Best-ever package on corrupt aspect of bowl games

Fenian and Bob:

Why is it bad to have every conference involved? I believe there are 11 in I-A. So you have a 16-team playoff with 11 conference champions and five at-large bids.

And because every conference has a representative, yes, some of the money does go to the have-nots. More, certainly, than they get from the BCS farce.

And as I said before, having a playoff doesn't kill the bowls. They're already exhibitions except the BCS title game. Nothing changes for them.

 

Well if we have a play-off then it will dimish the importance of the regular season because every regular season game matters, you know, like Texas-Oklahoma.......

 

I'm completely for a playoff, but I think the big stumbling block is that a playoff guts the big bowl games, the one with all the money/clout. Nobody cares if the magicJack.com Pizza Weedeater Bowl goes under, but is the Rose Bowl really going to be down with never having the big games in there? I think there'd be some significant resistance on their behalf if you try to incorporate them into the playoff calendar structure (rotating them among the finals, semifinals, quarterfinals: "Hey, we're the Grandaddy of Them All, not a danged quarterfinal").

Again, I could care less about them, but that's the biggest issue. I think the NCAA is hypocritical in its stance to not have a true, on-the-field national champion in its biggest moneyed sport.

 

Sounds good, but the Granddaddy right now is irrelevant to determining a champion.

 

Check out the attendance and TV ratings at some of these non-BCS bowls. The only people that attend are locals and die-hards of the competing teams. Most casual fans aren't going to fly halfway across the country to see their 7-5 team take on an 8-4 team.

They've had their moments, the season's ups and downs and they are what they are. Most fans have moved on to thinking about recruiting/next season or basketball/hockey, etc.

Going to a minor bowl doesn't mean much anymore. It's a novelty for the players and coaches involved for a few years and it gives the SIDs a chance to crow about their school's "streak" of consecutive bowls. But it just doesn't mean much anymore.

 

Fixed.

 

No frickin' way do to the big schools agree to this format. Five at-large bids to split between the six biggest conferences? That's a non-starter. The only hope for this happening is that the money is enough to replace the bowl payouts, which excepting Notre Dame, do not stay with one team, but are split among all conference members. (Another reason Notre Dame stays independent.) Plus, watching Oklahoma decromificate Florida Atlantic at some neutral site is not exactly going to draw an audience outside of Norman. The BCS system "works" because while it gives the minor conferences a shot at bowl stardom, money and exposure, for whatever that is worth, the big conferences get multiple members in bowls to boost their own bottom lines as well.

The minor bowls don't mean much to anyone -- except the schools and conferences directly involved. Casual fans aren't going to fly halfway across the country to see Troy play, but ESPN presumes enough people will watch it on TV to justify the rights fees it is paying. Heck, it's a lot better programming than more poker reruns or whatever the network would have to insert in all that dead time during a mostly dead time in the sporting year.

 

Swore he was going to stop covering college football. And didn't he begin covering boxing instead?

 

He could have left that line out, but who said he was covering the game?

 

Means a couple of extra weeks of practice and guarantees one coach the chance to say he won his last game of the season.

January 2010
Friday, January 1 - Rose Bowl (Pasadena)
Friday, January 1 - Sugar Bowl (New Orleans)
Monday, January 4 - Fiesta Bowl (Phoenix)
Tuesday, January 5 - Orange Bowl (Miami)
Thursday January 7 - National Championship Game (Pasadena)

If you think the Rose Bowl folks aren't intimately involved in that Jan. 7, 2010 game, you're fooling yourself.

 

I agree that the big schools will never go for this. They won't go for anything that guarantees a share of the cash to the smaller conferences. which is why there isn't a playoff already. The only chance for a playoff is that I-A (don't give me that FBS crap) keeps growing until the have-nots outnumber the haves.

As for the five at-larges from the top conferences, why is that a non-starter? That gives them 11 probable spots -- more than an any eight-team playoff proposal -- to five for the nobodies. And the matchups? What, Cincinnati-Virginia Tech is being anticipated around the nation with bated breath? Remember Georgia-Hawaii? You get dogs in the current system, too, and they aren't leading to anything. Look at it like Duke-Prairie View in the first round of the NCAA.

And the minor bowls, as has been stated, don't have to go away. They can go on as they are.

And if they rotate sites for the playoff final and hold it in Pasadena, how would they be less involved? As it stands, the Rose Bowl is not a title game and has nothing to do with crowning any champion.

 

And as usual, Bubbler nails the whole disgusting, foul essence of the bowl system with this graf.

The bowls reward teams who travel well, which explains why Notre Dame's overrated and underwhelming teams keep getting plum bowl bids when more deserving (read "better") teams get the Heisman stiff-arm.

On-field prowess is secondary to off-field tourism. In the manner of full disclosure, yes, I'm saying this as a bitter UCLA fan tired of watching past Bruins teams get stoned from decent bowls because they don't travel.

But the whole selection process is riper than month-old Limburger, never mind the rank operation of said bowls chronicled above.