Could Mark Cuban be college football's savior?

That's interesting. I wonder if they could have refused the bid. I doubt it.

This won't be the first time a school that goes to a BCS game loses money.

 

Dallas and San Francisco were usually the two best teams in the 90s, yet one was always eliminated before the Super Bowl . . . usually by the other.

Same principle. Whenever you have divisions or conferences, there is always the chance that the two best teams will both be members of the same conference or division and thus will not meet in whatever final series or game the sport has.

 

Well said, Schiez.

How many truly meaningful games were there in November? Really, only those involving Oregon and Auburn - the only compelling contest being Auburn-Alabama. I'll even throw in Utah-TCU, which at the time, appeared to be a compelling matchup of two undefeated teams that everyone knew wasn't going to make the BCS Title game no matter what.

But I will not include the Big 12 Championship, which meant nothing this year, except the opportunity to play in a different exhibition game for more money, which the conference may or may not divide evenly among its members.

And over the years, how many OSU-Michigan (2006) games have there been? One a season? Wouldn't the playoffs produce more than that?

The Catch, the Music City Miracle, the Immaculate Reception, the Hail Mary, the Frank Reich Game, "He missed it." All playoff games.

 

We don't. We really don't. And once that concept is understood, the frustration melts away.

Don't think of college football as a 120-team league. Think of it as 11 leagues with a varied level of play within each league.

If lack of a playoff system is stupid, then granting unbeaten teams with the 75th-, 84th- and 92nd-ranked schedules entry into this playoff while one-loss schools with the 8th-, 11th- and 14th-place schedules sit at home is twice as stupid.

All playoff games in a league where teams' schedules are remarkably similar and playoff qualifications are strictly defined.

Ask a football fan in Tennessee which he remembers more fondly, the Music City Miracle or the Miracle in South Bend (Vols overcoming a 31-7 deficit to beat Notre Dame 35-34 in 1991).

And college can play the "cool games", too. "Hail Flutie", "The Play", "Lindsay Scott!", the Kordell Stewart Hail Mary, the Nebraska 2-point conversion off the receiver's foot, the Boise-Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl, the Oklahoma-Nebraska 1971 game . . . Hell, before Frank Reich was rallying Buffalo, he was rallying Maryland from a 31-0 deficit against Miami in a 42-40 Terps win.

 

How many of those games ended one season and advanced another? Hell, Boise-Oklahoma was an exhibition, I had to google Lindsay Scott (shame on me, I suppose), and Kordell's Hail Mary pales in comparison to Staubach's.

Also the difference in Tennessee "Miracles" has less to do with playoff vs. no playoff and more to do with Pro vs. College.

I just think it's a fallacy to say a playoff system would dilute the regular season. If anything, it would expand the number of meaningful games throughout the season, since more teams would have a stake in the endgame.

 

They were eliminated by one another ... in the postseason. And I never said that the NFL has it 100 percent right. Maybe the NFL has too many divisions. College football doesn't need to mimic the NFL, but it is the only sport that doesn't end in a playoff.

 

The NFL's system isn't perfect. They should seed the teams based on record, so we won't be faced with 12-4 New Orleans traveling to St. Louis to face the 8-8 Rams in the first round.

 

Great points.

 

I've got some friends who are in programming, and every year about this time, I ask the same question: How did the bowls rate? Every year it's the same damn thing. Great. And I go, "WHY?!?" (Because I root for a playoff.)

And they don't know. For whatever reason, people love to sit around and watch meaningless bowl games during the holidays.

JD, you and I have talked about the "seats of power" within the BCS and how TV is perhaps chief among them.

 

You know what the real problem here is, right?

There are WAY too many teams in "Division I".

If you want to do a playoff right, there should be no more than 64 teams, spread across eight divisions, in the nation's top division. Can anyone make an argument for some of these schools?

I get why schools would be extremely resistant to this but if we were really going with the idea of trying to make the sport the best it could be, there would be one 64-school top division and everyone else would be spread across D-II, D-III and D-IV.

In this system, at the end of every regular season, two teams in each division make the playoffs and, after every four years (roughly one class start to finish), the worst two teams in each division are dropped out of D-I to make way for the best performing D-II programs.

This way, you give a smaller school a shot to compete every year and provide some incentive for those teams that are just staying afloat to be competitive, lest they get dropped down.

Oh and another thing ... this system makes scheduling 1,000 times easier and takes the power out of the school's hands.

You play seven conference games and, in theory, they're all difficult, and then you can schedule any four non-conference games you want. (You know, to keep the whole tradition thing alive).

I wish this would happen but I'm not holding my breath. I think it's much more likely that I'll be on this board when I'm 50 complaining about how I can't believe they still don't have a playoff system in college football yet.