College football posteason: Better/Worse since the BCS?

Well said, Michael.

The BCS era may have also altered scheduling philosophies. Take a look at some non-conference skeds from 1986. Ohio State opened with Alabama, Washington and Colorado. Colorado opened with Colorado State, Oregon, Ohio State and Arizona. Nebraska opened with Florida State, Illinois, Oregon, and South Carolina. Alabama had non-conference games against Ohio State, Southern Miss, Notre Dame and Penn State (and also Memphis and Temple).

It seems these days we're lucky to see one really attractive non-conference game per year. Oregon-LSU this year; Ohio State-Texas a few years back.

 

Hate the current setup. Ugh. And Ugly.

First, have an 8 team playoff, not the poll/computers decide things nonsense.

Second, blow up the automatic tie-ins/slotting. How many times do we have to see South Carolina v. Ohio State in Orlando or Michigan v. Florida in Tampa? Throw everything open where we might get more unusual matchups than today's tried and true: maybe an Oklahoma v. Wisconsin game, a Georgia v. USC, a Va Tech v. Texas. Some more variation between conferences would certainly be a more entertaining thing.

Of course, that might make the bowl organizers have to actually work a little to get their teams, rather than having them handed to them. And I still say that getting paid to be a bowl committee member or head has got to be the best damn job in the world. Travel around the country to football Saturday boondoggles when your teams are pretty much going to be set for you, arrange a one time a year event in venues where they're already pretty much set up to do this already, make the schools do most of the hard work in selling the tickets and assuming the financial risk, and then sit back and rake in the take, and your six figure salary. One day, the schools will finally wake up and stop letting themselves get bamboozled.

 

Key, when there was so much less college football on TV back in the day, broadcasters WANTED big intersectional (there's a word you don't hear much lately) games for ratings. Now they don't need them. Also, when the national championship was totally poll-driven, bowl selection was more so, so big nonconference games were a risk needed to make the big bowls. Now, you just need to be a brand name school.

 

Thanks.

I miss the 11am to 11pm New Year's Day/Night Bowl games. New Years day was great, Italian Subs, Pizza and Football.Asa kid the Rose Parade was great followed by the actual Rose Bowl late inthe afternoon of New Years Day. Now you need an app to tell you when the games are on.

 

Nowadays, you can play an intersectional game in your own conference (especially if you're in the Big East-plus).

 

New Year's Day was one of the great days of my youth, better than just about anything besides Christmas, but I would bet the bowls and the networks (OK ESPN) realize tons and tons more money this way. As much as we all loved flipping back and forth between the Fiesta and Rose, and then between the Orange and Sugar, putting each of those games on in its own time slot and usually in prime time causes what has to be a threefold spike in the ratings.

 

If the old system were in play how would this year be set up?

Wisconsin and Oregon would be in the Rose
LSU would be in the Sugar, probably against Stanford
Okie State would be in the Orange, probably against Alabama
Arkansas and Boise in the Fiesta?

I think you would at least enter the bowls with four teams still in the championship mix. Obviously, if LSU wins, the title would go there, but if Stanford won, then you pay close attention to the Okie State-Bama game.

In the old system, teams still had a chance. In the current system, if Bama beats LSU in a sloppy game and Okie State crushes Stanford, there there would be a debate as to who is No. 1. Now, Bama would get the Coaches' poll by default since you can't vote for a No. 1 and Okie State only has a chance with the writers.

It's just dumb. Get a fucking playoff already.

 

Yeah, as a kid New Year's Day was one of my favorite sports days of the year, topped only by the first two days of the NCAA Tourney. Growing up in California, games were on from the second I woke up until usually 8 or 9 p.m. and most of them meant something.

Now, between spacing out the games and the BCS bowl, that isn't played for more than a week, none of them have any meaning. There are a couple good games, but they don't mean shit.

 

Opening up the TV Guide to see the special pull-out section with all the bowl games on New Year's Day was one of the big sports highlight for me as a kid. It was a lot easier to not get disappointed in a bowl match-up if there were two other, potentially better games going on at the same time. When every night brings a match-up of two teams with marginal records, it's hard to hide the mediocrity.

 

You need to get money on it. I watched every second of the fourth quarter of TCU vs. LaTech-plus-10.5, cha-ching.

 

Worse. Before, (creating a scenario)a couple of top 5 teams with big wins Jan. 1 in say the Sugar and Cotton or Rose could see the No. 1 team get beat in the nighttime Orange Bowl and know they have a shot at being the new No. 1 and fans of 2 or 3 teams get excited. Now, it's whoever wins that last contrived title game who will be No. 1 and maybe the two best teams aren't even in that game. So no other bowl means anything except to those teams' own fans.

 

Without defending the BCS too strenuously, how is a system that has four teams playing opponents of various strength, with one of them getting the ring because it beat the #6 team, a better way of deciding the champion? If people didn't bitch all year about that system, we wouldn't have this one.