I think a fair critique/comment of anyone who complains about something is the question, "What's your solution?"
Here's mine...I think the logistics are far from difficult and it scratches a lot of the itches that traditionalists have.
First a couple of tweaks to the way things are today:
-Every BPS will play 11 games and D-1A opponents won't count toward the record. If a team has some archaic agreement to play a lower-division team (a la Iowa v. NIU), they'll play that game the week prior to the regular season kickoff and it won't count as a win, officially.
-No team without a winning (not .500) record will make a bowl game. Does that mean there will be some contraction of bowl games? Absolutely. Is this a bad thing? You tell me- are the schools and fanbases that go to bowls like the Motor City Bowl, EagleBank, Humanitarian or others (don't make money...the fans don't get to enjoy great weather, and the games are played to half-empty stadiums) really being robbed of anything?
-The Final BPS regular season games will be completed on Thanksgiving weekend. Conference champs will be crowned the next week.
-Lower-eschelon bowls will be played during week day evenings (Tues.-Fri.) in the second week of December. Bowls that garner more commercial revenue will get Saturday slots.
-The remaining bowls will be played between 12/26 & 12/31.
-The current six power conference champions will get automatic bids. Two more tournament bids will go to the next two highest-ranked teams. These two teams will be determined on a composite of: The AP Poll, The Coaches Poll, The Harris Poll & The BTS Computer Poll. Each will get equal weight. The seeding will come from the numerical order of the average ranking of these polls.
-Round one of the tournament will be played at regional sites on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Sure, this will step on the toes of the unimportant NBA matchups...who gives a damn?
-One Final Four game will be played at the University of Phoenix Stadium (Western Bracket) and the other will be played in the Super Dome (Eastern Bracket).
-The Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl will rotate each season as the Eastern Bracket Regional Championship...during the off year, the bowl left out will be played days prior to the beginning of the tournament.
-The National Championship will be played at the Rose Bowl. The Grand Daddy of them all will host the most-important game of the season each year.
Bowl Tournament Series concept based on 2010
18 comments:
Shouldn't it be 4 vs 5 and 3 vs 6 instead of 3 vs 5 and 4 vs 6? Or is there some reason for that? Pretty much all playoff systems currently in use in sports have the #1 seed playing the 4 vs 5 game.
Playoffs, why? The only way to really determine who the best team is in one sport is a "series" like in pro basketball, hockey and baseball. You can argue that the Superbowl usually crowns the best team, but sometimes the best team has an off day and their opponent catches a ball on a helmet. (Giants over New England)
Anyway, here's my point, I don't care who wins the NCAA because if you played the tournament 5 times in a row, you'd end up with 5 different winners. Why do we need to spoil great bowl traditions just so some NCAA football team can say are the very, very, very best? Plus a playoff system really waters down the regular season. Under your system, OSU gets to play in the playoffs. They lost at home to a USC team with a Freshman QB and they lost to PURDUE. They don't deserve to be in a playoff. There would also be many years where the ACC champion didn't belong, etc.
Bottom line... winning a "one and done" tournament or playoff doesn't always give you the best champion.
Did you mean Iowa vs. UNI? NIU is Northern Illinois Univ. UNI is Univ of Northern Iowa.
I don't see why the "bowl tradition" is so great. Maybe it was a big deal in the 60s to have teams from different regions play each other, but it's so commonplace now that I've never thought any of the bowls were that special. I'd rather have conference champ and playoff games. I don't need parades.
With all due respect to MattDSM, while you might not need parades, do you have any concept of how important the Rose Parade is to so many people? It is a spectacle you can't imagine until you've seen it live and talked with people who come from thousands of miles just to see it. It's much more than what you see on TV.
What's wrong with OSU vs. Oregon in the Rose Bowl anyway? It works just fine for me... and Northwestern vs. Auburn. Very cool matchup.
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Chicago - what bothers me is that they don't mean anything. If you want to give any team with a 6-6 record a nice vacation at the end of the year to go play a meaningless game, then just say so. Don't pretend like it's an accomplishment and a sacred tradition that can't be changed to create a playoff bracket. Just my feelings, I'm sure it's fun for USC fans every year.
The only fair thing is to have a 64 team double elimination tournament. That way we be sure to crown a deserving national champion. That is the goal right?
So in your view, Boise State still gets screwed huh? After all, it's not like they did something remarkable like GO UNDEFEATED, right?
My view is largely similar to yours, but expand to 16 teams. All 11 conference champions and 5 at-large selections. If you wanted to restrict it a bit you can reduce the number of at-large -- make it say, 2 teams, not five, then give the top three teams as decided by polls/BCS/etc bye weeks so that you at least cut it down to three "meaningful" weeks of games.
But I don't think any system that excludes an undefeated team (and you can talk about strength of schedule, but they did beat the Pac-10 champ) meets the "fairness" test.
Does anyone actually think the fanbase of any school will book a weekend bowl trip......4 weeks in a row.....and the last 3 on one week's notice? Impossible.
The best solution is traditional conference tie ins to Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, Rose, and Cotton....followed by a plus one between #1 and #2.
My thoughts have been the following:
16 teams, 11 conference champs and 5 of the best non-champs
Seeding based on BCS standings &/or committee
Higher seed plays at home.
Final four could rotate between BCS games.
I like Rose Bowl as host of NC game every year as well.
I don't have a big problem with the idea of a 16-team playoff. But, my idea was to keep the existing bowls in tact in order to keep advertisers/TV happy. I think transitioning toward 16 is a good idea. But, logistics become harder and harder the larger the tourney gets. And unlike basketball, weather would play a big role in the games if the teams merely play at home. Playing at controlled-climate stadiums, I think is a key to the equation.
Regarding Boise State- they played the 83rd-best schedule in the nation. Going undefeated is noteworthy, no question about it. But, I really think the meat grinder of major conference schedule can't be discounted. Playing two MAC schools, a PAC10 school and the WAC schedule is not a week-in, week-out monster. Check it out, formulate your own opinion:
http://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/team/boise-st-broncos
I thought of my concept in two hours with a committee of myself. I'd hope it has some kinks...but what the NCAA & BCS are doing/have done is a sham.
One of the arguments that I keep hearing is how can one expect football fans to travel up to two or three weeks in a row. It is made out to be so monumentally unfair. Well, to that I ask....what do fans do in March/ April for conference championships and the NCAA tourney? If you follow your team, you would have to make plans in less than a week (Sunday to Friday) based on a team win or loss for up to four consectutive weeks. So, it is already being done, without complaint it seems.
Representing the apathy vote: I don't really care.
Probably sacrilege to you guys, and I respect your energy and love of the game. It's cool that you are all thinking through solutions for the problem.
If it were Purdue in the top 5, and if it means a couple extra games, sure, why not. I can't see myself going cross country to see three extra games, but if any of them were within reasonable commute distance (1k miles) maybe I'd catch one of them. I'd sure as hell watch on TV.
I'd like to hear what some of the student athletes thought of these schemes. They are the ones really affected. Three more weeks of playing, which probably means 6 more weeks of practice, has to have a price academically. That would be concerning - they are STUDENT athletes, after all...
All this BCS stuff just makes my head want to explode. People need to realize this:
1. Teams will still be pissed if they feel they were snubbed out of the national title game or tournament.
2. There is no fair for all solution, but there is a fair solution (hint: It's not the BCS).
3. Bowl games no longer have the tradition they used to have except for maybe the Rose Bowl. New traditions can always be established.
4. Teams that win Championships are not always the best team that year.
5. Athletics interferes with academics all the time. Student athletes get special treatment for these occasions. I'm guessing most football players take their difficult classes in the spring.
6. A very low percentage of students actually go to bowl games. Generally only the wealthy and the local alumni base go to the bowl games. Most of their revenue comes from TV advertisements and corporate sponsorships not ticket sales.
7. People will still watch and attend regular season games even if there is a post-season tournament
8. The issue is not about students (who don't have any money), student athletes (who are just pawns), or fans (who will follow their teams no matter how shitty the post-season). It's about money. It's about the cities who make thousands of dollars in tax revenue from visiting teams. It's about the corporations who slap their logos on the field. It's about the universities who make hundreds of thousands of dollars on the bowl games. The fear is not that the regular season will be diminished. They are worried that the other bowl games will become (more) meaningless and therefore lose revenue. Bowl games are a huge source of money for second tier programs (Purdue included), and MAC schools probably make more money in a bowl game then they do all year.
@Chris,
have you seen how empty some of those gyms are for the 1st and second round games? What makes the bowl games so successful is how a fanbase will go to baton rouge for the sugar bowl and spend money there the whole week.
Matt,
Good comment about crowd size, I'll give you one there. However, I would add in that they need to stop playing basketball in football arenas instead of basketball arenas. That might help.
@ Purdue Matt.
You're right, fanbases will NEVER book trips one week in advance.
That's why the NCAA Final Four always has so many empty seats.
Fact is, if your team is still alive and playing for a NC, your fans will show up. Period.
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