CURIOUS INDEX, 1/4/09

At the Cotton Bowl, a weak, uninspiring “S-E-C” chant broke out for maybe 20 seconds. The well-timed display of the Papajohns.com bowl score on the worlds largest Hi-Def screen likely had something to do with the lack of conference-centric enthusism on our part.

Also, it was a shitty game.

Lingam worship + Golf = not a good mix for the married guys

Sincerely,
Eldrick Tont Woods

That music video is the answer to everything @InsideTheBCS says.

joker phillips will show up to the press conference in a snuggie, pound a dozen scotches as brooks gives his farewell remarks, declare the idea of retiring: bullshit, and break his empty scotch glass over the head of the a.d.

I wonder if T Cody told Saban to his face “I thought you would be bigger…SIR”

I would hate to see Saban perform liposuction on Cody with his laser eyes

OH GOD, NO!
Somebody brought a left-over fruit cake to work. It’s in the break room staring at me while I fill my coffe cup. And Rich Brooks knows…

It’s good to see things are back to normal in Columbia and the Clempson game was just a once in every ten years aberration.

Its good to be dictator SABAN: "Smart also had a humorous warning for anyone encountering Saban on the golf course.
“You know the first hole you get a mulligan on the first tee? Well he’s been known on the 18th to pull his out,” Smart said. “He calls it a hooligan. It travels with him. In a critical moment, he’s down a couple of strokes and hits a bad shot, and he says, ‘I didn’t use my mulligan on the first hole.’ I didn’t say much, but I just kind of accepted it.”
With a laugh, Smart said he didn’t apply the same rule to himself.
“He probably would say, ‘Well, I did it. You can do it,’” Smart said. “But it’s just more of a golf ethical rule for me. If you use it on the first tee, it’s gone.”
-————————————-
THE ‘MIDGET’ COACH: Alabama nose tackle Terrence Cody has heard enough about his size to be willing to poke a little fun others, even Saban.
Asked about his first impression of the Crimson Tide’s coach, Cody replied, “I really thought he would have been bigger than he was. I was like, ‘Man, this guy’s a midget.’”

He probably cheats on his wife and says “Roll Tide” followed by “baby its Rolling” while doing his dirty deeds done dirt chep.

So the thing I don’t get is this. Most playoff proponents will come back to the “It’s all about the benjamins” refrain for the BCS as in the video, but they can’t acknowledge the other side of what a playoff brings:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/football/nfl/01/03/goodell.colts.ap/index.html

AM I THE ONLY PERSON IN THE FUCKING WORLD WHO SEES THAT THERE IS NO PERFECT SYSTEM?

And don’t even get me started on the idea that a single elimination playoff probably doesn’t crown the best team champion any more often than a poll based system. But, without a definitive list of the best team for each season from some omniscient source, it is impossible to compare the results of competing systems.

The funny thing is the video advocates boycotting the BCS, well, I do exactly that with the NFL and don’t feel a damn bit of a loss for it. On the other hand, I’m here posting on a College Football blog. So you tell me hotshot, why am I too stupid to realize the awesomeness of a playoff system?

@10

how does this article on the colts reflect on the bcs? Is the implication that college football teams will start to rest players in anticipation of the playoffs?

 This doesn’t happen in college basketball, as teams play for seeding up to last minute. College football eams also occasionally play crummy non-conference teams (or teams coached by Steve Kragthorpe) in the final weeks of the season to be able to rest their starters for conference championship games or bowl games or whatever.

Sure, a playoff won’t have uh, “omniscience” you desire, but it also removes unnatural barriers to the competition, like say, idiotic voting by coaches and the media, conference biases, etc. No system involving 100+ member institutions will ever be perfect, but over time, a playoff will be most accurate in figuring out the best team each year.

@10, 11

Not to mention it puts the action on the field. Sure, there will be teams left out that could, theoretically, roll through the playoffs and win. But you’d never see what we saw this year: three teams winning every single contest and ending up with no shot at a national championship. Think Chip Kelly stays put if there’s a playoff? I will take a championship decided on the field by the best 8-16 teams in the country over the BS we have now in a heartbeat.

Its official, Brooke’s has retired: www.kentucky.com

How many people screaming for playoffs are actually “paying for this shit?” My impression of playoff fanatics is that they’re 14- to 30-year-olds, who don’t have season tickets, and watch college football as if it were a national pro league (plus a few older people who bet on the games). The only way they’re “paying” for college football is by fast-forwarding through the commercials. The people who actually pay for college football are mainly concerned with their OWN teams, and don’t particularly care what happens to TCU and Boise State and their combined 60,000 fans.

Seriously, the BCS is a flawed system because BOISE gets “screwed?”

This whole entire football season can suck my ass.

if I have to pick one flawed system over another, I pick playoffs hands down…maybe not 32 team playoff, damn sure not 2 team

and if a cincinnati with it’s faux schedule gets jobbed every now and then so be it… but if NotreDame goes undefeated, or TX or USC (or god forbid Auburn) then they should have SOME way of parsing the teams into brackets for our amusement

Amen

Jon,

You say that a playoff won’t have the “omniscience” I desire in one sentence and in the next go right ahead and assume that over the long haul it will do better than a poll based system. Not sure how you know, but how about some lotto numbers if you have access to that kind of info?

I personally think they do about the same, but can’t prove it and wouldn’t assert it as anything other than my perception. Maybe you feel the same way and don’t mean to imply you KNOW a playoff is more accurate, but rather you BELIEVE it to be so.

Regardless, not a single person has ever been able to explain to me why I can turn a blind eye to all the various playoffs (admittedly, I’ll watch much of March Madness but little of the regular season and VERY little of all the other sports) but still get geeked for CFB come the end of August.

You’ll have to take my word for this, as the following is just words on the screen. Growing up and through high school I primarily watched pro sports; the NFL, MLB, NBA were my staples. I didn’t really pay attention to college except my regrettable band wagon on the Laettner, Hurley, Hill Duke glory days and then about as a junior in high school (93-94 time frame) I started paying attention to UF because I knew I’d end up there . By the time I left UF, I had seen the light and although not as indifferent as I have become since, pro sports had lost major major appeal.

All the whining about crowning a “true” champion misses the point that the journey really is the point. As a Gator, I can’t be very certain that in any of the three years we won a MNC, we really were the best, but the memories of big games and the tension beforehand and relief after big wins has never been even remotely matched by any pro team or any regular season college BBall, even during our Back-to-Back run. Granted, I was an Air Force brat so I don’t have ties to any particular city and maybe fans who grew up in Pittsburgh feel as strongly about the Steelers in week 4 or 7 of the NFL as I do about UF and CFB in general every week, but in the free market place, pro sports have not managed to attract much of my $ or attention.

Also, I don’t think college football teams EVER rest starters in the current system until the game is way out of reach. In fact, the opposite seems to be the issue, leaving them in to run up the score for style points. I would think you would make the case that a playoff system would maybe encourage more “sportsmanship” than that it wouldn’t devalue the enormity of losses.

Think of the poor Tebow-haters. They probably wouldn’t have gotten to see his cancer curing tears on Dec. 5 or the awesome spectacle of Urbs resigination/leave of abscence if that game didn’t hold so much meaning. Or dare I say, the “Promise” speech. However you come down on it, you are a million times more likely to have the above instances happen in CFB than pro, or even college basketball.

Ummm, laettner beating Uk in 1992 is less interesting than a player crying? just switch to reality tv if you want story lines and emotion. Sports and playoff championships can combine both at their best.

If you want to glorify the regular season, be my guest. But it always comes down to the inane argument that one side’s undefeated regular season is better than another side’s regular season.

The BCS is flawed for a lot of reasons, not just Boise State’s fate. And, as a die-hard Boise State fan, I’d like to point out that you used the weakest argument as the voice of everyone who doesn’t agree with you. Boise State getting screwed is only one part of that song. Let me help out by explaining the actually good arguments.

If Texas misses that FG in the Big 12 championship game, Cincy goes to the NCG. Looking back on how they handled Florida… Wow.

With no one playing anyone else OOC, there is no real way to measure how good a conference really is. With the BCS, two teams and only two teams get picked to play for all the marbles, even if in hindsight it turns out that maybe one of them shouldn’t have been there. What if TCU manhandles my Broncos tonight and Texas lays a big fat egg in the NCG?

With a playoff, at least there would be some sort of way to actually judge how good teams are. TCU got screwed more than Boise State, but in the end lots of teams have valid complaints about the current system. And even if the end result is the same, an Alabama vs. Texas NCG, everyone would know that both teams earned their spots there completely.

Either TCU or Boise State will remain undefeated after tonight, which sucks for Alabama and Texas too. There shouldn’t be any debate whatsoever about who is best, there should be a way for teams to earn that title. Alabama and Texas have done everything asked of them, played tough football all year and never lost to another team. They deserve the shot they are getting. But everyone, Alabama, Texas, TCU, Cincy, Florida, Ohio State and even little pathetic Boise State deserve a shot to prove their worth. The college football regular season rules, but it doesn’t answer all questions. Would a playoff? Well, it’d do a better job of it, that is for sure.

I’ll be thrilled with our season no matter what happens tonight, but I’ll never be thrilled with the current system. And I acknowledge that in an eight team playoff Boise State would not have been invited to attend. But damn, even having the opportunity is better than not having it at all. I’ll take an eight team playoff that leaves us out in the cold over a BCS system that leaves so many unanswered questions.

And North 2, you may forever believe that you were the best team last year, but there will always be a contingent of fans that can, and rightfully will, make a case for Utah. And you’ll never be able to shut them up. Nobody beat them last year. Nothing actually dealing with football played in stadiums and on fields proved that they weren’t the best.

This is AMERICA Dept:

Playoff vs BCS?

This is America, where we fight it out on the fields for supremacy.
Not some sort of Beauty Contest, like gymnastics, where Euro and Third World judges hand out awards in some sort of biased, !@#$ way.

(Yes, I am leaving out that US also participates in the judging because I want to.)

Interesting how that second recruit UF picked up in the U/A Bowl doesn’t merit a mention here by name. Penn State thanks the Gators for taking a future headache off their hands.

Make it a playoff with every team in D-1A, but don’t bother playing the games. Let’s use one of those fancy-schmancy electronic coins like they used in the Liberty Bowl.

You can’t argue with the e-coin!

Any idea where I can get one? A simple quarter just one cut it anymore when I need to make a decision.

Simple solution for simple minds:

1. No changes to the current conferences (other than independents may join).

2. All 12-team conferences with a conference championship games get a first round bye (there are five).

3. All non-12 team conferences must play another non-12 team conference in a ‘regional playoff game’ to advance. Seed them how you will (there are six).

4. Keep all other non-championship bowl games. Let the two best 6-6 teams slug it out in the Papajohn’s bowl. What the hell.

5. The remaining eight teams are seeded in a playoff system by region or lot, take your pick. Venues are by regional bowls all played on Jan 1 (Sugar, Orange, Rose, Fiesta). Venue the other three games (semi-final and final) based upon who wins regionally and is ranked the highest.

6. Tell Notre Dame, Army and Navy that if they want to play in the post season, they’ll have to join a conference (they’ll howl, but will in the end, join – there’ll be too much money lost to avoid it).

The above will result in only two additional games to the current system (with only four teams playing more than 13 games). Spread over the two weeks after the big four won’t even disturb the network coverage of the NFL playoffs and will bring even more money than the current BCS system.

Sullivan013

re: #10, another reason you wouldn’t have teams “mailing it in” before the playoffs, is because unlike in the NFL when it’s random team #1 playing random team #2 to end the season, most college teams end the season playing their arch-rivals. You think Bama fans or OSU fans wouldn’t burn their respective states to the ground if they “threw” their big seaon-ending games to “rest their starters” for the playoffs?

I like college football. While not necessarily a BCS honk, the regular season is bad ass. Whatever anyone does, don’t mess with the glorious schadenfreude I get if my team derails a hated rival.

I guess this is why I really don’t want an 8 or 16 team playoff. The satisfaction of bringing some other fanbase to postseason hell with me is so much more gratifying that sharing a little slice of playoff heaven.

@24 I dunno, I live in Dallas, and plenty are bitching about Romo being left in the game even though it was against their hated rival the eagles.

Stuff:

A playoff has a neat, ordered system that is simple, streamlined, and fair. The BCS is contained chaos. Give me the BCS. A playoff diminishes the regular season. The BCS places all the emphasis on the season, with the bowl game being the just reward for surviving the fields of chaotic triumph and despair.

A playoff ensures nobody gets any money except the last 2 teams standing (If my Idaho State Bengals were in a bowl system, we’d be reaping some good money off of Montana’s 17-18 million consecutive years in the postseason). The BCS at least makes it so the little guy, even if he gets totally sodomized by a traffic cone, gets a damn good amount of money.

You think the BCS is unfair? Wait til you get a playoff. The big conferences will find a way to get more bids for their own. It’s happened in every other system. Don’t think it won’t happen here.

Think about this. The big schools can afford to send their thousands of crazy fans to games every week. The small schools would be vastly outnumbered in playoff games.

Finally, this is mystical but I’m serious. The FCS has always had playoffs, since 1978. That’s the way we do things. If somebody suggested we go to a bowl system, I’d flip. Vice versa, we’ve always had bowl games here in the FBS. We’re identified with bowl games. We have been for over 100 years. If you fuck with that and force a playoff system, you will be destroying the wild, wacky, passionate and beautiful environment that is college football.

The BCS should be tweaked, I agree. Get rid of conference affiliations, expand it to the Top 14 by inducting the Cotton and Peach (formerly Chick Fil-A, renamed to sound BCS-like) Bowls, and make sure the Top14 in the BCS polls get the bids.

College football is too big at D-1 to have a playoff. You want playoffs? Go watch the FCS if you love it so much.

Spyder Mayhem,

Not sure if you really read my second post, so I’ll cut and paste part of it again. I don’t for a second think any of the 3 MNC of Florida are “legit” in the sense I would bet a wooden nickel that we were undoubtedly the best team.

“As a Gator, I can’t be very certain that in any of the three years we won a MNC, we really were the best, but the memories of big games and the tension beforehand and relief after big wins has never been even remotely matched by any pro team or any regular season college BBall, even during our Back-to-Back run.”

And Jon, the fabulous UK DUKE game your reference was in a playoff no? If that had been in the opening game of a ACC/SEC Matchup (Like the current ACC/BIG 10 thingy they do), you can’t with a straight face say that game would be remembered even half as fondly. 98% of the drama was because of what was on the line in that game. So we are back to the regular season vs. post season debate. The vast majority of the great games I remember fondly in CFB were regular season (some were bowl games, yes, but not more than about 1/13th or so), while I can’t remember a SINGLE Florida regular season basketball or NFL game with any particular strength.

Hell, even the Giants almost derailing the Patriots at the end of 2007 was most noteworthy because, SHOCK OF ALL SHOCKS, the Giants played to win the game even though it didn’t improve their playoff standings. The various commentators and analysis about had a seizure as though this idea of giving a damn was weird. And then after the Giants won in the Super Bowl, proving they were clearly the better team (that’s sarcasm for the slow), the Bill Simmons’ of the world try to spin the whole karma angle that since the Giants actually tried at the end of the regular season and fought the good fight, it carried over into the playoffs.

I never want to change the post season formats of other sports, I just want my college fuwtbawl left alone and chaotic. But like socialized health care, I know it be a coming, so for now, I’m soaking in all the beauty ever August through December so I’ll have great memories to fall back on.

*analysts not analysis

and

every not ever

and any other typos, I suck