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Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Let’s get this part out of the way, first: I loathe the BCS. I don’t have a favorite college football team (my alma mater, Indiana University), is rarely competitive. So I always end up rooting for the clusterfuckiest of possible outcomes. In my idea scenario, at the end of the year the top 15 teams would all be 10-2.
Wait. That’s not true. My ideal scenario would be for some billionaire (Mark Cuban?) to pay the top four teams some obscene amount of money to have a playoff after the conclusion of all the BCS games, thus undermining the legitimacy of it all.
Also, “BCS Championship” is redundant.
All of that said, Orin Hatch is an idiot.
<sarcasm>Great to see the Repulicans returning to limited government principles</sarcasm>
If the Republican party was really serious about becoming the party of limited government and not just using it as an excuse for obstruction until they can get control again, this would be the perfect example to make an example of one of the people who led the party off course over the last decade.
The idiocy isn’t limited to just Orrin Hatch: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/21/committee-chairman-towns-locks-republicans-dispute/
Your tax dollars at work — changing locks so the R team can’t enter the room. What I wonder is why the R team doesn’t use the D team’s door. Or why there are separate doors for each team.
There is no easier way to get a bunch of votes back home than addressing this issue. A couple Texans did it when Texas got cornholed last year.
I love college football, but it is a complete sham. The BCS is run by monkeys and the big football schools are whores, pimps, and plantation owners all rolled into one.
State institutes of learning engaging in sports entertainment where the players get virtually nothing* while the schools earn billions. God Bless America!
* Yep. 20 credits toward a Recreation degree is virtually nothing.
A playoff system barely works in the NFL, with 32 teams playing a 16 game regular season. It’s not going to work at all with 120 college teams playing a 12 game season. Heck, it barely works with 30 MLB teams playing 162 games!
If we instituted a playoff system in NCAA football, the first controversy to erupt would be be over who gets to be in the playoffs. That’s the argument with Boise State right now, and over the last couple of years: they’re talented, they go undefeated, but do they really deserve to be ranked at the top, considering who they play?
It goes without saying that the government should stay completely out of it.
Didn’t the 11-5 Patriots miss last year’s NFL playoffs, despite having beaten both teams that made the championship (Pitt and Ariz)?
How is it a “series” when then play only one title game?
I remember from elementary school the special ed kids as quite violent and obnoxious. But, if the rest of us were lucky, they would get distracted by a sudden need to spin round and round.
I’d rather the argument be about who should be team #12,13,14,15,16 versus which teams should be 1 and 2.
The playoffs work perfectly fine in the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA (along with the NCAA Basketball and all Football levels outside of the BCS series).
My only complaint with the NBA and NHL playoffs is they let too many teams in. Football isn’t too bad, but they are flirting with adding more teams which would be stupid.
At least in all those sports it gets decided on the field as to who gets in. It’s not based on a the biases of a bunch of football coaches that don’t watch all the games, or the algorithms of some computer program.
There is no reason that a playoff system can’t work for the top division of college football. Somehow the NCAA is able to pull it off for all the lower divisions.
There is a way to crush the BCS and still hold to limited government principles. It wouldn’t require an investigation and wouldn’t require establishing some tenuous anti-trust justification. Simply cut off all federal funds to schools that participate in the BCS. The clown show that followed would be hysterical!
The funny thing is by antitrust standards — and admittedly, these are never consistently applied — the BCS is actually pro-competitive. Under the previous bowl system, fewer teams were eligible for the highest-payout bowls because most of the slots were locked in by conference affiliation. The BCS “liberalized” this process by substituting its own rankings criteria for the “restraints” imposed by the traditional system. Thus, it would satisfy the antitrust “rule of reason” criteria as a pro-competitive restraint.
But again, consistency is not a hallmark of antitrust enforcement; still, it would take a very creative argument to prosecute the BCS, and the Justice Department is unlikely to expend any time or resources on such matters.
@ #6
If by beat you mean lost 33-10, then yes, the Patriots beat the Steelers last season.
Even if we went to play off system in CF, we’d all end up bitching about who is in it and who isn’t. Besides, a playoff system means that we can’t have 30 or so bowls where schools can make big time money for an average year of 7-5 or 8-4. Unless a playoff system can reward mediocrity, I don’t see much happening anytime soon.
Stop watching college football. When ticket sales and Nielson ratings begin to drop, they’ll get their shit together. But so long as you keep biting out the shit sandwich every year and weekend, the powers that be have zero incentive to change no matter how much any of us bitch and moan.
I don’t get the big hullabaloo about the BCS. Hell I even went to Texas and last year didn’t bother me. I would argue the BCS has been pretty darn effective.
What’s the gripe? That some po-dunk football program from a weak conference needs to be given the go ahead to a championship because they beat eleven schools with borderline high school squads? That Cal isn’t getting enough love, even though they are usually egregiously overrated and prove it by losing?
The reason USC, LSU, Texas, OU, Florida, et al dominate in the BCS just might be because they have the most dominant football teams.
Unless you are a Sooner in which case please stop disgracing the Big XII with your BCS embarrassments!
Things look fine from down here… (from Bama). Eitherway, I am not really worried because the SEC and on occassion the Big 12 will dominate college football in whatever system. If only the Big 12 teams could play defense…
In all seriousness, a playoff or the BCS will always be a compromise. It is really impossible to know which team is the best in a given year. The best we can do is determine approximately, which will always leave room for error. Furthermore, anything can happen in one game. For instance, a dominant team like the University of Alabama can lose to Utah(in a lesser bowl game), which if my memory serves me is the reason this buffoon is trying to get congress/justice department to intervene. So, because of the outcome of a single game we need to change the rules for everyone. In reality, it’s all about money and school exposure. In politics a scandal is nice, but you have to move quickly because people will soon forget and emotions will subside. Honestly, I don’t think true football fans really care how it’s determined we just want to be entertained by the best possible matchup.
Obviously, this(really all of politics) is a huge waste of time, except for the possible positive benefit of having politicians occupied with an issue that really does not matter, which will maybe keep them from fiddling with ones that do…
I don’t really see how this would apply to college football, but I really like the way European Soccer(football) associations determine the winner of their leagues. For each game you are awarded: 3 points for a win, 1 point for a tie, and 0 points for a loss. The team with the most points at the end of the season is the champion. There are other smaller cups and championships mixed in for spice, but the real deal is winning the league. In addition, the bottom 3 teams of each league are relegated to the one below it and the top 3 teams of the lesser leagues move up. That way you can’t blame any one game for ruining your entire season and it makes it possible for smaller clubs to move up the ranks.
War Damn Eagle and
GLORY, GLORY, MAN UNITED!
peace
If Utah wants to play for a national championship maybe they should have played Texas last year instead of dropping them from their schedule like they did. If they did that they would not have a SoS that was weaker than all but 2 teams in the ACC, Big East (yes the Big East), Big 12, Pac 10 and SEC. On top of that maybe they could have beat the bad teams they played by more than 1 score also.
A playoff will not work in college football due to its structure where 120 teams play a 12/13 game schedule in 12 different leagues and at most 4 OOC games. 6 of the leagues are just no where near the level of the top 6 even the fabled mountain west. The 4th best team in any of the BCS conferences would dominate 5 of the lesser sisters and be about the level of a Utah or Boise St. There are teams that only have a relationship in the 4th or 5th order (meaning Team A and Team B did not play each other nor did any of their opponents and opponents opponents etc etc) in contrast the NBA and NHL all have 1st order relationships and MLB and NFL all have 2nd order relationships.
A playoff would be rather simple to do:
1) Have the regular seasons end the Sat. before Thanksgiving.
2) Award the 11 conference champions automatic tournament bids (SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big East, MAC, Mountain West, Conf USA, Sun Belt, WAC, Big XII, MAC)
3) Hand out 13 at-large bids. The BCS formula can be preserved to determine these teams.
4) Start the tournament Thanksgiving weekend with your 9-24, 10-23, 11-22, 12-21, 13-20, 14-19, 15-18, 16-17 games. Align each game with an existing Bowl.
5) The following week, you’d have the top 8 seeds playing seeds 9-24
6) Rotate the national championship and final 4 round matchups among the Rose, Orange and Sugar Bowls.
7) There will be 15-20 remaining bowl games. Allow them to continue as consolation prizes. The Humanitarian, Insight and Motor City Bowls were meaningless (but sometimes entertaining) before. They’ll be the same after.
8) Profit.
Why Orrin Hatch or Barack Obama or hack politicians in Utah or Texas feel like they need to legislate this is beyond me.
#17
I see a few problems with your plan:
That would mean eliminating regular season games that take place the weekend of Thanksgiving. That will simple never happen. There are too many rivalries that weekend and (more importantly) too much money to be made from those rivalry games (ticket sales, concession sales, TV money, etc.). And if you try to move those games to an earlier weekend, then you would be looking at eliminating a different matchup. And again, for the same reasons, that will simple not happen.
The larger conferences (SEC, ACC, Big XII, etc) have a championship game of their own, usually the first weekend in December. Those will absolutely not be eliminated; WAY too much money involved.
Whichever team ends up number 14 on the list (Utah maybe?) will be the first to complain and demand that the system be changed again.
That said, one of the most arrogant things Obama has said (I know, I know) is that “no serious fan” of college football could argue about the need for a playoff. Really? No one who disagress with him could POSSIBLY be a “serious” fan? That statement alone would be enough to oppose a college football playoff on principle.
@ #18
Yes, #14 could complain but are going to have a couple losses if not more. If they wanted to get to the playoffs, they could have won their conference or all of their games i.e. their fate was in their hands. They only have themselves to blame for losing. I much prefer that to the current system where even if a team wins all their games and sets records they will only get a shot at the title if they are from the right conference. Currently, any team not from the BCS tie in conferences is de facto disqualified from competing in the title game even before the season starts.
“Indiana University is rarely competitive (in the BCS)”
hahahahahahahaha
I also Rarely get to spend weekends with Oscar-winning actresses.
“I don’t think that word means what you think it means” – Fezzik