A Pox On The BCS
Seriously, that stinkfest last night was hopefully the death-knell of it. There’s absolutely no reason there can’t be an 8 team playoff. None. It would take 3 weeks. Prior to last night’s game ‘Bama had last played on November 26th, for god’s sake.
Look at the final top eight in the AP poll:
1. Alabama 12-1
2. LSU 13-1
3. Oklahoma State 12-1
4. Oregon 12-2
5. Stanford 11-2
6. USC 10-2
7. Arkansas 11-2
8. Boise State 12-1
Wouldn’t any fan rather see a tournament amongst them to truly decide who is number 1?
Fun, Life | Mr. Bingley | 
January 10, 2012 6:17 am
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Didn’t even watch the thing in protest. LSU should have played someone else…who had played someone else in the last month at least to get there. Like, maybe even WON THEIR OWN CONFERENCE (Frankly, you shouldn’t be allowed in the HALLWAY of the Big Dance if you CAN’T WIN YOUR OWN CONFERENCE, ALABAMA).
Stinkfest is right. Play-off. It’s the only way to be sure.
See, that ‘conference’ bit doesn’t really bother me, because in every other sport you get non-conference winner champions all the freakin time.
A proper post-season tourney settles things nicely.
Because in other sports, YOU HAVE A PLAY-OFF!
If they’re not going to go to a playoff, they should scrap this BCS nonsense and just go back to the old bowl system where the individual bowls invite the schools or enter into agreements to take such-and-so conference champions. It was confusing but it was never meant to crown some mythical national college champion in the first place.
If a champ is the be-all, end-all goal, then it has to be a playoff. The only downside is that, as a single-elimination, the best team can always have an off-week and lose to a worse team. In fact, an eight-team playoff will simply multiply that difficulty by three. But ever team faces the same difficulty so that’s no problem.
I also worry that these 8 teams would eventually grow to 16, because if there’s something the NCAA loves more than its veneer of Nobility of Amateur Sport, it’s money.
I agree with fly, go back to the old bowl system and if one poll has a different no. 1 than another so what? Makes for better banter. If they went to an 8 team playoff somebody is going to get screwed so then they would expand and you have too many games. It is not a true test anyway with teams having to wait 30 or more days to play a game. Another thing they need to get rid of is pre-season ranking or at least don’t let it have any weight later on.
There are already 35 bowls so I think it would be very easy to dub 4 of them the ones for the 8 team playoff. And hell they could easily expand it to 8 bowl games over 4 weeks for the top ranked 16 teams to play off. There would be no need to use more time and also then no team would be sitting around for 30+ days between games.
As far as the preseason rankings they have no real bearing on anything now, other than the starting positions for teams to move up or down from depending upon how they do during the regular season.
No, the pre-season ranking position teams so that teams that are below them have virtually no chance of moving up unless the pre ranked teams lose big, it’s is an unfair bias. Your scheme might work Bing if they started the bowls the first week in Dec but that’s not gonna happen, New Years is when those bowls and towns make all the big money, all those other bowls are a waste. I liked it when all the big bowls were on New Years day and then you were done with it and let the arguing begin. If they started a playoff on New Years they wouldn’t be done till almost Feb. I’ll bet the ratings for last nights game are dismal.
It would actually be 7 bowls for an 8-team playoff (eliminating one team with each one played), and then 15 bowls for a 16-team playoff.
One reason bowls run so long over the rest of the season is that most schools have finals in the first two weeks of December. If you played your first “round” of bowls on the 20th or 21st, and then the next round between Christmas and New Year’s, and the “championship bowl” on Jan 3rd or 4th, you could shoehorn it all in. So what would happen if you added a fourth round (by expanding to 16 teams)?
Looking at this year’s schedule, ‘Fly, you could do 16. Bowls started on Dec 17:
round of 16 Dec 17
round of 8 Dec 24
round of 4 Dec 31
final Jan 8
And nobody went to those bowls starting the 17th, not going to work like that Bing and you better have deep pockets cause that is going to be a lot of airline money for the fans. I don’t think you are going to have the Rose Bowl people give up their New Years day proceedings very easily.
You don’t need 16 teams. Keep it at 8 and start it on New Years with the four big bowls all playing on that day or 3 on one day and 1 the next day. You would be done by mid-January. Ratings would be great and all of the other bowls would remain intact.
I rember when Jan 1 was chapionship day.
Institute a top 4 playoff after the conference championship games.
Number 4 plays 1 on Dec 23 Number 2 plays 3 on Dec 24.
Play the championship on New Year’s day.
As a resident of Alabama, I have 5 short words for all of ya:
ROLL TIDE! and WAR EAGLE!
Oh there’s no doubt the Tide rolled, Red!
But I would really have loved to have seen their incredible defense go up against Oklahoma State’s offense.
I heard this morning that the powers that be are talking about a “plus 1” scenario for 2014. Two of the bowls would be designated as the playoff bowls, probably rotating, with a subsequent title game.
They were probably reading this blog and saw Mr. Bingley’s request for a Tide/Cowboy matchup. Thanks, Bingster!
Yojimbo, I’m fairly sure that Alabama could beat Dallas at a neutral site.
Ha!
They just might do that.