It appears that the thing that motivates the university presidents may actually start coming into play here: money. If no-one wants to pay the BCS what it is expecting, maybe they will finally have the incentive to make some REAL changes. --------------- TV not overwhelmed by BCS BARRY JACKSON [email protected] Any college football fan knows that the addition of a fifth BCS game beginning in the 2006 season will do nothing to address the system's problems. The college presidents won't listen to fans, but it will be curious to see if they listen to the powerful voice of television, which has greeted the new BCS with some skepticism. Loren Matthews, ABC Sports' senior vice president/programming, told me in March that the new BCS -- featuring 10 teams playing in five bowls -- was ``not TV's idea of how to fix the problem.'' And that point was reinforced the past two weeks, when ABC submitted a bid that's apparently short of what the BCS envisioned. ABC reportedly offered $17 million annually, on average, for each of the BCS games (excluding the Rose Bowl, which has already renewed with ABC at $30 million a year through 2014). Under the current system that runs through the January 2006 games, ABC pays $25.5 million per BCS game. The BCS spoke with officials from Fox and CBS on Wednesday. Fox is believed to have serious interest and could top ABC's offer. But CBS' interest is believed to be limited at best. ''We didn't look at the additional game as enhancing the overall package,'' CBS Sports president Sean McManus said in a statement. If the BCS wanted to add a fifth game, why not have it match the teams that emerged first and second in the rankings after the first four BCS games? BCS officials said school presidents were worried about how another game would affect the players off the field (academically, for example). Funny, but that doesn't seem to bother the presidents when they collect a big paycheck from CBS for the NCAA Tournament. Presidents adopted the 10-team, five-game system to give more access and money for conferences that do not have automatic bids. If school presidents don't like the offers for the five-game BCS, might they keep a four-game system or make the fifth game a one-game playoff? BCS spokesman Bob Burda said Thursday ''it's hard to speculate'' what the presidents might do and that ``the only model being discussed is the current model [planned for 2006].'' BCS officials will meet with university presidents Nov. 14 in San Diego. It might take a combination of factors -- including three or four teams finishing unbeaten this year -- to make the stubborn presidents seriously reevaluate what to do with the BCS. ------------ Full Article
A playoff is a bad idea for college football. Take the following example. LSU is 10-1 with a loss to Auburn. Auburn is 9-3 with a win in the SECCG and losses to UGA, LA Tech, and I don't know Notre Dame. They go into the playoffs go on a run and win the NC. Now is an 9-3 Auburn team really better than the 10-1 LSU team they beat? This scenerio may not be probable, but it is possible because of the idiotic idea of a CFB playoff.
The 9-3 team that gets hot and wins the playoffs IS a better team than the team that finished the regular season 10-1 and then fizzled. Take for example the 2001 LSu team that finished the regular season 8-3 and then won the SECCG and the Sugar Bowl. Due to the NCAA's archaic BCS system the SEC Champion was denied a chance to play for all the marbles. LSU might not have been a very good team on the night they lost to Ole Miss but by January 1 they were certainly at least one of the top 2 or 3 teams in the country. Certainly a far better team than the Nebraska team that got to play Miami for the BCS title by default and was embarrassed in the Rose Bowl. I'n not saying that LSU would have beaten the Canes and won the title but they would have put up a hell of a lot better game than the Huskers did.
And that is where I disagree. Of course, it is just my opinion and mine alone, but I don't think college football should be like college basketball rewarding hot teams late in the year. That has always been the big divide among playoff fans and bowl fans. Maybe it's a subjective view, but to me college football is about the entire regular season (not just the last month). A playoff will, over time, ruin the unique importance of the regular season. What's worse is that you could have a 4 loss team win the Big East, taking a playoff slot away from 1 or 2 loss real power conference team, and then have that 4 loss Big East team win the NC. It's possible, and that alone would change the face of college football forever. Maybe it would be for the best, ratings would be huge for playoff games, but I don't think huge ratings are enough to change the sport that much. Money is not the only reason university presidents don't want a playoff, they also like the exposure schools get in bowls. I agree that few people are watching bowls like they used too, but with the bowl system more schools get exposure. Adding a playoff will take that exposure away, even if you keep the bowls in a playoff format. University presidents (at schools that do not sit in the top 10 year in and year out) will never vote for a playoff, so until you can give those university presidents good reason to vote for a playoff, they will continue to support the bowls. I don't think anyone here would be willing to give up a SEC playoff slot to a CUSA team to make things more fair.
] At some point in the season the 10-1 team WAS a better team than the 9-3 team but if the 9-3 team is capable of beating the 10-1 team along with other teams with better records what was true earlier in the season is no longer true. You can't just make a power ranking and say team A is a 10 and was a 10 for each and every game of the season and team B is an 8 and was an 8 for every game. Team A might have won games against lesser competition where they played like a 7 that day while team B might have lost a game to a very good team even though they played at a 9 1/2 level that day. Nothing is static about the relative ability of college football teams from game one to game 11. Young players can get better with experience and make their team better. A team can jell as a team as LSU did after the 2001 Ole Miss game and all of a sudden is a world beater. Injured players can heal and also good players can get injured making the injured players' teams not as good a team as they were before the injury.
Without a playoff the bowls have basically become meaningless to the fans. What does anybody care about? People care about the bowl that is designated as the BCS CG game bowl that year and they care about whatever bowl their own favorite team is in. Lets say that USC and Oklahoma are in the Orange Bowl and LSU plays whoever in the Capitol One, Cotton Outback or whatever. Auburn wins out but has to settle for the Sugar Bowl, probably against an opponent other than even Wisconsin should the Badgers finish undefeated and also get left out of the NC picture. So Auburn plays Michigan. Who gives a crap? Wisconsin plays California in the Rose. ZZZZZZZZZ The Fiesta has a potential blowout with Texas and Utah. Wake me up when its over.
Bengal B, everything you say is true but it is not set in stone. Each season is different, you will not always have 5 undefeated teams or even have 4 teams worthy of NC. But even with a playoff you will still have polls (human polls), and it's not like all of sudden the polls will be fair once you have a playoff. Anyway, you make good points. . . I just don't agree. If I were allowed to rank teams, I'd try to be more fair than the current poll voters, but at the same time I would try to look at the entire season when I make my choices. Teams that lose more than 1 or 2 times a season don't deserve a shot at the NC . . . to me. I understand that a great case can be made for a 6-5 team that is very hot and almost unbeatable at the end of the year, that doesn't mean they deserve the same shot at the title as a 1 or 2 loss team. There are 120 teams, under the current system almost half get exposure at the end of the year. With a playoff it would be 16 tops. For fans it's great, you see the top 16 teams compete in a playoff. But usually the top 16 teams are going to be the same 16 every year . . . and that is something the university presidents want to avoid. We may not care about them, but those teams have to exists for the other top teams to play. Why field a team at Vandy if you know that it will be near impossible to ever make the playoffs. Getting better is not an option. For a while at LSU it seemed we would never be ranked, before Saban we may have made the mythical playoffs twice in almost 20 years. If you think about it . . . this playoff decision will not be made by the fans, networks, or "experts". It will be made by university presidents who may not see college football as the sole reason for their university. This is what almost lead to the Super 60, a "new" classification for Div 1 football that at the time in the mid-90's did not even include LSU.
I think some people are missing the boat here. First off, who says you have to have a 16 team playoff? I'd just like to see a 4 team playoff. No. 1 vs. No. 4, No. 2 vs. No. 3. Winners meet. Simple as that. Does that render the regular season meaningless? Hardly, you won't have a shot unless you go undefeated anyway, or there are a lot of one-loss or two-loss teams. Secondly, why would you have to get rid of the bowl games? Say only the teams in the playoffs don't go to bowls, and the other teams that are bowl eligible go to the bowls as normal. You can still have 50 something teams playing a post season game (I'd argue we are already allowing too many teams to play in bowls).
