You’ll have to keep working on persuading him…

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

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.

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.

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.

#3 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.

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.)

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.

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 ; )

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.

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…

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.

………….six times.

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?

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.