“A good starting poing for the arguement: 2001 Nebraska got to the BCS championship game after losing the BXII championship game to a strong Oklahoma team that they had beaten during the regular season, and everyone outside of cornland was pissed, even though their body of work was arguably as good as anyone else’s in the nation. I’m sure it will be brought up ad infinitum on this site, but Oklahoma did the same thing the following year when USC was left out, not getting the BCS point bump from a conference championship game. ”

Neither Oklahoma nor Neraska played in the 2001 B12 Championship. Nebraska won their only meeting with Oklahoma that season 20-10. Nebraska lost to Colorado in the last game of the regular season. That loss sent Colorado to the 2001B12C to meet Texas.

Oklahoma bumped USC in 2003 not the following year, 2002.

“every retard in the Special Olympics”

The Special Olympics are for the physically challenged.

If there’s a special competition for clueless douche bags someplace, congratulations: You’re the Champ.

I think the only way to settle it on the field would be to have some major conference realignment and winnowing. Maybe 4 10 team regional conferences that would play a full-round robin during the season. Then have a play-off for the 4 conference winners. That would only be 40 teams involved but you could employ a promotion-relegation system and the bottom team in each conference would switch places with the top “mid major” in that region.

Since I don’t think we will ever start from scratch and design some sort of rational system, I expect us to be stuck with what we have got for a very long time.

I could also live with the idea suggested above about the winner of the 11 conferences plus 5 at large picks. That saves us having to deal with the pain of an argument about Notre Dame’s exceptionalism from conferences… though I’d suspect that they have a season or two to go before they’re back in the MNC mix anyway.

In a normal year, no team is judged solely by what it does during the season — the preseason rankings play a huge role in who plays for championships and they aren’t based on anything but speculation and conjecture. If you want it settled on the field, have a playoff. If you want it settled by pederasts like Mark May, keep the current system.

picture a team that has lost 3 games or more by week 7-8 of the season… say Arkansas last season… this was such a “devalued” season that they managed to beat LSU in week 13… not exactly following the “our season sucks, guess we should just mail it in” playbook

I could argue that a playoff in the post season would give different results than any basketball tournament…. because no Hawaii would ever stand up to winning against 2 Georgias even if they managed to sneak by one… but bottom line is this… our flawed method of crowning a king is more akin to a beauty contest than a war… and I prefer to see the losers on their knees and hear the lamentation of their ladies more than I want to hear “well, if our team could’ve played y’all, then….”

picture a team…say Auburn last year… who knew by the Alabama game that rosy post season play was coming, but no glass football in their future… it did not mean a thing in that game, the passion and fury was evident throughout the game

picture a post season reward system that allows 20 bowl games to host teams not in the 8-16 playoff system… they would know that the results are superficially meaningful to the season, and that just practicing winning is the biggest goal (along with the bags o’swag handed out)…geez, that sounds kinda like the system we have in place now… did anybody suggest we dump all the other “non-playoff” bowls just so we can have a playoff?

finally…. picture some team in the future…your team…. and imagine they have 2 losses by week 13 in the season… but they say to themselves…. HELL IF LSU COULD WIN IT BACK IN ‘07 (08?) THEN WE CAN WIN IT THIS YEAR and only with a playoff system will that ever happen again

and that is a promise

I went to Las Vegas once for the opening round of the tournament. It was entertaining and informative, but I will never do it again, either. Don’t let that dissuade you, though.

How many people are out there like me that pay $50+ per game for their season ticket (plus donation, of course) only to get irritated that your alma mater is forcing you to pay for three+ games versus Sister Mary of the Poor (or, insert Division IAA or Sun Belt Foe here) to get the right to see the games that actually matter to you. A tournament, especially one that focuses on conference championships and strength of schedule, does not water down the season. It encourages your favorite team to play, you know, entertaining and real opponents in non-conference play. These are things that most of us want to see… For those tOSU fans out there… Did you get a bigger thrill watching your Buckeyes playing NIU or Texas a few years back? Would you Florida folks rather see the Gator’s play Western Kentucky, or would you be a LOT more excited to see them get a home and home versus someone like USC or Oklahoma in the non-conference schedule if you knew that a loss would NOT necessarily take you out of the championship picture? To give them some credit here, USC will play just about anybody (but not Hawaii this year). Georgia people??? Hello? If conference championships were the only sole determining factor in getting an automatic bid, how would that undermine the season?

The bottom line is this… CBS spends $600 million a year to show the tournament, not counting their regular season contract. How much money does the bowl system + network contracts provide to college football? How much would a network pay for a 16 team play-off and television rights to conferences if teams were free to schedule real games in September? My point is not that money = good. My point is that money = interest, which is why the networks pay it.

Three quick rejoinders, OhioDawg

1. Your argument was used for years to justify excluding non-BCS teams from the major New Year’s Day bowls, and before that, by the major conferences to argue against automatic bids for the smaller leagues in hoops. In both cases, it only took one year for teams to prove said arguments were essentially bullshit (Boise State in football, Cleveland State in hoops back in ‘86, one year after they expanded the field to 64). Also, football games aren’t played in a 10-game series. If Ohio State gets dropped by a plucky New Mexico State team playing way over their heads, well then, that’s the Buckeyes fault, not the system’s.

2. Orson’s point was that a playoff would devalue the regular season. By only opening up the playoffs to conference champs plus a handful of at-large bids, you do just that, give the regular season meaning. If the fourth-place SEC team could run roughshod over the Sun Belt champ, well, too damned bad for the fourth-place SEC team. Should have won more games in the regular season.

3. I had to watch a Big Ten team get mopped by 32 in the Rose Bowl this year. Blowout victims aren’t confined to the mid-major ranks.

As a logistical matter, the NCAA will never sanction a championship tournament that doesn’t provide access to the entirety of the division it represents. Meaning, any playoff scenario that would end with the victor raising their undisputed trophy aloft would by definition have to reserve space for us non-BCS rabble at the start.

In any case, I will always prefer a post season where the champion is the only one who wins its last game. Every major sport except college football has that, and for a good reason.

I don’t buy the meaningful regular season arguments either. Go and attend an AU-AL, UF-UGA, OSU-UM, UM-FSU game and you’ll see that a post season playoff won’t make a lick of difference in people caring about the outcome. That’s true whether the teams are competing for a title or whether neither one is going to make a bowl game. That won’t change with a playoff.

I think your proposal is as good as any other. Which is to say it still won’t come anywhere near the goal of crowning a universally recognzied objective #1 team, and would probably generate a bunch of hated outcomes as the BCS has done (check out #30’s second line).

I just hope you are not standing at a gate in PHX, saying to the dude next to you, “damn, where… is… my… boarding… pass?” and then a full 10 seconds elapses before either of you realize that you are holding your boarding pass in your left hand.

Godspeed, Good Sir.

Excalibur!

The bowl guys would never let it. CBS would love it. Sonce CBS$$$>bowl guys$$, we’ll get the latter one day, sadly enough.

My point earlier about Coach K is that CBSABCNBCESPN will lobby the selection committee and have ND in there w/ a 8-4 or 9-3 record.

Currently, we have a system that rewards teams for playing eight home games, for playing a litany of cream puffs in the non-confernce slate, plus unbalanced conference schedules in every league save the PAC-10 and Big East. Teams are punished/rewarded based on whatever random league slate the Commodore 64 at Conference HQ spits out.

The “season” shouldn’t be sacrosanct if teams are allowed to stack their non-conference deck with impunity, and if conference foes play schedules of wildly diverging strength within their own league. THAT devalues the season.

I’m still a fan of the 16-team tourney. All 11 conference champs get a bid, plus five at-larges. Set a maximum of three teams from any one conference. Set minimum standards for ND and other independents to get a bid.

It’s the best of all worlds — the season still matters (you either have to win your conference or be among the five best teams in the nation to not win a conference title to get in) and any champion has to prove their worth against at least two or three outstanding teams at the end of the year to raise the trophy… no skating straight to the title game based on a high pre-season ranking and a weak schedule. Best of all, it’s decided ON THE FIELD, not on a computer or on the ballot of a pollster.

Plus, you get the level playing field and fair opportunity for teams outside the BCS cartel (and potential for upsets that make the hoops tourney the most popular college sporting event in the world…)

I fail to see how the ridiculous set-up we have now values the season more.