large teams playing in round one to set the 16 team bracket.

The current system is an embarassment to the NCAA and proves that it is all about the good old boy system.