"Fixing" college football -- let's see your solution

[iggymcfly]

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I don't know a single person outside of Auburn [and even some Tiger fans] that thinks they were better than USC, esp after barely beating a mediocre VaTech team while the Trojans annhilated a very solid Okla team by 40, when Okla was undefeated.
Okla was favored for 3 weeks until about the day of, I think they went off as the favorite at some books. Nobody thinks VaTech was remotely as good as them.

If you go undefeated with a top 2 SoS [relative or absolute] you go to the BCS. Simple. If you schedule patsies, you forfeit ALL rights to complain.

What's the nightmare scenario? Okla, USC, PSU, Fla all go undefeated this season. So say Okla and PSU win v the other 2. Oh noes!! Worlds be ending! Both teams and fans and students and alums and communities get to celebrate!
The horror. The horror.

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Actually, the system's even worse than that. The most likely scenario the way you're describing is that USC and Florida would play for the national title, while Oklahoma's Fiesta Bowl game against Rutgers and Penn State's Rose Bowl game against Oregon are left as complete afterthoughts.

Seriously, why shouldn't we be able to crown a national champion every year instead of just occasionally when it's convenient? Your argument is like when they call it a tie at the end of a little league game in some kids movie so that no one has to lose.

[bernie]

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what's wrong with debating the merits of 1991 Miami v 1991 Washington?

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Or the '84 Huskies and '84 BYU...

b

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I still cannot believe Illinois was passed over in 2001...they had one regular season loss but the computers chose someone else...BAH

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I think the '84 thing might be a bit different.

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[bernie]

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If Boise wanted an invite last year, here's a tip - don't play Wyoming and Sacramento State - schedule Okla and TxAM and Marshall and other good OOC teams,

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I'm sure they'd love to play those teams. Except it's not easy to schedule those teams unless you want to be the one travelling(this goes especially for the bigger SEC teams) Is that really fair, though? That a lesser team is usually the one travelling to play when they want to step up? If both in the same division, it should be equal. Won't ever be, though.

I agree that the comparison to CBB is ridiculous.

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[bernie]

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Charlie Weis has two BCS games in two years

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I think those BCS entries had more to do with it being ND than Weiss coaching.

Any other team and he doesn't come close to a BCS.

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[NajdorfDefense]

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But, according to you, he should ignore his classes/finals because he's just some dumb nobody you want to watch on TV? Because that's what you're insinuating.

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I tend to watch a lot of bowl games and every year, there are at least a couple where the announcers do a video package about how someone like Memphis had to take their finals 1000 miles away from home in between practice and media day for a bowl that hardly anyone really cares about.

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Everyone -- Stop saying that, plenty of people care. Stop assuming you speak for every student, player, fan, and alumnus of that program. It's driving me nuts - no one cared about PSU v Tenn last year? Really? LOLOL. No one in Nevada cared about playing Miami? WTF.

I've cheered my ass off at the Peach Bowl and then some.

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If the NCAA really cared about academic concerns, they'd change the scheduling on those games so that there were no conflicts.

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They don't for Div 2, isn't that the 'argument.' Div 2 is perfect? Why should academics revolve around a game?

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If you have to, you can always just chop a game off the regular season.

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So the Big 10 is going to have only 7 in-conf games? And the P10 and the ACC and...? Why not eliminate Nov and Dec and make them all playoff games, more is better, right?

Okay, here's an outside the box suggestion:
If you go undefeated in conf, you must play all of the teams in the conf before advancing to either Conf Championship or Bowl game. If you're in the Big10 and can't play Wisky and Iowa, go back and play them first before advancing. If you're BC, go play Miami before advancing to Conf Title game. That will eliminate virtually *all* seasons with >2 undefeated teams.

Then, proceed as normal. More games -- all important games, virtual 'playoff' games in conf, and more data to choose the top 2 teams. More revenue. Everyone wins!

[NajdorfDefense]

Yes, you're screwing every team not in the Big 6. I have a big problem with that. You are urging them to play more weak OOC teams instead of strong ones [why take the risk now? There's no point if I win my conf] and we both *know* this will happen. You're giving an autobid to a 8-3 VaTech team over a 11-0 Houston, Hawaii, Wyoming, or CMich team. Doesn't work.

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Najdorf, do you see anything wrong with my system? Quarterfinals at campus sites before bowl games/finals start. Semifinals at bowl sites on New Year's Day. Championship a week later at the bowl site of the semifinal where the #1 team played.

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Yes, many conferences have Conf title games then.

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There would still be some fans that couldn't go to both, but I don't think it would be completely unworkable. It would still be much easier than trying to coordinate getting Final Four tickets/reservations after winning an Elite Eight game for example.

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First off, hosting a home playoff game is a RIDICULOUS advantage. Be serious! NCAAB got rid of that system over 20 years ago -- it'd be such a massive advantage it's not funny. Miami is #5 and PSU is #4 so Miami has to go play at night in Dec at PSU? Whaaaat?
How is that fair? Assume they are both undefeated or 11-1, isn't one team getting royally hosed?

Miami fans in your scenario have to schedule flights to say, Happy Valley, then Anaheim, then say Tempe. Unworkable. And book hotel rooms at the last minute when they are generally unavailable [esp in places like Happy Valley!!] and rent cars and buy tix and.....No.

NCAAB has 4 teams filling up 18k seat arenas. You only need 4500 people from each school.
Now switch to 2 teams and a 100k stadium for football - works for 1 Nat'l title game, doesn't work for the others.

Finally, no one involved in the Conferences thinks a new playoff system will bring in more money. They do a bangup job of maximizing revenue with the BCS, no doubt.
No one's shown or demonstrated more $$ otherwise, so you can't kill the golden goose without a guaranteed replacement. Many, many, many schools the successful football program pays for some/most of the rest of the Ath Dept - Miami, ND, PSU, etc.

What if I said make NFL best of 3 to make it more fair? 2 home 1 away for the better team. More games! Fairer method! To me, yours and many of these suggestions are the same -- unwiedly, unworkable change for change's sake.

Does anyone think Auburn was better than USC?

[NajdorfDefense]

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Also, even if you think Auburn didn't deserve a shot at the title due to their OOC scheduling, (pretty ridiculous IMO telling the players who worked hard through spring ball and summer conditioning that they should be eliminated before the season started due to something their athletic director did 5 years ago), what about Utah? There was literally nothing they could do short of ...They just had no shot.

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Wrong. Their AD/Coaches made that decision. It didn't spring upon them from the sky! If you go to a school that's scheduled patsies you KNOW IT BEFORE YOU SIGN, as you say, it's right there in black and white. You can't whine that 'We beat LaTech and La-La and La-monroe, we're better than USC is!' You made that decision. Everyone in the program is accountable from top to bottom.
Why are you excusing cowardly ADs and Coaches for their scheduling?
How do you think Miami got on top? They weren't in a power conf. They were unranked --- did they magically cast some spell on the entire country?
They played 2 for 1s in places like ND when ND was a powerhouse. They spent seasons going to PSU and Ark and Mich and UF and Fsu and SoCar and MichSt and Iowa and SDSU [with Faulk, Scott, McGwire] and Houston and WVA and Wisconsin and Oklahoma and OklaSt.

Utah made their bed, they have to lie in it. I got no sympathy. If I'm an independent, [or weak conf] and I purposely schedule teams likely to be ranked 111-119 in the polls 4 years from now, and I run the table because I'm 50th best, and play 4 away and 8 home games, you're saying that entitles me to a guaranteed playoff berth? No. I disagree.

Anyway, see if my earlier suggestion makes sense or is nonsense.

Besides, now Utah can claim until the year 9999 they were really the best. Who is harmed by that? USC? No one.

Edit: Utah scheduled Utah St and UNC OOC. Football powers? No. Even close? No.

UNC didn't have a winning record in 1999 or 2000 - it's not like they scheduled Miami and got the 7-6 Canes instead of the 12-1 version. They pussed out, pure and simple. Urban Meyer was afraid to play top 10 teams OOC until he could get to a giant football power like Florida.

Would I still watch the games- of course! Are any of the new proposed systems here better and workable? No.

[NajdorfDefense]

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If Boise wanted an invite last year, here's a tip - don't play Wyoming and Sacramento State - schedule Okla and TxAM and Marshall and other good OOC teams,

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I'm sure they'd love to play those teams. Except it's not easy to schedule those teams unless you want to be the one travelling(this goes especially for the bigger SEC teams) Is that really fair, though? That a lesser team is usually the one travelling to play when they want to step up?


I agree that the comparison to CBB is ridiculous.

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YES! Of course it's fair, are you saying if Okla gets calls from Wyoming, Tulane, Temple, East Mich, Navy, Duke, and Houston they have to agree to 1 for 1s with every AD who calls? We're talking realistic solutions here, I thought.

If Miami can go to Okla and ND and Mich and win, any school who thinks they are THE absolute BEST in the country can do the same. And they went to BYU and lost - cost them the 1990 title, pure and simple -- no one would even argue that. Put in a playoff that year and the Canes destroy 2-loss, 1-tie Colorado, your Nat'l Champion. GaTech couldn't beat a 2-win Carolina team. Even the NYTimes said Miami was the best...oh well.

[pwnsall]

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2) I would hate to remove the bowl system and the idea that there is more than one winner in college football (especially with 119 teams).

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Why is this such a sacred cow?

There are more teams in Division I basketball. They seem to do OK with only "one winner".

And there's nothing that says you have to have "one winner" if you have a playoff! You could have any number of NIT-like mini tournaments in the post season. Bowls, even! Just don't try to integrate them into the playoffs.

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Have you ever been a long-term season ticket holder for a major university?

Do you donate thousands per year to a major university?


My guess to both is NO. I have and I do (well my family did and, now, I do). These are the people that make college football big. Among these subset, the bowl system is very, very popular. Scrapping it would alienate those that make college football gogogogogoggogo.

It's about getting together every week with family and friends. It's about having achievable goals for every school. Bowl games are as much about rewarding the fanbases as they are the teams themselves.

I've been to the All-American Bowl (now defunct). I've been to the Citrus Bowl (now Capital one). I've been to the Hall of Fame Bowl (now Outback). I've been to the Sun Bowl. I've been to the Liberty Bowl. I've been to the Micron PC Bowl. I've been to the Sugar Bowl. I've been to the Rose Bowl.

EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM MATTERED, though I have to say the Sugar Bowl was kind of hollow as it wasn't the Rose.

I could give two [censored] about a national title. The goal every year is the Rose Bowl. At least it is among the alumni supporters of the school I attended.


The bball tourney for NCAA is kind of a crapshoot. In no way would I want that to be the model to be followed. It's created a deadly atmosphere. For one, did you know that Bruce Weber is tied for the most wins in NCAAB with Coach K and Billy Donovan over his 4 year tenure at Illinois? Did you know that a majority of Illinois 'fans' want him fired? That's the attitude that comes with basketball.

In football, 2 Rose Bowls in his first four years would've made him a god and untouchable for a decade at least.

Bball is not healthy IMO.


my post is incoherent rambling... I don't know how to say it right... I think you're missing the point of college football.

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A+ rant and I agree FWIW.

[iggymcfly]

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But, according to you, he should ignore his classes/finals because he's just some dumb nobody you want to watch on TV? Because that's what you're insinuating.

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I tend to watch a lot of bowl games and every year, there are at least a couple where the announcers do a video package about how someone like Memphis had to take their finals 1000 miles away from home in between practice and media day for a bowl that hardly anyone really cares about.

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Everyone -- Stop saying that, plenty of people care. Stop assuming you speak for every student, player, fan, and alumnus of that program. It's driving me nuts - no one cared about PSU v Tenn last year? Really? LOLOL. No one in Nevada cared about playing Miami? WTF.

I've cheered my ass off at the Peach Bowl and then some.

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I never said "every" bowl was meaningless and I never said that there are any bowls that no one cares about. I'm a proponent of the bowl system, remember? That's why I put so much effort into figuring out how to make the matchups intriguing for teams that lost that quarterfinal games.

All I said was that very few people care about the very first games of the bowl season which are the only ones that would possibly be played during finals anyway. The students aren't going to be "cheering their asses off" if they're back on campus taking exams. And playing in the San Diego Country Credit Union Poinsettia bowl on a random Wednesday is a lot less prestigious than playing in the Peach Bowl on New Year's Eve.

Besides, all that stuff you threw out there was tangential to my main point which was that if finals can be disrupted for a lower-tier bowl between two mid-majors, they could certainly be adjusted a little bit for a national quarterfinal.

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If the NCAA really cared about academic concerns, they'd change the scheduling on those games so that there were no conflicts.

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They don't for Div 2, isn't that the 'argument.' Div 2 is perfect? Why should academics revolve around a game?

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Don't put words in my mouth. I grew up in Missoula, MT which is a college town for a I-AA powerhouse and that's the main reason that I'm so opposed to a 16-team playoff for I-A. The lower division system is far from perfect. I started going to games as an 8-year old in 1993 and every single year since then Montana has made the playoffs. It completely devalued the regular season and is something I want to keep away from I-A football.

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If you have to, you can always just chop a game off the regular season.

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So the Big 10 is going to have only 7 in-conf games? And the P10 and the ACC and...? Why not eliminate Nov and Dec and make them all playoff games, more is better, right?

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OMG! How can we go back to the stone age of college football where teams only played 11 games in the regular season. We haven't seen those dark days since, oh... 2005! How in god's name will they decide conference titles with so few games to evaluate the teams.

FTR, I'd let teams without a conference championship game in their league continue to play 12 games if they wanted, but the other teams would only get to play 11 max in the regular season. The last Saturday of November would be the last day for regular season games including conference championships period. Also, I love how you're saying that the Big Ten could only fit in 7 games if I cut a week off of the season when not one Big Ten team has a game scheduled after November 17th. Not only are they not playing the last week of the season, they're not playing on either of the last two weeks. They'd be completely unaffected by the change.

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Okay, here's an outside the box suggestion:
If you go undefeated in conf, you must play all of the teams in the conf before advancing to either Conf Championship or Bowl game. If you're in the Big10 and can't play Wisky and Iowa, go back and play them first before advancing. If you're BC, go play Miami before advancing to Conf Title game. That will eliminate virtually *all* seasons with >2 undefeated teams.

Then, proceed as normal. More games -- all important games, virtual 'playoff' games in conf, and more data to choose the top 2 teams. More revenue. Everyone wins!

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So wait a minute. Let me get this straight. I suggest adding quarterfinals and semifinals, 6 games total, and 2 max per team. You respond by saying "OMG, way too many games. How will the players ever pass their classes? They won't even be able to take their finals. OMGWTFBBQ!".

Yet your counter-solution is for every team in the ACC, Big XII, C-USA, and SEC to play 11 conference games, and for the teams from the MAC to play 12 conference games. And then these MAC teams are still supposed to schedule at least one Top Ten opponent so that their recruits don't have to forfeit the right to play for a championship and probably need another opponent from a Big 6 conference too. Then, they can play their conference championship, and then a bowl game. That's longer than an NFL season. Try using at least a little consistency in your arguments please.