Congress again looking at College Playoffs

[TRIPP]

i like the playoff idea, but then i dont. if u go undefeated, but play easy games, then u dont desearve to go to the big games. tell ur athletic director or whoever is in charge to sign some contracts with big name schools and earn it. it would just be tooo wierd to see playoffs in college football.

 

a guy on espn made a good point. if they do like college basketball with playoffs, then nobody watches any games until march madness. there is no hype to anything during the reg season, but then march madness gets all the hype.

 

u gotta watch all the college football games, cause any one of them could decided ur teams future.

[sewardite4NU]

i like the playoff idea, but then i dont. if u go undefeated, but play easy games, then u dont desearve to go to the big games. tell ur athletic director or whoever is in charge to sign some contracts with big name schools and earn it. it would just be tooo wierd to see playoffs in college football.

 

a guy on espn made a good point. if they do like college basketball with playoffs, then nobody watches any games until march madness. there is no hype to anything during the reg season, but then march madness gets all the hype.

 

u gotta watch all the college football games, cause any one of them could decided ur teams future.

 

 

That's because March Madness takes 65 teams. If your team is any good at all, they'll have a shot at the end. With 65 teams, you're guaranteed to have the best team in there somewhere.

 

With a playoff system where each team has to win their conference, you're gonna want to watch all year. Drop one game in-conference and your playoff hopes could be gone. Every game still matters. Maybe it's just me, but the NFL seems to have no trouble keeping viewers during the regular season. I know I watch every week...(even when my team sucks).

 

But then again it's exciting the way it is and I don't really see them changing it. I don't really hate it THAT much.

[Vince from ShamWOW]

If there isn't a playoff then strength of schedule must be a HUGE factor throughout the season and post -season rankings. No more KSU, UT or NU 2010-like schedules if you expect to play for the MNC.

 

The factor has to be so big that a one or two loss team with a tough schedule would jump over a 0 loss team with a weak (KSU, UT, and NU 2010) schedule when it come to playing for the MNC. The argument excuse of "the regular season is tough" doesn't apply and never should.

[CornHOLIO]

I wish Congress would worry about something else. I love football, but at the end of the day it's just a game.

 

Why deminish the NCAA into "NFL lite"?

 

Next thing you know, they'll butt into the NFL and make the draft illegal..let the players go to where ever they want..

[NoKoolAidForME]

The one thing that hurts the Strength of schedule argument is you dont know what team in confernce much more non conference will be like from year to year. According to Bo and company our defense will be better than this year. (I am on record saying that is bullsh**t. Without Suh we wouldn't have been close in the games we were in. Also Bo would not have been able to rush four all season and play coverage. Lastly we had 7 DB on the field against Texas and Suh dominated the game.)

 

How can you gauge how good a team will be years from now. I'm sure when they signed Washington for next year they didn't think UW would believe they had a chance. Guess what if the QB stays they may. We play Miami in 2014 and they may turn there program around. Without a playoff you never know who would beat who. If we ever got a playoff there would be no reason for teams to schedule anyone tough again. Play as easy a schedule you can to get so your starter are out by half time and your team stays undefeated. Then you can prepare for the end of season battle.

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

i dont like playoff, and here is what it boils down to. you could end up with say, a 2 loss regular season team going on a run and winning it all (depending on how things were set up it could be worse, like 4 loss). meanwhile an undefeated regular season team loses in the first round. I know, I know, if you lose you lose, blah blah blah. But you think it wouldn't end up like the pros where teams with locks take games off?

 

I just don't see an easy way around it. Even if you do a +1 game this year it doesn't necessarily settle anything. BC what if the games had been swapped?

No one ever seems to complain about the the playoffs in all the other sports

[sewardite4NU]

The one thing that hurts the Strength of schedule argument is you dont know what team in confernce much more non conference will be like from year to year. According to Bo and company our defense will be better than this year. (I am on record saying that is bullsh**t. Without Suh we wouldn't have been close in the games we were in. Also Bo would not have been able to rush four all season and play coverage. Lastly we had 7 DB on the field against Texas and Suh dominated the game.)

 

How can you gauge how good a team will be years from now. I'm sure when they signed Washington for next year they didn't think UW would believe they had a chance. Guess what if the QB stays they may. We play Miami in 2014 and they may turn there program around. Without a playoff you never know who would beat who. If we ever got a playoff there would be no reason for teams to schedule anyone tough again. Play as easy a schedule you can to get so your starter are out by half time and your team stays undefeated. Then you can prepare for the end of season battle.

 

 

Good point. Now that I think about it, for a playoff with conferences champions + wild cards, you'd have to eliminate the independents and force them to join a conference. Notre Dame would schedule Southwest Missouri Tech State A&M every year and get in every year. F it...I'm convinced there's no fool-proof system.

 

Just out of curiosity, how does 1AA do it, or FCS or whatever the F it is?

[Vince from ShamWOW]

The one thing that hurts the Strength of schedule argument is you dont know what team in confernce much more non conference will be like from year to year. According to Bo and company our defense will be better than this year. (I am on record saying that is bullsh**t. Without Suh we wouldn't have been close in the games we were in. Also Bo would not have been able to rush four all season and play coverage. Lastly we had 7 DB on the field against Texas and Suh dominated the game.)

 

How can you gauge how good a team will be years from now. I'm sure when they signed Washington for next year they didn't think UW would believe they had a chance. Guess what if the QB stays they may. We play Miami in 2014 and they may turn there program around. Without a playoff you never know who would beat who. If we ever got a playoff there would be no reason for teams to schedule anyone tough again. Play as easy a schedule you can to get so your starter are out by half time and your team stays undefeated. Then you can prepare for the end of season battle.

 

Some of what you post is valid. However every AD knows Idaho, Louisiana-Monroe, U-Mass, Western KY, South Dakota State, and Texas Arlington are not good teams.

 

Even with a playoff - strength of schedule could be a major factor in who finsishes where and who qualifies for the playoffs and who doesn't. Example: Two 11-2 teams. One plays a weak schedule and the other plays a tough schedule. You take the one with the tougher schedule.

 

I realize there isn't a perfect solution. However a playoff is the much better of the two when to compared to the the BCS as we know it.

[skersfan]

The thing I am most upset about is the TCU/Boise State game

 

What a sham to protect the BCS. If those two teams had played BCS schools and won, what would the fall out have been?

 

They are protecting themselves from further embarassment it seems to me.

 

We need a play off and all conferences need to have a championship game, or no one does.

 

If you are the best team with two or three losses when you play and can get through and win the championship, more power to ya.

 

But I agree Congress should try to concentrate on housing and feeding our country. Football is a minor problem. But the pay offs for those games not being allowed to the non BCS teams is a joke.

[indianahusker]

The thing I am most upset about is the TCU/Boise State game

 

What a sham to protect the BCS. If those two teams had played BCS schools and won, what would the fall out have been?

 

They are protecting themselves from further embarassment it seems to me.

 

We need a play off and all conferences need to have a championship game, or no one does.

 

If you are the best team with two or three losses when you play and can get through and win the championship, more power to ya.

 

But I agree Congress should try to concentrate on housing and feeding our country. Football is a minor problem. But the pay offs for those games not being allowed to the non BCS teams is a joke.

I cannot agree enough!!!

[JTrain]

Congress is clueless enough about the issues they are supposed to be dealing with. I don't want them anywhere near college football.

 

As I've argued in detail before, I think a four-team playoff (a "plus-one", as the media generally refers to it) is the most practical static solution. If you went back the past 20 seasons, and looked at the post-conference championship game rankings, then counted the number of teams worthy of being in national championship contention, you would generally get a number between two and six. This year, there are five (or four, if you are extremely anti-Boise St.). But the average is right around four.

 

Since people generally want a static system, I think four is the best number to stick with. It's better than two (current system) and certainly better than eight (I don't think many people want a two-loss team anywhere near the trophy). You could make a decent argument for six, but I still think four is closer to the average, and will be the best system in the long term. Yes, sometimes a deserving team or two will get left out (like Boise this year). And sometimes an undeserving team or two will be included. But more often than not, it will work out well.

 

You would hold the games at the home field of the higher ranked team the Saturday after the CCGs. So, if the system were in place this year, Cincinnati would travel to Texas for a 2:30 game this Saturday, while TCU would travel to Bama for the 7:00 game. The winners would play in the national title game on Jan. 7. And the losers would get BCS bowl bids (maybe they would play each other in the Sugar or Fiesta).

[Hingle McCringleberry]

It looks like 4 maybe 5 games. If you go all the way, you play 15 games a year. Some of the playoff games are at home, so there is the advantage of having that. For D 2 that is...

[skersfan]

I think you add the games, shortening the season for those that do not make the playoffs would hurt the bottom line and drive them out eventually.

 

But if Alabama is actually cancelling classes for the week of the NC game, it appears something is wrong with the BCS thinking.

[SaturnDrew]

Leave it to the government to say something is not fair. I can just see congress saying "Hey Dr. Tom, I really think you earning those national championship rings are great and all but other teams don't have them. Why don't you share one with Iowa State?"

Government has a few BIG jobs to handle. College football is not one of them.

 

Congress did say something like that when Title IX was passed.

[KellyBomelly]

The first and most obvious thing: What in the HELL is Congress doing in all of this?! GTFO! Apparently they're that desperate for better polling numbers that they'll ignore actual serious issues and abolish the BCS. Yeah, we all don't like/hate the BCS, but at least we have our priorities in order. KYFHO!

 

There obviously isn't a perfect solution to this or else we'd have it already. I'd prefer not to do away with the bowl system, it's too classic, nor take the significance of the regular season away, as in NCAA basketball. The different conferences work as a playoff system, with the season culminating in a CCG. If conferences want their teams to vie for the NC game, then they must have a CCG. The winners of the conferences go to a playoff system, possibly with classic bowls (Rose, Sugar, Cotton, Holiday, Fiesta, etc.) being the venue for the playoff games. Those teams that do not make the playoffs can be invited to lower-tiered bowl games as they are already.

 

The thing here is numbers: there's eleven "BCS conferences", but only eight of these have teams that are NC material. Would conferences need to be shuffled around? How many playoff games do you want? If there's eight conferences vying, through December you have two rounds of playoffs, with the NC game in early January. And Notre Dame, Army, and Navy would have to dump their non-AQ status if they ever want to compete for the NC.

 

Problems with this, though: These players are still students, remember. December is tough academically-speaking. Do you extend the season further into January? It's also the holidays: these guys have to see their families at some point.

 

All of this was just me brainstorming as I wrote. Feel free to tear it apart.