Keep bowls and BCS away from college football playoff

I agree with some of what you say Jeff, especially getting the bowls out of the way, but I’m still in favor of a 16-team playoff like the other divisions of the NCAA.

Cut the regular season back to 11 games and it will work well. And the fans will love it.

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makes sense so im sure they won’t do it

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It’s so simple and makes so much sense, it’s amazing to me that almost each one of these proposals is being talked down if you believe all of the recent reports.

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Why not try it … try anything other than the mess we have.

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“but I’m still in favor of a 16-team playoff like the other divisions of the NCAA.”

The FCS playoff is in the process of expanding to 24 teams from 20. As much as people may hate BCS apologists, one point they are 100 percent spot on is any playoff system larger than 4 teams will eventually swell up over time.

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You have my vote to chair the committee

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I agree with Jacket Backer..if a play-off system is how a champ is decided, don’t do it half-a$$ed! 16 teams- eight games to start…they draw for match-ups, so it is fair. Evrybody else can go to a bowl….(sound of my 2 cents in a bucket)

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I agree with everything Schultz said. It makes perfect sense, that’s it will never happen

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I like it all, except I think it needs at least 8 teams. Only allowing 3% of your member teams into a playoff is just way too low. Basketball allows almost 20% of D-I teams into the tournament. I’m not saying it needs to be that high, but I think it needs to be north of 5%. It can be done as long as school presidents stop lying to themselves about this student-athletes needing to take finals garbage.

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I like it all. The current bowl a night system means I don’t watch any bowls. Give me two solid days of football on New Year’s eve and New Year’s day then play a national championship a week later. I want to put four tv’s in the room and watch all the games at once. Have friends over for a party and cheer for everyone. Call me a Luddite but I want to go back to the old ways.

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the 4 teams MUST be Conference Champs because that is what the Football Season is all about. The way ESPN works it will turn into a Season Long SEC Lovefest selling at SEC to always have 2 teams in the mix.
If a team doesn’t win their Conference then they are not 1 of the 4 best teams. Screw the Bama v LSU joke we had this year that NOBODY watched but people in the South.

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PEOPLE wanting 16 teams are forgetting this is COLLEGE. These kids are there for COLLEGE and Studying. Let the lil FCS teams play their game and let the Big Boys Play the Season and just a few get a Shot at a Championship. Expanding the season expands the risk to the players and forces more talk of PAYING the players.

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Sounds good to me. EXCEPT What if a team chosen for the playoff loses its bowl game first?

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Conference champions get a bye, runner-ups are in. 6 BCS conferences= 12 teams. This ensures the regular season still matters. Cut out some of the 1-AA opponents. Not worth paying Ga Southern 800,000 to play a game you win by 50 in front of 60,000 people. All of the insignificant bowls are played by those who are not in the mix (just as they are today). BCS bowls are used for quarter/semi final games.

it’s not hard (that’s what she said)

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Ah okay Jeff 4 is too long for sec or acc schools but old div1aa conferences can do it. Whatever. Pro sports can do it! All college sports can do it. But noooo not pigskin! It’s tooo long. tpyical whiney liberal

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I love the idea of a playoff. I would want 8 or 16 teams instead of 4. In the BcS era, mid-major conferences and independents other than Notre Dame have 0 chance of having a team win a National Championship. What incentive, outside of winning the conference, do the mid-majors have? Also, having home playoff games would be bigger money makers than the paycheck non-conference games against FCS opponents.

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Couldn’t agree more. I went to a FCS School(THE Georgia Southern Universiy) and have seen how successful a playoff can be. However, due to the conference championships a 16 or 20 team playoff would not be feasible. The only way that a 16 team playoff could be feasible is if we eliminated the conference championship games, which is not going to happen.

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Miss Cleo you are soooooo off the mark……not going to happen IMO

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So last year, we would have seen this?

LSU versus Stanford in Baton Rouge
Bama versus Okie State in Tuscaloosa

I could live with that. Would be better than what we have now.

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Playoff teams do not have to be conference champions. No other sport, college or pro, mandates this.

Every other sport has a real playoff system that gives every team in the sport a chance to win the championship without worrying about the opinions of old men. If college football is going to create this fake 4 team playoff format then they should at least try to create some way for teams to earn their way in. Otherwise it will end up as corrupt and useless as the BCS.

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Honestly I don’t see a problem with a smaller stadium school hosting a playoff game if they are the higher seed. Most of the money comes from TV. The sales from an extra 30-40 thousand tickest wont be a big difference in the grand scheme of things. I think it would be kinda cool if a smaller school played well enough to earn a playoff game at their house.

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“If college football is going to create this fake 4 team playoff format then they should at least try to create some way for teams to earn their way in.”

That’s all fine and well. The problem is there are more then 4 conferences. Not only that, if you make conference champion be a requirement it’s a sure bet that this thing will get bloated and expand past 4, then past 8, then past 16… next thing you know we’ve got a crappy season to wait out like in basketball.

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Greed is killing college football. Rivalries that defined and built the sport’s popularity are discarded without a second thought if another conference offers more money. Boosters are asked to pay contributions that would make NFL franchises blush. Universities and alums make their peace with thug “student/athletes” in the name of winning. Not what I consider to be progress.

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That’s all fine and well. The problem is there are more then 4 conferences.

Which is why I called it a fake playoff. You can’t really call it a playoff when most of the teams in college football are eliminated before the season even starts. Until every team in the country can win a championship on the field, there wont be a real playoff. I am just arguing for a way to make a horribly unfair system slightly more fair.

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the tech man and his bug community like the conf champion scenario as they see scenarios where they may get a shot to have their brains beat in. Playing in possbily the weakest conference in America there is a shot in the dark scenario where they can win their conference with 6 losses….be unranked…therefore giving them a pass into the final four even though they have already been whipped by double digits on at least 4 occasions. Such is life in the ACC as a tech fan…hahahahaha!

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Last year was the first year the BCS championship game was on cable you nut.

No it wasn’t. The Auburn/Oregon game was, and it got much higher ratings.

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dewey cheatum and howe…you knucklehead yuck yuck yuck

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Heisman – fair enough, I did not play professional football. But you have not played competitive soccer either; otherwise, you wouldn’t have made that comment. You can’t therefore speak to anything about the physical nature of soccer. I’m not trying to downplay the physical play of football, but your random shot at soccer in general is strange – nobody mentioned it, but you randomly decided to include it in your post and, apparently, you have decided soccer players are sissies or something to that effect. That is not true, and quite frankly, ignorant.

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Well Jeff, why I do like the idea of a playoff system, the 4 team play off system is not much better than the current system. So what you are trying to tell us is that winning your conference should mean nothing. Who is to say who the top 4 teams are? Who’s to say for arguments sake’s that if Alabama and LSU had been in the big 12 or whatever it’s called today, either of these teams may not have won that conference. No way can you say that Bama or LSU would have beaten Oklahoma State or Oklahoma for that fact. Conference champions should count and count the most. I mean, why even bother to play if being conference championships has no meaning?

Pick a panel to pick the 4 team’s that are going to be in the playoffs you say. Are you kidding me? I’m pretty sure that a person on the panel from California is going to pick a 1 loss Tennessee team over a 1 loss USC or Standford team or a Ohio man is going to pick a once beaten LSU team over a 1 loss Ohio State team. Get serious. The only fair panel one could come up with, is if the panel members were made up of European judges. I say pick the conference winners and have them go at it. If a conference is a split conference, then they only send the conference winner. If a conference is a split conference then the winner of their side of the conference should both play in the playoffs. You would let’s say have the winner of the SEC east play the winner one of the ACC winners and the SEC West play the other ACC champ, that way it is possible for the National Championship be between two teams from the same Conference. It the lower tier college can have a large playoff system, then so can the major programs. Use the bowl site’s for the first 2 rounds then do as you say. Have the semi’s and the finals at a neutral site. No! just because a team has a higher ranking should not give them home field advantage, because you don’t know for a fact that the higher ranked team would have been ranked higher if they had played in the same conference as the lower ranked team.

The bowls as they are now, I will say for the umpteenth time, flat out stinks. 10 years ago I use to watch almost all the bowls. I would never dream of missing the Orange, Cotton or Sugar Bowls. Even though the Rose Bowl was not a true bowl, I would usually watch most of them. The Rose Bowl was nothing more than a game between two conferences and would often have two teams not much worth watching. Always a great match up today, I rarely watch the Orange Bowl as most of these match ups are a joke. Conference tie in’s has for all intents and purposes, killed the bowl games.

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One more thing. If Notre Dame thinks that they are too good to join a conference, then oh well, good luck sitting at home when playoff time rolls around.

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8 teams is the right number….

6 confrence winners IF the winner ends the season ranked in the top 10. If the winner is not in the top 10 the slot goes to the highest ranked non confrence winner.

Last two slots go to – highest ranked non confrence winners.

First round games go to the highest seeds campuses…. GREAT IDEA…GIVE IT BACK TO THE SCHOOLS AND FANS.

Semi’s and finals go to bid cities.

Bowls take the role of and NIT in basketball which is basicall what all the bowls are now other than the top 2-3 games.

GOAL — PUT THE BEST 8 TEAMS IN A PLAYOFF – WITH THIS SYSTEM THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOME BUBBLE TEAMS BUT I WOULD FEEL FONFIDENT EACH YEAR THAT A RENKING SYSTEM AS THE BCS BUT RUN BY NCAA WOULD INSURE WITH NO QUESTION THAT THE BEST 4-6 TEAMS MAKE THE FIELD. THATS ALL WE CAN ASK.

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TDAWG – DO YOU NOT WANT TO MAKE THE BEST EFFORT TO DETERMINE THE BEST TEAMS IN THE COUNTRY GET IN THTE PLAYOFF REGARDLESS OF CONFRENCE.
IT WILL NEVER BE PERFECT TO PICK THE 4 OR 8 BEST AND BE 100% SURE THAT THE BEST ARE IN THE PLAYOFF….BUT TAKING CONFRENCE CHAMPS AUTOMATICALLY WILL INSURE THAT THE BEST 4 OR 8 ARE NOT IN THE FIELD.

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The SEC, Big 10, Big 12 and Pac 12 have received a combined 28 at-large BCS bowl game bids. The ACC has received ONE. Darn right we’re pushing to emphasize our conference champion. BCS bowl games only take our representative because they have to. We’d never make it based on merit alone.

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ACC – AND IF YOU CANT MAKE IT ON MERRIT SHOULD YOU JUST HAVE IT HANDED TO YOU AS A WEAK CONFRENCE CHAMP??? SOUNDS LIKE OBAMAISM. IF YOU CAN MAKE IT IN LIFE, WE WILL HAVE THE STRONG (OR FOUTUNANTE) GIVE IT TO YOU.

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I hope FSU is listening to you, 5150. They’d better stick to a conference that’s easy to win. Bobby Bowden’s logic is still sound. The ACC is the path of least resistance to a national title shot.

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global I like your way of thinking, but would go a bit further. The 6 major conference champion’s should be in the playoffs. If the conference has a split conference, then the winner of their respective divisions should make the playoffs. Also as you suggested teams in the top ten should also make the playoffs, not just the top 2 in the top 10, but all teams in the top 10. That would pretty much eliminate a team like Alabama being left out. I haven’t crunched the numbers, but I would have to believe that would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 teams in a playoff series. Notre Dame is to good to be in a conference, so I say arrivederci to them.

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I’m in favor of any scheme that would’ve left Alabama out last year and would’ve replaced them with the Clemson team that won the ACC championship and later was humiliated by West Virginia, 70-33.

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Good plan, except with only one week off, you give the teams 3 days to prepare for the biggest game of their lives. I guess that was another of Schultz’s brain cramps.

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SecFan…..BUT BUT BUT Every game the SEC plays against another SEC team is the Biggest Game of their lives according to all the Special Education Conference Fans.

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Jeff — Such wonderfully sensible ideas! I wish the college football bureaucracy would be able to adopt a plan like this.

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I’m with ya, 5150. When the talk turns to football, I always try to change the subject, too!

Its always amazing that in the phrase College Football, the College part is the what people want to pretend doesn’t exist.

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it’s gonna be 4 SEC teams in the playoffs.

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1eyedJack the Bowl game I would have selected to go to was the Armed Services Bowl. They gave the Best SWAG last year by far.

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I’m not really into college football but for those of you who are….be careful what you wish for.

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Listen, I like the FCS and their 16-team playoff fine, but it only works for FCS schools because there’s MUCH more parity (and much less money – coincidence? I think NOT) in that subdivision. Go back the last 10 years and try to find more than four FBS schools who had a legitimate claim to being the best team in the nation that year prior to their bowl games. Four would be plenty.

I don’t like the on-campus semifinals; other than that I think this system would work fine. Use the former BCS bowl games for those semifinal matchups (giving those games huge relevance) with the higher-seeded teams having geographic proximity, but an even ticket split. At WORST, if the on-campus games must happen, at least make sure the tickets are split.

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Don’t limit the field to only conference champs. Play the semi-final games at campus locations, and give homefield preference to a conference champ, even if a non conference champ has a higher seed. That doesn’t the four best teams from being included, but it does help to preserve the importance of the regular season.

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Who is Vidal Anderson?

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More useless crazy college football talk!
@Jeff Schultz…
Man, I can tell you this, wait until some SEC school has to go into Lincoln, Nebraska, Ann Arbor, or East Lansing in the dead of winter! You will see a death nail in that system so fast, it will be like watching the folks flow out the door the last day Bear Sterns was in business! I lived in that mess for 3 and 1/2 years in Washtenaw County… These aren’t NFL stadiums like Lambeau! Ha ha, wait till the winds off the plains or the Great Lakes hit them in the face! That would be priceless!!!

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And also require all bowl teams to have a winning record.

6-6 is not good.

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sounds great to me. once the dollahs start rolling in and the ncaa institutes some kind of revenue sharing plan, you’ll see this thing get as many teams as the market can bear…..cause folks, it aint about “college” or “student athletes”….

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As a true college football fan, I think you are spot-on with your plan. Many casual college football fans that have never been to a big time college game are chimming in with all the playoff senarios that would kill what is the beauty of this sport.

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First, Death to the BCS. Famous book; everybody get a copy and read it.

Second, no other major college sport has only a 12-game season.

Third, the conference championship game *is* (meaning should really be) part of the playoff. You lose, you are out. Beyond that…

Fourth, it is absurd to include multiple teams from one conference until enough games are played to include *all* conference champions. With these 16-school conferences that are forming, that means 64 teams vie for 4 spots automatically in the near future. The NCAA had better open up 4 more spots, or conferences like the Big 12 Left-behinds, the Big East Unpopulars, and the mish-mash of C-USA, Conference Everybody Else and the League of Independents will cry, “Fowl! (as “You turkeys.)

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But in the end, no other sport at no other level mandates a conference title to get into the postseason that I’m aware of, so why should football be different?

In every other sport, winning your conference does get you into the playoffs though, meaning there are no conference champions that are left out because some other undeserving team passed Kirk Herstreit’s eye test.

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Not to mention a 6 win, 8 loss team returning home from a meaningless exhibition with a loss.

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I’ll take the 4 team playoff to start. Anything is better than the BCS. I have been waiting for a playoff since 1966 when Georgia and Alabama finished 4th and 3rd in the polls and either could have beaten 1 and 2. When they see college football bolt ahead of the NFL in popularity and the money starts rolling in then they will start increasing the number of teams involved.

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Good idea, Jeff…But more teams need to be involved. Will never be picked b4 bowls, though.

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All major sports have there division winners in the playoff with the addition of wild card spots. If you are only allowing 4 teams in you should have the top 4 ranked conference champions. This will take some of the bias in the ranking out of the playoff field. If that means number 1,5,7,14 so be it. The overall goal is to find the number 1 team. If you didn’t win your conference, then you are not number 1.

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GT if you win your weak confrence with 2-4 losses and can get no more respect from the ranking system than a #14 ranking you do not deserve a spot in a 4 team playoff. The objective is get the best 4 teams in a playoff.

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Jeff’s idea for a four-team playoff isn’t bad, but I just don’t see it happening. Too many people have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. A playoff is definitely coming, but it will involve the BCS and some of the bowls.

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Just my two cents, while I like most of what you say Jeff, IMHO a 4 team playoff is to few and 16 is too many. The top 8 teams- with Conference Champs getting higher consideration over a non-conference winner from a conference; Independents would be considered on their own merits. This would have in my humble opinion given us a true National Champion in most disputed years i.e. 2003 with USC being left out, 2004 with Auburn being left out, 2006 Michigan left out, 2007 when Georgia and USC were left out and this past year when LSU and Alabama played for the BCS Championship leaving other teams out and other years throughout the history of Division 1- BCS or what other term you want to use for big time college football. Anyway this is only my opinion.

Go Dawgs

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Mr. Schultz, with all due respect the college Bowl system deserves NOTHING, that system is outdated and corrupt and has been corrupt for many years.

Remember when CFB Fans could have had a GT vs. Colorado MNC-Game on the field but the corrupt Bowl System “cut a deal” with Notre Dame as early as Halloween Weekend that put ND in the Orange Bowl vs. Colorado regardless of how the rest of their season played out, not to mention with no regard to how the rest of the top teams had their seasons play out that year also.

I can point to about 15-20 years of similar bowl shenanigans where the fat-a$$ Bowl Committee guys in ugly blazers repeatedly tried their best to ruin CFB each season between Halloween and the 2nd week of Nov. when back-door deal for bowl slots were made without any regard to the CFB fans nor to the teams that merited the best bowl slots.

The Bowl games have such a crappy track record I could care less about any of the Bowl games.

The BCS should have a 6 team playoff with the top 2 seeds getting byes, and the Top-4 conference champions (based on Strength of Schedule/BCS poll rankings) being guaranteed 4 of those 6 slots, but not necessarily the top-2 seeds.

After that allow the next 24 teams in term of BCS ranking be allowed to play in 12 bowl games.

This will make bowl games actually mean something once again.

As far as those 12 bowls, have the NCAA accept bids from communities that will actually support bowls so only the stronger bids/bowls will survive and that way the Colleges won’t be on the hook for as many tickets & hotel rooms as in past years.

For the NCAA teams that do not qualify for the BCS playoff or a Bowl Game, the NCAA should allow all teams 15-20 practices during the bowl season so Athletic Departments won’t have to intentionally LOSE $500K to $750K to go to a crappy lower tier bowl just so they can qualify for 3 extra weeks of practice.

This is how you “fix” the BCS level of CFB.

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Jeff—Some excellent ideas overall except for one thing—-95% of all college football games would be over and done by early, early January. Having those two weeks of college football heaven for the first part of January is the ONLY thing that makes my visiting inlaws tolerable !!!

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Can you imagine the SEC! SEC! traveling to Columbus and Ann Arbor to play on Jan. 1. Bring your long johns boys!

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It’s got potential. Not bad; as good as any I’ve read or heard thus far, and better than most. Got potential. I do like the part about all games being through by New Year’s Day. Definitely would vote for that.

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Just put the damn bowl games back the way they were before the BCS and then after the all the games are played (NLT news years day) you come up with the best 2 teams and they play each other the week before the Super Bowl. Simple and for the first time in the last 15 or so years the Bowl Games will actually mean something.

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GT if you win your weak confrence with 2-4 losses and can get no more respect from the ranking system than a #14 ranking you do not deserve a spot in a 4 team playoff

If that happened there is no chance that GT would get in the playoff. Everyone on here acts like if we use conference champions the a 5 loss ACC team is going to the playoffs. Use a little common sense and you will realize that that would never happen. Only one ACC team would have made it in the past 5 years.

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Hard to agree or disagree. I’m still stuck at “teams would be picked by a panel”………? Who is on it and how is that determined? Bipartisan relationships? What is their selection criteria? Conference championship carries no weight? SOS carries less weight….? Undefeated teams carry same weight across the conferences?

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then your new system of determining a champion will end up being just as flawed and unpopular as the BCS is today.

So you think the playoffs would be more popular with 2 SEC teams and 2 Big 12 teams then it would with an SEC, Big 10, Pac 12, and Big 12 team? This years horrible TV ratings showed that nobody wants to watch useless rematches decide championships.

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Dawg doo…..it, is asinine but that is how we do things in this country now days. We dont achieve to be the best…we all need a pat on the back and a freebie without earning anything. If we had to do 4 conf ch as mps….we have to take the 4 traditional power conferences…Pac…Big 12..Big 10 and the SEC…

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If you do 16 teams might as well discount the whole regular season. You have college basketball where only one month matters. NCAA will have nothing to do with this. Conferences run college football (scheduling, money); NCAA runs hoops. Other conferences are going to fight to make it league champions only because the SEC is only conference strong enough to put two teams in top four. Do NOT use a panel. Polls and one super computer (strength of schedule). Mother Teresa would get death threats if she was on panel that kept Tide out of NC

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If you want the best four teams to play, then their conference affiliation is irrelevant.

If you can come up with a fair way to pick those 4 teams then I will stand behind your plan. They way they pick teams now is a joke, and will continue to be a joke in a 4 team playoff. It is very sad that College Football determines its champion by the opinions of people who can’t possibly watch enough games to know who is best and not on the actual field of play like every other sport.

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@Rags – they already discounted the regular season when they rematched LSU and Bama last year. Also, college basketball has over 30 conferences. Half of that NCAA tournament field is conference champions. The other half are teams that had better have very good seasons. Its a cash cow and one of the most enjoyable experiences in sports. I agree 16 is too much for CFB, but 8 would be just fine.

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“makes sense so im sure they won’t do it” – bingo! Solid plan, so it has little chance of being implemented.

As much as I would like to see a 16 team playoff, to those who are saying that all you need to do is shorted the regular season to squeeze it in there – that’s great for the teams that are likely to be in the top 16 every year, but I don’t think the other 100 or so schools in the FBS would be too keen on that.

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There’s no question that the method of selecting the four teams will be critical. I don’t pretend to have an answer for that. My point is that the method that finally is agreed to will be doomed if there are any considerations that prevent the four best teams from playing. I’m an SEC fan, but there will be years that the SEC does not produce one of the four best teams in the country. If two of them are from the Big 10, then they should be included and the SEC should be left out that year. I wouldn’t want an undeserving SEC team to be included because of an arbitrary rule that prevents more than one Big 10 team from making the field.

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I could get behind your 8-team plan Mike. It doesn’t devalue the regular season, doesn’t make conference championships meaningless, and takes some power away from ESPN and the voters and makes teams earn it. I personally think 16 teams is the best model but the 8 team model is much much better then the 4 team model.

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Make’s to much sense and that is to simple for them. go OU SOONERS.

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Four team playoff is fine, determines who is No. 1 and who is No. 2.
How do you determine who finished 3rd and who finished 4th, and
so on, 5 thru top 25?

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A playoff of conference champions maximizes the importance of the regular season rather than minimizing. Every conference game is critical, just as it is now. The out of conference games become noncritical, but that is a good thing. Fan interest would increase with games against better competition. With a 14-team conferences, 9 conference games should be mandated.

Conferences with multiple power teams still get only 1 representative in the playoffs, but their elimination process has been decided in the regular season and conference championship game like every other conference. I don’t see the logic of 2nd and 3rd chances in a playoff system. Until the playoff system expands to include all conference champions, subjective selection of teams will continue to corrupt the system.

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So, the four teams will be picked by a panel. Hmmm. Did you fall off the cabbage truck yesterday? College football is already an obscenity en masse, it used to be fun and it used to matter, now it only matters to Chick-Fil-A and Cheetos and Pop-Tarts ……it took Cam Newton to pack it home for me, the whole institution, including you Mr. Schultz, is for sale to the highest bidder or the biggest bosom. Such stupidity and violence should not be financed by any Institution of Higher Learning. And I’m not talking about Georgie and Auburn. Period.

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shankit then you are saying that the Conference Games don’t matter cause you get another chance. Screw that.

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I know I KNOW I KNOW…………No matter Who wins a Championship if they didn’t play in the SEC then they can’t be good. The SEC is Football GOD so they should just let the SEC Champ play the Playoff Champ to be named the WORLD CHAMP of Semi-Educated Semi-Pro College affiliated Football.

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The Big Ten, the PAC 14 and the Rose Bowl have publicy agreed on the playoff scenario. The Rose Bowl will include a team or teams from those conferences that are not in the playoffs.

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Notre Dame wins their conference every year??? So, they will
be perennial top four.

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So, an undefeated Big East or weaker conference champion would have priority over say a
one loss SEC team which did not win it’s conference.

Yes it would. The reason being that a 1 loss SEC team that was not the best team in its conference has already proven that they are not the best team in the country.

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For the conference champions playoff system, nothing matters except winning the division and winning the conference championship game. No strength of schedule, no BCS selection nonsense, no votes. People may cry about Cincinnati being in the instead of 11-1 Tennessee, but Tennessee wasn’t left out on some subjective vote; they were left out because they failed to advance out of the conference. They can still get their big-payout bowl game invite.

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Scenario – Florida State goes 10-1, beats Oklahoma, Florida, USC, Virginia Tech, Clemson, loses to
Miami by a field goal. Miami goes 11-0 wins conference.
Temple wins Big East or whatever with 11-0 against weaker opponents.
So Temple and Miami play for the NC?

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So Temple and Miami play for the NC?

If Temple and Miami are two of the top 4 conference champions then they should. FSU had their chance, and they blew it. They proved they were not the best team in the conference or the nation.

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“So Temple and Miami play for the NC?”

Yes, if they win the respective semifinal games against, say the SEC and PAC 14 teams.

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Thomas Brown & WnE announce their pending nuptials.

They will join in a Civil Union the Friday after Thanksgiving and Honeymoon will follow the GT v UGa game.

They will be a prefect match. It will be History’s first ever Self-Loathing Interracial Homosexual GT UGA marriage. WnE is a Tech fan that hates Tech like Thomas Brown is a Dwag fan that hates UGa. They should live happily ever after.

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shankit……..if those 2 weak teams can beat the other 2 strong teams to make it to the Championship game then YES. They PROVED to be not as WEAK as you are making them out to be if they are the Last 2 standing.

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The meaning of a “bowl” football game comes from the Rose Bowl game, the “Granddaddy of them all.” The word “bowl” meant nothing more than the shape of the venue a meaningless exihibition of some sport would be played before a large crowd. The “bowl” configuration allowed for more people, as opposed to stands only along one side of a field, or stands along opposite sides. Additionally, the Rose Bowl was on New Year’s Day, which was a cold winter weather time of year. Because California had mild winters, which could allow for flowers to be grown year-round, they celebrated that warmth with a parade and a horserace (the Tournament of Roses). Thus, other games soon began in the beginning of winter, in warm weather cities, like those in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida; and it stayed that way for 40 years (or so). Then anyone with a circular stadium and hopes of making a buck began getting involved and “bowl” games blossomed like mushrooms. The only tradition is greedy people wanting to make money on meaningless exhibitions of college football teams. None of them have any bearing on any real standings, not even the Rose Bowl, but sports writers began ranking teams in some arbitraty fashion for fun, games, and more money for them. The BS-BCS is just greed heaped upon greed. College football has never had a true champion, the way all other NCAA athletics have, through a tournament system. The reasons have been: its too cold and the weather is too bad to have a team from most of Amercia play at home; there are not enough fair weather sites for 64 teams to be split up among; the regular season ended at Thanksgiving, so to have a playoff would mean the players would be missing their Christmas vacation time; and (least important) playing more than ten football games a year would be too hard on a young student-athlete’s body. So, there has always been the resolution that there would be no way to determine a true national champion for college football, division 1. Everyone would just have to pretend one was better than the others.

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The playoff I’ve described does not depend on the bowl games. If bowl games host the playoffs, well that is one scenario to be included. All must be conference champions. Hey, Notre Dame; y’all better pull the trigger and join a conference. Seeding of the teams? It doesn’t really matter. Alabama has to win out to be national champions, just like everybody else. Lose to Notre Dame? Oops. Guess we weren’t as good as we thought.

It won’t be objective until all top-division conferences are included. One alternative for the NCAA (and this is controversial) is to designate 4 conferences as the “Premier Division.” A better alternative is to not limit the playoffs to 4 teams.

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“there are not enough fair weather sites for 64 teams to be split up among;”

I have really enjoyed watching Montana play their home games in the playoffs the last 3 years in Missoula. Nope, they didn’t make it all the way last season.

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For the past six of seven years, the NC has been played in Atlanta.

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“LSU, Oklahoma State, Stanford, and at large Alabama based on
strength of schedule. This would be the fairest alternative to determine who
is truly deserving of the NC”

That means the playoff is part deterministic (based on who won their conference championship) and part probabilistic (computers determine prior to the playoffs that Alabama *should* win the national championship, or voters subjectively decide the same.) Last year Alabama got a do-over. The top 4 rankings were subjective + probabilistic. Is everybody in the country satisfied that Alabama won the “BCS Championship”? No, because they got a do-over and in fact played a team they had already lost to.

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Shankit………..last year the national championship was not played in Atlanta cause UGa would never be mistaken for a top 10 team last year.

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WE NEED TO LEARN FROM BASKETBALL. LET’S DON’T GUESS OR LET A COMPUTER PICK THE CHAMPION ANYMORE. GO BACK TO 10 GAMES A SEASON. NO CONFERENCE PLAYOFFS.

DO A “16 TEAM PLAY OFF” BEGINNING THE FIRST WEEK IN DECEMBER AT VARIOUS BOWL SITES. THEN DO “THE EIGHT TAEM PLAYOFF” BEFORE CHRISTMAS DAY.

THEN YOU DO THE “FINAL FOUR TEAM PLAYOFF” ON NEW YEARS DAY.

PLAY THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME AT THE SAME TIME WE DO NOW.

THE CURRENT BOWL SYSTEM CAN SURVIVE BY PAIRING TEAMS RANKED 15 AND ABOVE.

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Including a Big East Champ like the 8-5 2010 Connecticut team in the national championship playoff just because it won its conference will certainly lend tremendous legitimacy to the way college football crowns its national champion. And by forcing a team to lose no more than 5 of its games, it will greatly magnify the importance of the regular season. And the icing on the cake: viewers across the nation will be on the edge of their seats to watch UConn play for it all. Oh boy, I can’t wait.

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I like it all. One addition — the bowls go back to their original names. Go back to the Orange Bowl, not the Tropicana Orange Bowl, or the Arrow Shirt Cotton Bowl (or what ever it is these days). Sponsors get enough for their millions without screwing up bowl names.

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By my 8 team playoff senerio…..

Teams In by winning confrence……

Wisconsin (# 10 at end of regular season)
Oregon (#5)
lsu (#1)
oky st (#3) ………… would all be in as confrence champs.

clemson
w Virgina ….. won confrences, but out of playoff because they ended season ranked out of top 10…#15 & 23 with 10-4 & 10 & 3 records.

Bama and Sanford, would be in as the 5th and 6th team with 11-1 records and highest ranked at end of season. Replacing confrence champs Clemson and WV.

the last two slots would have gone to boise and Arkansas as the highest two remaining ranked teams that did not win a major confrence.

This gives some credence to confrence winners if they play a complete season. Does not fill one of 8 playoff slots with a #15 or 23 ranked weak confrence winner.

This is with out a doubt the best system …. Call it the gbal national championship system!!!!

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http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150593305944481&set=a.109983729480.84055.104804139480&type=1&theater

You have to see this It is perfect description of College Football.

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I like most of what you said. I do disagree on 1 point however, the use of a committee to pick the teams. The problem with the BCS and the system for naming a champion before that, was that it relies on “OPINION” Polls. We all know what opinions are like. The NFL doesn’t seed it’s playoffs with an opinion poll, or a committee, why should college football. Everything should be decided on the field. There should be NO human element involved at all, because all humans are biased and easily corrupted. I would prefer an 8 team playoff featuring the 5 major conference champs, with 3 wildcard teams determined by record, strength of schedule, head to head and common opponents. If you have clear and transparent rules for who gets in, then it’s completely fair, not decided by the opinions of a mysterious cartel of voters, and we would finally have a true champion.

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If an 8 and 5 UConn team gets in a playoff as conference champions, it will be an 8-team one; the 4-team scenarios being bandied about would not support that scenario. However, that UConn team must win the quarterfinal game against another conference champion, probably the highest seeded one, to advance. You may want to consider if you dare the Big East, Mountain West, or C-USA team (whoever is seeded lowest of the as a “tacit bye” for the #1 seed. The problem is if the #1 seed stumbles while looking ahead.

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My final point: What transpire in the cascading series of events last year made the SEC regular season and conference championship meaningless. Had LSU played Oklahoma State and lost that would not have been the case. This BCS nonsense must be stopped.

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To make it better stop having the BIG conferences playing 3 cupcakes. make the OCC games traditional rivals or other Major football teams. I don’t want to pay to see Ga Southern or Jacksonville St get beat to death.

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Delbert – The SEC regular season was not meaningless at all…. it was a great season… bama, lsu, arky, sc, uga,,,, all had a shot at the SECC game and it played out very exciting. Then bama plyed their way back in.

Thats like saying that the regular season in basketball is meaningless. after all you can play average ball thru the season and get in the field of 64 …. who cares about that regular season…. just get me to March and the tourney. Thats where its all decided.

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Hey … LSU and Bama were arguably the two best teams and they met again in the big one. No go to an 8 team or even 4 …. it reduces the argument as to who the best team is at the end of the season. Yes you can argue who got in and who didnt, but at the end of the playoff ther will be less argument about the eventual champion.

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Dont care for the BCS per se but the ranking system does a pretty good job of identifying the top 10…10 to 20 teams. You can loook at bowl results and see this. If this ranking system is going to influence which 8 teams get in a playoff…as a group, I am ok with that.

Determining 1 from 2 or 2 from 3 or 4…. thats always going to be an issue but with a playoff we are not worried about that. Just want to ID a group of top teams.

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Jeff, Jeff, Jeff. You’re almost right, but you’ve fallen into the same trap as most of the decision-makers, which is taking into account too much pre-existing BCS-y junk. The biggest problem with the BCS is not the BCS but how it’s rendered the bowl games irrelevant. Try this on for size:
No BCS, bowls choose whomever they wish. AFTER all the bowl games are played, either a committee or whatever rankings (even the BCS formula) chooses the top two teams and they play one more game. A true plus one. The biggest merit being that a team ranked 3 to 5, 6, 7, maybe even 8? might have the chance to play in the championship game and thus that many more bowl games are meaningful. It’s simple, it’s traditional and it’s fair.

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I say lets go back to when college football was fun before ESPN and the BCS and college football presidents and athletics directors managed to take the fun out of it.

Bowls invite whomever they want regardless of ranking. The team’s players in closed door meetings without the coaches present vote on which of the bowls that invited them that they want to play in.

The team captains tell the coach who calls the bowl official and accepts the invitation.

End of story. Lets go back to letting the AP numb nutts who do the voting award the meaningless trophy to whomever they like and all of the joke organizations like the Womens Temperence Union can also award meaningless championship trophies to their favorite football teams.

Its not the same thing as an NCAA championship because their has never been an NCAA championship for a Division 1 ie BCS program in football and people need to accept it and deal with it and get over it.

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HAROLD,

TELLING PEOPLE TO LOOK AT YOUR OWN POSTS IS LAME.

You can forget about a 16 team playoff, it isn’t going to happen. The only playoff under consideration is 4 teams, the only thing being debated is which 4 and where to play them. I think it’s best to pick the best 4 teams, using whatever system can be reasonably agreed on. Coaches poll shouldn’t be used in the system, too much self interest involved. Last years game, using conference champions only, would have had the 1, 3, 5, and 10 ranked teams in the playoff. Do you really think that those are better matchups than the 1-4 ranked teams? And it would have included Oregon, who LSU had already beaten. If you’re going to complain about Alabama getting a rematch, why let Oregon in? And for those who are pointing to last year’s tv ratings as a reason to have conference champs only, since when should we start choosing the playoff teams on what would give the best tv ratings?

The semi final games should not be home games, should use existing BCS bowl games for that, then the final bid out.

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5150…..trust me when no one cares about techs defunct championship due to cheating….mean u guys plau in a conference of buffoons…..really not a big deal

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Delbert D… I guess the LSU SEC Championship Rings say Owned by BAMA on them.

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Ok so far, but I’m not sure I trust a selection committee. Put semifinals week before New Years and allow 2 weeks to prepare for NC game. With traditional new years day bowls played in between on new years day.

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Moving Up………….You know the SEC will want to PARTY in New Orleans and give their game to that Toilet of a city.

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Here’s what ESPN says on the deal: “The location has not been set. The Sugar Bowl (SEC) and Fiesta Bowl (Big 12) already have a dog in this fight, but expect bids to come from Jerry Jones and his deluxe Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, as well as a play from Atlanta. “

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The ACC had better move quickly, with the PAC-14 and Big 12 sewing up bowl games for their champions. The Big 12 (10 teams currently, of course) is going to try to gobble up prime teams to fill out their slate.

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I deduce that the Big 12 slipped the news to FSU last week, hence the sudden interest of FSU switching conferences.

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Slive has been a strong playoff proponent. The announcement of the SEC / Big 12 game indicated that is either conference champ is part of a four team playoff, then the conference will provide a replacement team.

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The other thing the SEC partnership agreement does is pretty much end any discussion that the Big 12 is unstable.

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[...] the original post: Keep bowls and BCS away from college football playoff | Jeff Schultz Tags: archives, cars, classifieds, deals, entertainment, games, georgia, nba, news, [...]

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Agree 99%. I’ve said all along that Semis should be ON CAMPUS. You can’t ask fans to travel two weeks in a row. College campus atmosphere better (and I don’t care if Boise State Bronco field only holds 33,500 – it’s their problem). We’re all tired of the power of the big dollar Bowls & BCS – the Gods of greed…this horse doesn’t belong to them.

-1% … another committee to select the top four, well nothing perfect.

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As long as the FBS schools play a 12 game regular season, with a 13th game to determine conference champs, the most you can have is a 4 game playoff. Since no one is going to support cutting back to 11 games, or getting rid of the conference championship games, this is the best proposal. (FCS schools play 11 games, with 4 more for the two teams that make it to the title game, potential of 15.)
Pick the 4 participants using an agreed upon method and declare victory. It’s college football. It’s not life or death….

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I like a lot of what you say here. I personally don’t see why the 16 team format used by the FCS schools would not work.

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This is so easy it is ludicrous that a playoff system for college foobal will not be adopted. But say it was adopted, I feel they would wonder why they waited sooo long to mak the change.

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Evidently you have never been to a Bowl Classic nor been a college football player that was on a team in a Bowl Game. Playing at home is a downer for a culminating experience. You go to a game at home against Wake Forest or Wyoming not a once in a life time National Championship Playoff game. And there will not be the kind of money that the greedy want in an on-site home game. CNN did a poll of more than 42,000 College Football Fans and a large majority (60%) in 48 States want a 16 Team Playoff over a twice as bad as 2 team Championship (4 team playoff). Only, wait for it, only Louisiana and Alabama were against the 16 Team Playoff, go figure. To put that in perspective the majority of Football stadiums do not hold that many people.

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Late to the party but this is the smartest thing Schultzie has ever written (okay, that doesn’t say a lot). Did you do all the thinking for this column, Schultzie?

This statement is especially cogent – “Wire service and computer rankings will not be part of any official criteria, even if it’s assumed everybody on the panel will be peeking at them.”

I am impressed.

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I think Notre Dame should play Michigan 12 times a year and the winner of the series declared the national champion. If they are tied, then it goes to Ohio State by default. Problem solved.

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Way to much money and politics involved with this topic… It will be very interesting to see what type of playoff we finally get…

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The difference in bball and football is that more inter-regional/out of conference games are played so you have a better idea of rankings. Most big conference teams play eight conference games, three cupcakes and one maybe decent team. Make all non-conference games against bcs teams and then maybe you can have a better idea of national ratings. But with the current system, you can’t.

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