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Sunday, December 7th, 2003I must say, I was happy to see Oklahoma lose last night, but only because every college football season, I cheer for as much calamity to come to the Bowl Championship Series as possible. It looks like we’ll get that this year. Delicious!
A buddy of mine (who blogs here) has an idea for college football that I think just might work, if only we could find ourselves a billionaire to make the whole thing come about.
Here’s his plan:
Someone with lots of money to burn and who nurses a healthy loathing for the NCAA approaches the top four college football teams after all the bowls have been played. He offers each school a ridiculous amount of money to participate in a four-team playoff — let’s in mid-January. He rents out a huge stadium. The teams play.
The scheme would basically render the NCAA’s end-of-year rankings useless. No matter what the scorebooks say, the team that wins our billionaire’s private playoff would be known to most of the country as college football’s best team. The NCAA would be left limp and cold. The organization would no longer have any validity in college football. Particularly if it’s own “champion” lost in the playoff.
Of course, the NCAA would likely take drastic action against the four participating schools. And there’d be a ton of litigation afterward. But I think anti-NCAA angst is about to reach the boiling point. I think the day is coming when the four top teams in the land would have a price, though I’d imagine it would be a very, very expensive one.
But our billionaire need only show some savvy to pull this thing off. He’d need to convince the top four teams and their schools that the playoff is worth doing on principle, in addition to the paycheck. He would need to convince them that any repercussions the NCAA took against them would be meaningless because if all four agreed to play, the NCAA would instantly become meaningless.
I’m not even certain our billionaire would lose money on the deal. First, he’d be a national hero. Second, he’d likely recoup his investment on TV rights alone. Even if the major networks bow to the NCAA and refuse to pay for rights, he could make a fortune on pay-per-view. Hell, he could probably do pay-per-view with commercials. I’d buy the package on principle alone. I’d imagine there are millions just like me.
Imagine if, after the bowls this year, Oklahoma, LSU, USC and whoever finishes best among Michigan, Texas and Kansas State — held a privately-funded playoff just before the Super Bowl.
Wouldn’t you pay 50 bucks to watch it? And wouldn’t the winner have a more legitimate claim to “best team in the country” than whoever wins the Sugar Bowl?
I have read rumors that when the current BCS contract expires in 2005 they might implement a sort of playoff. It would consist of the top four teams playing their regular bowl games and the top two teams coming out of the bowls playing for the national championship. Personally I would rather see an eight team playoff, because in years like this one I think the top eight to ten can all compete with each other (possibly more than that). I guess any playoff is better than none, but as long as it takes to make changes in college football I would like to see a radical one now.
Well, when I make my first billion, I’ll be happy to invest.
In the meantime, you can put me down for the $50 PPV.
Part of me would not be suprised to see the “violating” schools playing in this playoff get the death penalty (as SMU did in 1980′s for paying the players). Besides, I doubt the BCS champion would want to play anyway, standing around a 65 percent chance of “losing” their title if they do play.
This is the perfect year, all you need to do is setup the game with USC vs the winner of the OU-LSU game.
Instant credibility. You have my PPV $$$.
The NCAA would be nuts to give any participating school the death penalty oif this were to happen. Let’s say Oklahoma, LSU, Michigan and USC got the death penalty. How would the Big XII, Big 10, Pac 10 and SEC schools feel about losing one of their biggest draws?
I could envision Ohio State and Michigan State making moves to drop their NCAA membership so they can continue to play Michigan. (As for the rest of the Big 10, I’d say they’d follow suit, but who knows.)
Texas, Nebraska and Oklahoma State would also lose one of their biggest rivalry games. Knowing that they’d be able to compete with Oklahoma and Michigan (not to mention the Big 10 schools that pull out), they would explore their options also.
How would UCLA, Cal, Stanford, ASU, Arizona feel about not having the University of Spoiled Children to kick around any more?
And the SEC could be fuming as well. Plenty of schools would hate to lose LSU on their schedule.
Since Notre Dame enjoys long rivalries with USC and Michigan (and Michigan State), they could pull out of the NCAA, too.
Does it seem farfetched? I think the NCAA would be in crisis if someone pulled it off. It would be defanged. It would have no choice but to embrace it.
Radley, here’s another one for you:
A labor lawyer with nothing better to do approaches the players on USC, Michigan, LSU and Oklahoma this month and explains how they are seriously undercompensated for the money they’re making the school. He gets 300 of the 400 or so scholarship players expected to dress in the Rose and Sugar Bowls and has them walk out shortly before kickoff. Obviously, they’d have to cancel the game (or let the walk-ons play).
He’d then get the 300 “union” players to play their games Jan. 10 or Jan. 17 for $$ (procured from TV contracts). Schools get zilch. NCAA gets nothing.
“This is the perfect year, all you need to do is setup the game with USC vs the winner of the OU-LSU game.”
And why is that? I would disagree that USC has earned that #1 ranking. LSU and Oklahoma were both required to play an additional game against a highly ranked opponent to win their confrence. USC was not. USC played a mediocre schedule due to a weak Pac-10. Saturday they beat a mediocre Oregon State team that has not won in LA since 1960 and suddenly they’re #1? What about the rest of the season? How many ranked teams did USC play? 1. They lost to Cal, where is Cal ranked? Nowhere in the top 25. LSU lost to Florida, #17. Oklahoma lost to K State, #10 and the recipient of a BCS bowl bid.
The BCS is far from perfect, but the truth is that there are 3 teams with 1 loss this year that can all argue that they belong in New Orleans. Only 2 can go and the bizarre, confusing system set in place by the very wise men of the BCS has picked those 2.
USC needs to quit whining and concentrate on Michigan. They have another game to play before they can crown themselves anything.
Jill –
Holy cow. Right on.
It is crap that the #1 team in both major polls is not going to the national championship game, but it is also crap that USC is #1 in both major polls simply because it got its loss out of the way much earlier than Oklahoma.
What’s absurd about all of this is that nearly all involved (except for the NCAA, of course) want playoffs. Nick Saban and Pete Carroll (and probably Michigan and Oklahoma’s coaches, as well) basically said “the BCS is flawed, but there is nothing we can do about it because there is no playoff.”
The day will (hopefully) come. One wonders if then the issue will be whether #4 truly is #4 or whether the #5 team should go instead. It’s just difficult to compare football teams.
USC lost in triple overtime, not getting it’s butt kicked … and it has won by an average of 40 points or so in it’s games. This talk is still all worthless unless they implement a playoff system. I don’t understand why what works for the NFL doesn’t work for College ….
Think of those poor, poor “student” athletes, having to spend all of that extra time away from their books and classes if we had a playoff system for Division I college football. Surely their grades would suffer considerably.
Besides, it’s not like any other college sports, or other NCAA or NAIA football divisions for that matter, have made such a crazy idea as a playoff system work for them in determining a champion…
Rad-
You’re an IU guy. You should know the history of how the NCAA Basketball Tournament elbowed the NIT out of prominence in the 1940s & 1950s. (Read about it if you don’t know).
What your friend proposes here would simply be tit-for-tat, with about 1,000,000% interest.