forsberg_us wrote:

I don't see a scenario in which you can hold more than a 4 or 6 team playoff at the bowl sites because it's unlikely you can get fans to travel 3 weeks in a row.

I think even if you went to an 8 team playoff, the first round of games would have to be played at the home stadium of the higher seeds to ensure you get the crowds.  Even then, you would have the four major bowls (Orange, Sugar, Rose and Fiesta) fighting for 3 games (2 semi-finals and the national championship.

I suppose whichever bowl was left out each year could still use traditional conference allegiances (i.e., Rose = Big 10 v. Pac 12) for a game played by teams not in the playoff system.

Good points. I still like 16 because with eight you could be omitting a worthy team. You could play the round of 16 and the quarterfinals at the home of the higher seed, and then when you get to the final four do what you've described.  And I think the alumni would travel to a neutral site if the stakes were high enough. Look at how many Ohio State fans showed up for the skanky Gator Bowl last year. Of course, you have to take into account even Ohioans probably are glad to leave Ohio.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (11/05/2012 9:45 pm)

"You can't go more than 3 weeks due to schedule overload. "

Allow the BCS to play in home stadiums?

At its core, it is all about money, or at least that is what it has become.

If the universities wanted to have a championship playoff series for the sake of it, they could simply do it.  Or maybe they couldn't, on account of their contracts for televised games. 

Having the #1 and #2 teams play each other for a national title, instead of having #1 being selected, just moved the sausage making back one step, i.e. deciding who is #1 and who is #2.  Did it make it incrementally better to do so, maybe a bit.  Dunno.  If so, maybe the realistic next step is just that, one more step: #1-4, play.  Or with consolidation of the football leagues, maybe we can get to a point where the winners of either 4, or 8 conferences, play for the title?

In any case, the sausage making is in full swing.

"Or with consolidation of the football leagues, maybe we can get to a point where the winners of either 4, or 8 conferences, play for the title?"

I've forgotten who or where, but some enterprising college football writer penned a column a few weeks ago about how after everything settles, we're going to end up with four uber conferences - the SEC, the Big 10+, an amalgamation of the ACC and the Big East, and the Pac 12-plus how many ever teams in the West can hook on out there.
The article was timed with Notre Dame joining the ACC in every sport but hockey and football, and the point was that the schools who don't end up in one of these four big conferences are going to be shut out of the BCS.
I disagree. As loathesome and sanctimonious as the folks in South Bend are, they'd be crazy to give up that primo TV deal to join a conference where they'd have to share football revenue. I maintain  just as many people tune in to Notre Dame games to hope they lose as to see them win, but either way the NCAA is going to have to deal with the 800-pound elephant in the room.

tkihshbt wrote:

You should write more anti-Notre Dame screeds.

. . . because Notre Dame supporters, and Irish people in general, don't get all defensive when a subset of them are caricatured. 

I don't see how Div 1a could condense to just four leagues.  The league schedule would either be prohibitively long, or else meaningless.  I just read that there are currently 12 leagues.  I can imagine a system wherein a portion are considered "Powerhouse Conferences" with an automatic in for their winner, while the others must play an elimination round to qualify.  Something like this:

8 conferences compete in an elimination round to yield 4 teams.
4 Powerhouse conferences get a bye

Then, an 8 team tournament begins.

As for Notre Dame, an 800-pound elephant would be a scrawny, awful looking little thing, but whether 800 pounds or full-size, fuck 'em.  Join up, or sit out.

tkihshbt wrote:

Max wrote:

tkihshbt wrote:

You should write more anti-Notre Dame screeds.

. . . because Notre Dame supporters, and Irish people in general, don't get all defensive when a subset of them are caricatured.

Their fans, like KU, Duke and SEC football fans, are completely insufferable and deserved to be mocked.

Yes, but when I did, I discovered there was a double-standard.

"I don't see how Div 1a could condense to just four leagues.  The league schedule would either be prohibitively long, or else meaningless."

Well, you don't play every team in your conference now. Just the teams in your division. Imagine if an uber conference increased to 20 or 24 teams with four divisions. Then you'd have a semifinal round before the championship game. Cha-ching!

"Their fans, like KU, Duke and SEC football fans, are completely insufferable and deserved to be mocked."

Contempt for Duke is universal, but I've never felt extraordinary hatred for the Kansas mens basketball team other than when they knocked out the best Arizona State team of my lifetime, albeit in a game in which the Sun Devils didn't bother to play well.
Granted, I don't live in the state next door to Kansas. It's probably as benign to me as my contempt for the rubes in New Hampshire is to you guys ...

Why are there so many unsolved murders in New Hampshire?

Because the DNA is all the same and there are no dental records.

artie_fufkin wrote:

"I don't see how Div 1a could condense to just four leagues.  The league schedule would either be prohibitively long, or else meaningless."

Well, you don't play every team in your conference now. Just the teams in your division. Imagine if an uber conference increased to 20 or 24 teams with four divisions. Then you'd have a semifinal round before the championship game. Cha-ching!

I confess I haven't paid attention.  When the Big Ten was ten teams, I think they did play each other, nine games and maybe three non-conference games.

I did not think I was being mocked.  I argued that there is a double standard, in that mocking fans along these lines raised no objections: "I can't tolerate miniature people with red hair and freckles from South Boston thinking the superiority of their Irish heritage has been validated because a bunch of African-American kids from California and the Midwest won a freakin' crystal trophy."

But mocking fans in this way led down a very strange journey of defensiveness: "if the SEC wins, a bunch of yahoos with confederate flags on their bumper feel that their political beliefs, and their entire way of life, is validated when a bunch of strapping young African American men, poor and working for no pay, win a national championship."

If there is a double standard, whereby mocking insufferable Notre Dame fans who see the superiority of their Irish heritage validated in their football success is OK, but where mocking insufferable SEC fans who see the superiority of their Southern heritage validated in their football success is not OK, then I can agree to those ground rules, I guess, as long as they are made explicit.  But I am Asperger Syndrome-like in my inability to grasp the unwritten rules of society, so I like to get things clear on the surface.

artie_fufkin wrote:

"I don't see how Div 1a could condense to just four leagues.  The league schedule would either be prohibitively long, or else meaningless."

Well, you don't play every team in your conference now. Just the teams in your division. Imagine if an uber conference increased to 20 or 24 teams with four divisions. Then you'd have a semifinal round before the championship game. Cha-ching!

That makes sense, too.  If Div 1a collapsed into, say, 4 uber-conferences, then their playoffs would account for the first two rounds of a national championship playoff.  At which point, a further two rounds of "bowl games" could settle the issue.

Anyway, back to the point, I am fine with Oregon getting one spot in the championship game.  Makes more sense than Notre Dame or KSU.  Why wouldn't it be Alabama vs. Oregon at this point?  I see KSU is currently ahead of Oregon in the BCS rankings, while behind Oregon in the AP and USA Today rankings.

Max wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

"If so, maybe the realistic next step is just that, one more step: #1-4, play."

Already done.  Beginning 2014 they're implementing a 4 team playoff system.

Then baby steps it is. 

Seems like ultimately a conference-based, or region based approach, would be helpful.

That's never going to happen because the system would be grossly inequitable.

I don't know if you are or have ever been a hockey fan, but back when the NHL first expanded from its original 6 teams it set up 2 divisions--one had the original 6 teams and the other had all the expansion teams. One of the expansion teams would make the Stanley Cup Finals and promptly get swept because the disparity of talent was significant.

Assume you took the top 8 BCS teams and started a playoff based on the current rankings.  5 of the top 8 teams are from the SEC. Then there's K-State (Big 12), Oregon (Pac-12) and Notre Dame (unaffiliated).  No one from the Big 10, ACC or Big East, let alone the smaller conferences.  If you rely on conference success, inferior teams from inferior conferences will keep out superior teams from superior conferences.

It would be like baseball putting Kansas City, the Cubs, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Houston and San Diego in a division and guaranteeing a 70 win team entry into the post-season.