Look who supports a plus one playoff now

Why, none other than the Big 10, who as recently as 4 years ago shot down a similar proposal by the SEC, because the precious Rose Bowl must be maintained at all costs.

Big Ten exploring four-team football playoff - NCAA Football - SI.com

 

While I like the idea of the games on campuses I think a more logical choice to keep the bowls happy would be to used the current Big 4 bowls to be used in the plus one process. It would be rotated between two of them every year to keep them involved. If the Rose wants to keep their Big 10/PAC 12 tie-in then let them. I'm sure someone like the Cotton or Gator or Outback would love to step into their place.

Say the Sugar and Orange would have the playoff games and the other two bowls would keep their traditional ties then it would rotate to the Fiesta/Rose the next season. The championship would then be rotated like it is now in addition to their regular bowl.

 

And that's exactly the one change I would make to their proposal. Using the BCS to seed 1 and 2 for home games can lead to way too many shenanigans to get home-field advantage.

This was brought up on Moscona's show yesterday, and the number of people complaining about this idea blew me away. Either they get their perfect 8 or 16-team playoff or they don't want anything. One old-timer even called in wanting us to go back to the old pre-BCS days of split NCs.

The goal is to move away from a fatally flawed system, and this is a first step toward its elimination. It's going to take baby steps to reach an ideal solution, it doesn't have to happen all at once, and really can't for logistical reasons. But the key is to take that first step away from the BCS and replace it with something better, and this is a great step in that direction.

 

Exactly keep the BS politic's out of it as much as possible - it will already be a sh*t show about who the top 4 are going to be every year with #'s 5, 6, 7 & 8 bitching about how they got robbed, can you imagine what it will be like in order to try and host the game at a university campus!! There will be more crooked crap going on in the voting than every before. If they are going to do a playoff they have to keep it with the bowls and rotate the games on an equal basis.

 

I agree here. The Rose, Sugar, Orange and either Fiesta or Cotton should host the final 4 on a rotating basis with the NC game also held as the Super Bowl is in a professional stadium (if logistics can be worked out) rotated around.
As in basketball the teams left out will bitch and moan that they should have been included but I think a final four tournement is as far as it should go. That would be 15-16 games a season for the last two in and that is almost too many for health reasons.

 

The plus one championship is the only way these lesser football conferences can get in, that's why they are for it.

 

I think having the games on campus would be fine. Look, we, like most SEC teams would have little trouble travelling to a game in Miami followed by a game in NOLA, but look at it from the BIG perspective. Both of those games (if they were fortunate enough to win the first) would be big trips for their fan base, with the bowl still probably asking the teams to guarantee the gate. That means that only about 5K would be able to travel to both, but the school would be on the hook for a lot of unused tickets. Better to have a road game, where you know you aren't going to have too many tix, but you also have a realistic chance to sell them all.

As to concerns about playing the games in bad weather locations, my response would be "win more regular season games". This year, the matchups would have been Stanford at LSU and Ok State at Bama. I don't have any real problem with that (though I would support a rule that you have to win your conference to host.) It would have erased from our minds any idea that Bama didn't "deserve" to be there (which had to be a factor in the LSU gameplan) and it would have meant that Bama's game prep time would not have been able to focus on LSU (and our three offensive plays) for the entire 40 days they had to prepare.

I don't see anyone complaining that sometimes the NFC Championship game is in Green Bay. Why should college football be different, if in fact we are moving toward a real playoff. And if you want to move in that direction, getting the BIG on board is a big step.

GEAUX TIGERS

 

The SEC winning 6 NC in a row is all the "on board" the big 10 or any other conference will need. If anyone thinks Bama would have trouble traveling to Wisconsin, should think it again. Great defenses and power football tend to travel well.

 

I think they arr trying to keep the money in house by wanting to play the games on campus. That way they would not need to split any revenues with the bowls. But what happens of one of these schools with a 35000 seat stadium host a semifinal game?

They would make a new rule within a few weeks of the season ending.

 

The size of the stadium is inversely preportional to the chance that they will sell out. IOW, LSU is much more likely to sell out 92K Tiger Stadium than Troy is to sell out their 30K Veterans Memorial Stadium. Soooo, if the semifinal somehow ended up with LSU going to Troy, plenty of seats would be available for Tiger fans. And if new Troy fans come out of the woodwork, the NCAA could still have a rule guaranteeing 7-10K tickets to a visiting team. Not sure this is really a problem, since even in this scenario, the host team would not lose money on the game. Having a smaller school have to meet ticket sales requirements at a neutral location would be practically impossible, meaning the school would lose big money.

One of the recurring themes in Dan Wetzel's "Death to the BCS" is that the bowl system is a racket, where the bowls are subsidized by schools through ticket guarantees while at the same time pretending that they are actually giving money to the schools. He addresses the playoff home game question pretty well, pointing out that when it comes to having a quarterfinal game pitting Nebraska against Oregon, would you rather have it in Lincoln or St. Petersburg. The question pretty much answers itself. While this proposal doesn't reach Wetzel's 16-team playoff, he does still have the national semifinals at home sites, and makes a pretty good case.

GEAUX TIGERS