Curious Index, 12/5/07

Orson, I’m literally typing this from a hotel room in the Ginza district of Tokyo (here on business – 9:30pm here on the 5th) and you have no idea how many shows are on the tv here like the one you show. The Japanese believe in Total Quality Management and shows where normal people are physically humiliated for sport!

But to also let you all know how catastrophic this season has been for ND; when I was introduced to the leader of our business group here in Japan today he said, “You went to Notre Dame right?” I said, “Yes sir”. He said, “oh, so sorry about this season.”
Ouch.

Paul Johnson to GT
Rick Neuhiesel to UCLA
Mike Leach to Arkansas
& it ain’t over till the contract is signed – Les Miles to Michigan

Why are so many people so eager to see Paul Johnson leave Navy? We pay him well for doing a great job and he’s got a pretty good thing going here. I mean that is unless you don’t like a seven digit salary, an office overlooking the water, an adoring fan base, non-hostile press corp, and a well below average off-field problems team. The BCS champion gets a call from the President, service academy coaches who win the CIC Trophy get a reception in the Rose Garden and meet him. Navy’s not such a bad gig.

And seriously would Duke or SMU be a move up for PJ? Georgia Tech, sure. But second man to Coach K or C-USA is a “better job” than Navy?

HANDS OFF OUR JOHNSON!

So let me see if I’ve got this straight. The nail in the coffin of those of us who think a playoff would be bullshit is a half-baked article in a business magazine owned by Street & Smith?

And what’s he saying? The fat cats who are making money on the proliferation of ridiculous bowls tell us that it’s a business and should be treated like one? Hmmm the shoe salesman says we need new shoes.

Since the Peach Bowl now makes money, it’s time to move to a playoff?

And relevance of the regular season games is a thin reed to lean on? Where’s the wildly important regular college basketball (or pro basketball) game…other than a traditional rivalry?

The only reason a playoff system makes sense is because it feeds the Sportsertainment leader. I think that’s a great reason for people who are into sportsertainment. I know I’m positioning this to damn with faint praise, but I really do respect that position. I don’t agree with it, but I respect it.

Tuberville stays.

Write it down.

#3

I guess it depends on what his career goals are. If he wants to win a Nat’l Championship, he cannot stay at Navy. No offense, but that is just not going to happen in this day and age.

I’d love to see Johnson stay at Navy for life. But I don’t know whether he’s more of a “climb the coaching ladder” type than a John Gagliardi type.

(Then again, I’m a guy who thinks Tim Murphy has one of the best coaching jobs in the country. He’s got a successful program, gets to work with great kids, and has virtual tenure.)

I can assure you that our season finale would have taken on a great deal more importance if there was a playoff berth – as opposed to a Fiesta or Orange Bowl appearance – at stake. Adding a playoff would make create more meaningful games, not fewer.
-—

Calling bullshit.

You just copped that one game, the season finale, would have mattered more than the two early conference games. Thereby, the playoff berth just created twice as many meaningless games in your own scenario.

C’mon, Peter! Wake up and smell the entropy!

I call shenangians on you Mr. Bean! A playoff would not make anything more meaningful, how could it?
You’d render the first two months of the season unimportant. That Stanford win over USC? Means nothing. OU’s chokejob to Colorado? Eh, no big deal.

I’ve always been in favor of putting all the bowls back to the old school (Rose Bowl is Big Ten/Pac-10, conference champions go directly to assigned bowls) and then have a plus-one after that. I don’t want a playoff but I agree that the “tradition” of the bowls has been whored out. So how about we bring back the tradition and add a little BCS/playoff afterwards?

A full-blown playoff would kill college football for 85 percent of the schools. Why would I keep following UConn? Insert about 80 different schools for UConn in that question. It would just destroy everything. STOP LISTENING TO THE MEDIA!!! PLAYOFFS ARE BAD!!!

The NFL playoff system adds drama when two 8-6 teams play, yes; but it sucks all drama out of it when two 10-1 teams play. And one can safely snooze through the first two months of the season.

I’m not convinced that’s an even swap.

I think the real crux of the situation is that if you kept playing games, the weather outside is just not nice anymore, and I don’t like watching football in the cold, that’s what NFL people do. Boo to cold weather football. Yes my team is going to a bowl in Boise.

A Playoff is the only fair way. Bottom line. Not only that but a 8 team playoff would be 1,000,000 times more exciting than all these lame bowl games.

Use 4 BCS bowls as the first round. Then play 2 more games. Keeps the bowl system alive and results in an 8 team playoff.

1. - I thought there was still a chance of Miles going to. But there would be rumblings by now if so. I think its dead.

Fair? What’s fair about making teams play each other again in a playoff format, or treating a team who lost three games as you do a team that went undefeated?

I’d rather have a few lame bowl games than a completely lame season with EXCITEMENT!™ only at the end to placate the fans who really only get worked up about the sport this time of year.
Of course, you don’t know anybody who has said “I start paying attention to college basketball at the end of February.”

At least the team that went undefeated gets a chance in a playoff and doesn’t get left out. Besides… you’re telling me the BCS is fair??? How come EVERY other major sport has a playoff? Do you hear ANY of them complain about it being fair?

The BCS is no more or less fair than anything else. People have an idea that playoffs are the only way to go. I disagree. Some teams get fucked over in any system. At least this one makes early season games important.

#4, Soothsayer:

Do you mean “write it down” like Phil Marshall “wrote it down” last night?

http://blog.al.com/trackingtigers/2007/12/tuberville_agrees_to_contract.html

People who are against a playoff system should have their civil liberties taken away. No freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, etc. They should be seen and not heard.

A Playoff is the only fair way.
-——-

#11, I like how you capitalize “Playoff” like it’s Jesus.

We need an appropriate term for the playoff zealots out there… something like Bracket Davidians.

Hold on, a playoff is bad b/c it de-emphasizes the regular season? I think that it’s funny that the people who hold this belief generally don’t follow a team in the SEC. Sure, maybe UConn/Rutgers would lose it’s luster, but I guarantee you that I would be (and always am) completely pissed if my team drops any conference game.
I hate all SEC teams except for mine, and I would always hope that my team wins, even if it is the last game of the season and the team would be going to the playoffs regardless. It will always mean something when Alabama plays UT or Georgia plays Auburn (or Florida plays LSU or any combination of any other SEC match up).
Also, 2 other things – the “regular season is a playoff” and “playoffs would make early season losses not count” arguments are also bullshit. If the regular season is in fact a playoff, certain teams sure do get permanent easy brackets. Compare tOSU’s road to the BSC game compared to LSU’s. LSU’s “bracket” sure was a lot harder to go through, and in no way could they play into a better bracket (like in normal tournaments, which seed you based on how good you are). This is and always will be the case for SEC teams, and that’s why so many SEC fans want a playoff.
As for the “playoffs would make early season losses not count” argument, well, what about late season losses this year? If you’re worried about a new system making this happen, what do you think about the system in place that just allowed two teams that lost their 1st to last game go to the championship game? Wouldn’t a late season loss be more damning to a champion than an early season loss? Take Georgia, for example. A very young team that made mistakes early and dropped two games, but is peaking at the end of the season b/c the young players have matured and are playing top level football. Why not give them (or USC, for that matter) a chance to square off in a playoff so we can see the best teams at the end of the year go against each other?

(7.5% alcohol, natch).

unseemly snickering

i did go a little overboard with the shift key today.

“You’d render the first two months of the season unimportant. That Stanford win over USC? Means nothing. OU’s chokejob to Colorado? Eh, no big deal.”

LSU’s loss to Arkansas at the END of the season? Meant nothing. Ohio State’s loss to Illinois at home in November? Meaningless. OU crushing the No. 1 team in the country in the Big 12 CG? Worthless.

There are already plenty of meaningless regular-season games. It happens that way every year. Nebraska played for the title in 2001 without winning the Big 12 North. OU played for it in 2003 without winning the Big 12 (losing to K-State 35-7 in the Big 12 CG). Of course, we all know about Auburn in 2004—11 wins, all meaningless! A whole undefeated season rendered meaningless by the BCS.

If a coach wants an instant multi-year extension and salary boost, float the rumor that Arkansas is interested in your services. Money in the bank.

Latest rumor is that Bobby Patrino ‘has expressed interest in the Arkansas HC job’.

On a unrelated note- Stop showing that fucking play with the Stanford band. Announcers can also stop saying “the Stanford band is on the field” on every play involving laterals. We’ve all seen it 1,000 times, it’s old.

Ok, I’m done. Feel much better tho.

as a bama fan i have to ask, when do we get maize and blue “no i will not coach your legendary football team” tshirts??

#9, two teams with 10-1 records playing isn’t exciting? Really? Two of the best teams in the NFL playing is boring? Nevermind the importance on and of home field advantage, that ought to be a good game.

And we need the triple option in the BCS NOW!

Anyone hoping for PJ to coach somewhere else hates America.

Enjoy Guantanamo, motherfuckers.

“Longshore also suffered a chipped bone somewhere in the back of his ankle which has caused him continuous discomfort.” Beanie Wells and his 222 against Michigan would like Mr. Longshore to cry him a motherfucking river.

that you posted leary and not the late great bill hicks is a crime against all i personally hold holy and is sufficient grounds for you to never be allowed back into the state of texas.

I thought No Cure For Cancer was a tribute to Bill Hicks, kleph. Have I been misinformed?

My favorite part of the bowl system is how the biggest bowls like the BCS bowls, the chick-fil-a, and the Gator don’t pay a dime in taxes on all their “excess revenues” making the naked cash grab that is the reality of the bowl system all the more obscene.

Div.-1 Playoff System is completely unworkable. How many fans are able to follow their teams around the country for three games (if they make the NC game) during the holiday travel season? Case in point is VA Tech. They make it to their conference championship game and maybe 5,000 fans follow them to Jacksonville. Do you think powers-that-be would promote a system that might play out in front of empty stadiums seats?

You all seem to be ignoring THE ISSUE.

However a playoff system is structured, the ESSENTIAL element is that none of the profits can go to the NCAA.

The money must go back to the colleges who plaly winning football.

4 teams, 8 teams or 16 teams, the only thing that matters is that winners take all, or at least thepayout they would have gotten under the old system.

Sort that out that issue and you’ve got a deal.

Edsall is god @ 9: Oh come on. Who rationalizes the team that they support based on whether or not they might get a national championship? 85 % of colleges aren’t going to play for a national championship any time soon under the current regime, so that’s not compelling.

Brian @ 11: boo to cold weather football.

Finally, a status – quo argument that I can get behind.

L-train @ 15: anyone willing to watch the organized monotony called basketball is welcome to it, full season or playoffs only. Just my opinion, of course.

To recap:
We’ve got a Bowls v Playoff argument and a thieving comedian argument going in the same thread. All we need is a Bama v Auburn slapfight and we’ve got a trifecta of neverending disputes.
Cool.

Peter, if you consider thieving, dishonest hacks like Leary who waited until Hicks was dead to steal his stuff a tribute to Bill Hicks, then yeah, you got it right.

Kleph is right, you shouldn’t be allowed back into Texas. And if word gets out amongst the locals over there, they won’t let you back in.

why isn’t johnson being considered for the arkansas, michigan or ucla jobs? i think the guy is a tremendous coach, and to only have him considered for ga. tech, duke and smu is rather demeaning

36 – Yes many teams can’t compete for a national title but there are other goals. For Indiana, it was just making a bowl game. For UConn, it was also just making a bowl game and turned into a conference title. We knew we wouldn’t be top 4 or even top 8 but it was still thrilling.

This year is a bad barometer to judge anything because it didn’t make any sense. Let’s see if next year is the same. Remember it was just two years ago, we had Texas & USC barrelling through the season like it 1985.

And LSU’s loss to ArKansas means nothing now, but it did at the time. Ditto for Ohio State’s loss. It took an amazing turn of events for them to get back to the top, wasn’t the past few weeks thrilling?

I don’t understand why people would rather have a playoff with about 7 games instead of like 32 games in a span of two weeks. Everyone complains about the bowls, but everyone watches them, gambles on them, attends them and loves them. I will be in Charlotte on Dec. 29, drunk, loving life and enjoying a new city. In a playoff system, I would not.

Please enjoy the best column ever written on the topic…
http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=klosterman/070103

while NCFC may have been a tribute, it was partly because leary pretty much stole his whole schtick from hicks and got tired of taking heat for it (sam kenison, who also was accused of this, actually was a bit of a mentor for hicks). fact is, why post leary when you got the man himself?

you want a coach that can rant? you want a man who can reach this level of sheer fury. or even better, imagine how much different tech would play if the coach gave a pre-game pep talk like this.

#39: The triple option doesn’t work for everyone, y’know.

If PJ leaves Navy, the terrorists win!

DC Trojan, you can throw the 168 game baseball season in there too. Boorrriiinnnggg! Playoffs are the only part of the season worth watching and, thank Orson, they only go 4 to 7 games.

That’s it. Tomorrow I’m writing about something controversial.

Early candidates include abortion, prayer in school, and the 1969 and 1990 national championships.

43 – I would avoid the 1990 National Championship discussion at all costs, because that means bringing up Rocket’s punt return in the Orange Bowl and that means thousands of Domers invading.

1. - fair enough – i’ll take ucla off my list of schools who should be pursuing johnson

peter – i cannot wait to discuss the 69 nat’l title

First off, no discussion of the 66 national title?

Secondly, A playoff is the only way. The undefeated Hawaii team is a perfect example. Hawaii hasn’t lost a game in two years and could go undefeated for the next ten years and still never get a chance to play in the title game because of the voter bias.

Face it, if you aren’t an SEC, Big 10, Big 12, ACC school or Notre Dame, you have no shot. Notice I did not include The Big East in there. They were only going to back into the game because of shit being as fucked up as it was. In a normal year, it never happens.

The Big East, WAC, MAC, CUSA, and all of your independents are fucked. If the regular season is rendered useless by the playoff system, then in our current system, these guys shouldn’t even be playing, along with half of the guys in the big conferences, such as your Baylors, Vandy’s, Duke’s, etc.

A playoff is the only way you can have a one year only team that is senior laden have a chance to make it, such as Wake Forest, or Alabama a few years ago, or Auburn in 2004, etc. Certain schools may be able to go toe-to-toe for one season with the best, but they can’t do it for five years in hopes that the voters will notice them.

#34: It would appear you confused the BC and VT turnouts in Jax — VT’s was closer to 20K, once you consider that most of Tech’s fans are savvy enough by now to buy tickets at the gate or from desperate scalpers rather than taking the crap tickets the schools get officially allocated. The overall turnout still sucked, though, which is why the game should be in Charlotte from here on out. VT rolls 45K there easy, and the locals might actually give a damn rather than staying home to watch the SECCG on TV.

Your anti-playoff argument still holds, though. Making flight arrangements to neutral sites on a week’s notice is pretty tough. If you want to keep the college atmosphere of having significant turnout of participating schools’ fans, you have to make that possible, and anything more than a plus-one will kill that.

47 – A Big East team has a reasonable shot to make a title game as is, they just need to go undefeated. Things will change in the next couple of years as Big East teams start scheduling real OOC opponents. I know West Virginia has scheduled an SEC team (Georgia or Auburn), USF is playing Florida and/or Miami every year for the next decade, Cincy is playing Oklahoma the next two years and even UConn is picking up ACC teams like UVA and UNC.

Hawaii could have made the title game if they played one killer OOC game, like the Alabama game last year or the opener at Florida next year. They could have gone on the road to play anybody and prove their worth but chose not to. Why? Going undefeated against cupcakes and guaranteeing a Sugar Bowl makes more sense than risking it all. Trust me, if one of Hawaii’s wins was a road one over an SEC team, they’d be in the title game.

You could never convince me that 2004 Utah would have beaten that year’s USC or Auburn teams, much less given them a game. And Boise beat OU last year (as fantastic as it was) because OU didn’t feel like playing until they spotted Boise 18 points.

Cinderellas are cute in college basketball but, come on, will George Mason or any other mid-major ever win a title? No. It’s the same there, it’s always the big boys in the end and for a reason.

Edsall, why would the run-up to a playoff not be thilling? There would only be either eight or 16 teams out of 119 involved. It wouldn’t be like college basketball’s free-for-all. Every game would still count. This year alone, some very good teams (Kansas? Georgia? Tennessee?) might very well have missed the playoffs.

The playoff issue really comes down to two questions, whether you want a true national champion and whether you want every 1-A school to have (at least in theory) equal access to playing for a championship.

If you don’t care about a true national champion, then let’s go back to the way things used to be: Big 10 and Pac 10 champs in the Rose Bowl, SEC champ in the Sugar Bowl, Big 12 champ in the COTTON or Orange Bowl, etc., with “invited” teams from any conference providing opponents for conference champs in every bowl but the Rose. Let’s go back to split national titles (which we’ve had with the BCS, anyway), No. 1 not facing No. 2 in a bowl game (which we’ve arguably also had), human voters deciding the “championship” and all the other stuff that we used to think was terrible. Let’s also drop the guaranteed BCS paychecks for dead weight like Baylor and Vandy.

That would be fine with me. ANYTHING would be better than the BCS, which has never truly “worked,” makes no sense and royally screws almost half the programs in college football every year as well as shafting a few of the big guys.

Edsall, one of the reasons that the big boys always win titles in college football is that they have the money and the system slanted in their favor.

I agree with you on Hawai’i this year. That team is a fraud and is going to get ripped by Georgia. But your Boise argument is BS, and it’s the same thing fans of smaller programs always hear after an upset. I’m surprised with you being a UConn fan that you would go in that direction. As for Utah in 2004, I would have loved to see that team go up against USC or Auburn. Utah certainly beat the tar out of the champion of your conference.

Hawaii is a unique case on lots of levels. They’ve always struggled to get people to come to them because of the cost involved, and that was even before teams ran the serious risk of getting embarassed out there.

If they are scheduling with the intent of just ensuring a bowl game, then the lineup of tomato cans they had this year is fine. But if they want to challenge for national goals, they’ll probably have to go to the Fresno State “anywhere, anytime” school of scheduling and go on the road to play a few schools on the mainland to beef up their schedule. I don’t think that it was only the fact that it was Hawaii that kept them from competing for the national title, it was that their schedule was softer than a marshmallow. But if you throw in even a road game against a midlevel BCS conference team — Illinois, Oklahoma State, Clemson, Arkansas, etc — then they have a much more legitimate argument for being a factor in the national title race.

Oh, and…no playoffs, thanks. I’ll take 4 months of excitement over 3 weeks.

Why would the regular season mean less because of a playoff? Hell, it would be more exciting because more teams would be involved trying to get into the playoff.

Boston Frog – I agree the BCS is not the answer and really think they messed up by killing the tradition of the bowls. Sure we didn’t have a champion, but everyone was pretty happy with New Year’s Day, the Rose Bowl, the classic Orange Bowls and a fun end to the season. My solution, other than going back to that and have it be the end, would be a plus-one without seeding.

The problem with the BCS is that you can’t compare teams from different conferences because they don’t play each other enough. Even seeding teams before the bowls is unfair (what four would YOU choose right now?) If you pick two teams after the bowls, you get one quality game from all of them and let them prove it on the field. And the lead-up to the bowls would be fantastic as more than one game would matter and it would spark a more rational debate.

53 – How would the regular season be less exciting? Umm, do you watch the last two weeks of the NFL season? Is it thrilling to watch the Colts and Cowboys rest their starters? Do you really care if the 8-8 Giants make the playoffs (unless you’re a Giants fan of course)? I don’t ever want to see the day when Jim Tressel is resting his starters against Michigan or USC sends out the backups to finish the year against UCLA.

Look at this http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/football/ncaa/12/05/ultimate.playoff/index.html and tell me a playoff would be good for college football. Anyone who proposes a 16-team playoff should be shot on sight.

Very pleasantly surprised to see the landslide of pro-playoff opinion didn’t materialize.

I also didn’t see anything – other than Stapler’s initial comment – that moved the pro-playoff argument forward.

If every team’s primary goal is to win their conference, every game matters. Regional differences in play are encouraged. Regional and intra-conference rivalries take on major significance. And most importantly, the focus of the entire system stays local/regional – THAT is something the sportsertainment leader can’t buy.

100 cocktails to the folks who talk about the undying importance of regional rivalries, but don’t forget those rivalries were born in the crucible of SEC, Big Ten, Pac 10 etc. conference play. When the sportertainment leader is televising Hawaii v. Boise State because of the impact it will have on the playoff system….

And unless someone is proposing a 30 or more team playoff how do you tell the #2 and #3 teams in strong conferences to get lost in favor of the winner of the MAC?

A playoff will happen, because the sportsertainment leader owns the game, but it won’t solve the “problem” and it will create more things to talk about that don’t happen on the football field.

Boston Frog – 2004 Utah was cute but they beat nobody. Texas A&M, Arizona and even Pitt that year are nice names but they weren’t very good. At least not national-title worthy good. I’d like to see them play USC or Auburn but they would have been destroyed.

As for Boise last year, please. I know a lot of people say that after upsets but it’s true. OU 100% did not care about that game in the slightest, play for about 10 minutes to take the lead and then lost on three of the craziest plays in college football history. Kudos to Boise but they wouldn’t stay within 21 points of Florida or USC last year, if either of those teams felt like playing.

EiG- excellent arguments all – more tradition, a playoff component, retain the full meaning of the regular season.

As far as the meaning of the games is concerned, the point is that you never know which game is going to matter. Certainly LSU and tOSU had no reason to believe that their penultimate games would not matter and played to win. Had there been a playoff LSU would not necessarilly have mailed it in but the intensity and (melo) drama of the 3OT thrilled would have been pretty much trashed.

If winning your conference is required to make the playoffs, then every game counts. So that’s not even a valid anti-playoff argument.

As for the “weaker” conferences, if you consider the scholarship limitations already in place and add a legitimate shot at playing for the RNC, you improve the quality of programs in those conferences.

Some of the lower tier bowls would become the NIT of college football, which is kind of what they are now.

As far as the current system giving everyone a shot, that only applies if you start high enough in the polls, which are only based on opinion. Oh maybe and strength of schedule. Which is based on how your opponents are ranked. Doing the simple math, if rankings are based on opinion, and strength of schedule is based on raking, the SOS is based on opinion as well.

how do you tell the #2 and #3 teams in strong conferences to get lost in favor of the winner of the MAC?
 
You send them a letter that says: You didn’t win the conference so you don’t go to a playoff game?

Since when have fans of the noble, manly sport of college football become so concerned about the feelings of the teams that don’t win their conferences?

We’re not torn. Tedford made a pretty boneheaded mistake by letting Nate make the call to stay in.

………….six times.

DC Trojan – I don’t care about their feelings in the least.

I meant that in the sense of how can someone say they are having a playoff of the best teams in college football when one team in the playoff could be Miami (OH) as the MAC winner, or Hawaii as the Mountain West Winner etc. while Georgia or last year’s Michigan team sits at home watching? In my opinion, you can’t. If it’s just conference winners, it absolutely will not solve the “problem.”

Seven Ds – I didn’t say that you had to win your conference to be in a playoff, I thought that was implicit in all the different playoff scenarios.

In a 16-team playoff, every conference champion plus five other teams would get a shot at the title. The regular season would still matter because teams would have to make the playoffs—and, even better, the ENTIRE postseason would matter rather than just one game.

Still, I would be happy going back to the old system, as long as we could ditch the Fiesta Bowl as a major bowl and reinstitute the Cotton Bowl. The old system doesn’t actually seem that bad compared to what we have now.

I always love how fans of big programs oppose playoffs, though. They fear losing to the MAC or MWC champion, even though their programs would win those games 95 percent of the time. They just can’t stand the thought of pulling an OU.

Edsall, you sure make a lot of assumptions. You realize, of course, that before this year it was safe to assume that UConn was a basketball school that would never be any good in football…

OhioDawg, I misintrpreted your statement, I thought you were implying that only the current system requires a team to win it’s conference to have a shot at the MNC. Many opponents of the playoff argue that if a traditionally strong conference has more than one team qualify for the playoffs, potentially the second place team in the conference could win the championship.

I don’t agree that the “weaker” conference champs are necessarily not as good as the second and third place “strong” conference teams. My opinion of the Boise OU game from last year is that Boise was the better team because they came to play. If Stoops’ team didn’t prepare emotionally but Boise did, then the better prepared team won. If you only play hard sometimes, then you’re not the best team.

OhioDawg @ 62, What do you mean by best then? I understand that some conferences are “better” than others, but trying to use subjective index variables to determine that is putting a numerical face on a beauty pageant.

It’s not so much that I am pro-playoff as I am anti-bullshit. The BCS is supposed to provide a facade of rigor that theoretically delivers a national champion while maximizing bowl revenue. And yet all it consistently delivers is the money.

I can think of at least three alternatives that I would like to see better:

1) go back to the old bowl system and just vote on a national champion – just drop the pretense.

2) establish a playoff based on conference results

3) group teams by strength rather than geography and have the national champion come out of the top conference – a Premier League, if you will ; )

Boston Frog – I don’t oppose a playoff because a team like Boise could win a game or two. I just despise any arguement that includes giving Boise a chance to win a national title. It’s not happening. Why should 2006 Boise get a free pass into a playoff by playing one good team (Oregon State) when the BCS conferences have to play a full slate of tough games? If Boise wants to play for a title, I want their non-conference slate to be Washington, USC, Cal and Oregon State.

I make assumptions based on what I see on the field. I said before the season started that if UConn could find a QB, they’d be pretty good. And they did and they were. I give Boise and Utah all the credit in the world for their seasons and what they did but to think they could have been national champions is absurd.

Edsall, if this season has taught us anything, it’s that assumptions are worthless AND that any game can be a “tough game.” (Right, West Virginia?) Besides, how many “tough games” does Ohio State play every year? Two? Three? It’s all very subjective. Playoffs are objective. That’s the point.

Beyond that, one of the primary reasons that teams like Boise don’t have tougher OOC schedules is that big-time teams won’t play them. The big boys are too busy scheduling Sun Belt and 1-AA teams (which can backfire—right, Michigan and Alabama?). I’ll give credit to OU for scheduling TCU again, given that we’ve won on our last two trips to Norman (the most recent of which was in 2005). We also have LSU and Arkansas on future schedules, but those games don’t come easily for the better non-BCS teams. You know as well as I do, too, that there’s no way to know how good a program is going to be when games are scheduled five and 10 years out.

Plus, most of the best non-BCS teams would absolutely jump at the chance to join a BCS conference and play a full slate of “tough games.” They just don’t have that opportunity. You make it sound as though they’re ducking competition; they’re not, in most cases—if anything, they would love more shots at the big boys. (Hawai’i, incidentally, does NOT fit into that category for me, which is why I think of the Bows as being such a fraud this year. Yeah, Michigan State backed out on them, but Charelston Southern and Northern Colorado, or whoever it was? Whatever… You’ve got to do better than that.)

DC Trojan – we are in complete agreement in at least one area: I try to keep the BS Detector on high also.

I also agree with you on the three options. I would pick the first one because, on a totally subjective, wallowing in my own bullshit level, I like it.

I think an unintended consequence of the old system is that it places the highest value on events w/in a given region which, in turn, encourages regional differences and limits the influence of the sportsertainment leader. Wholly subjective.

I don’t think a playoff based on conference leaders would solve anything for a couple reasons. First, in some conferences all teams don’t play each other. This may not matter often, but it may be a BIG deal in some years. Second, I agree with you that there is certitude to a conference winner, but I also think you would agree that it’s not bs to say that the second best team in [insert strong major conference here] is much better than the winner of a weak league.

1. is what we do in the afterlife!

My bottom line is that there is no way to solve the “problem” without quaffing gallons of BS. Moreover, I don’t think there’s a “problem” for the reasons I mentioned above.

Think of instant replay. Designed to eliminate bad calls, yet after Oklahoma/Oregon and so many other debacles, we know one thing: the problem hasn’t been solved. What it did do, however, was to help the sportsertainment leader to fill lots and lots of time on a 24 hour sports network with nonsense that doesn’t have anything to do with the game on the field.

I think we’ll get a playoff of some type and I think it will be a case study for the law of unintended consequences just as instant replay has been.

The deck is so inherently stacked against non-BCS teams in both resources and opportunity it’s not even funny. We’ve had three teams in 10 years qualify for BCS bowls from those leagues. That’s three spots out of 45 to 50. Meanwhile, 9-3 Clemson could have been selected by the Sugar Bowl if they didn’t have to take Hawaii by rule.

Not having a playoff allows the little guy a shot at the big time without bankrupting the fans and athletic department of Hawaii/Boise/Utah. And if your team loses to the little guy b/c they “didn’t take them seriously”, too bad. It’s your own damn fault.

#59, Seven D’s….
Did you watch a Florida State-Miami game in the 90’s?Or a Florida-Florida State game? USC-NotreDame? The fabric of college football exists because of the intensity of some of the inter-conference rivalries, so no, the “winning the conference” requirement doesn’t eliminate the argument.
One of the problems of the “PLAYOFFS!” crowd is that they all run around yelling it loud, without any sort of consensus as to what they mean by it…you imply a conference championship criteria, but the next few post quickly point to the problems this would create…we shouldn’t change just for the sake of change, too much is at stake.

Trojan,

Don’t you think USC/Texas playing conferaence champions Penn State and Florida State on the way to the MNC Rose Bowl in 2005 would have been bull shit? What if there had been an injury and the two teams that had clearly shown themselves to be above the rest would not have been at full strength for that particular encounter?

Would not a playoff system that year sucked almost all the drama out tOSU/Texas and Notre Dame/USC?

Yes , I know that year was something of an outlier in the degree of clarity and “closure” it provided but a palyoff, particularly one involving conference champions like 5-loss FSU in 2005 would have certainly been bull shit. And if, as other have noted, we echew conferance champions and/or add a bunch of “wild cards” would we not also be introducing a fair amount of bull shit into the system?

Certainly this year there is no way to separte the teams in a legitimate fashion absent a playoff but such a playoff is likely to cause problems as often as it solves them. In any event, exticating the BS out of the process would seem to a somewhat quixotic endeavor.

Mr. Orfon Swindle,

I am difmayed at your words regarding the bowls confidering how you recently defended the status quo while speaking on the talking box. Have you perhaps come to your senfes?

Sincerely,

Benjamin Franklin

Henry – Orson is vacationing. The words are mine, not his.

You’ll have to keep working on persuading him…