Could Mark Cuban be college football's savior?

Goody, the SEC teams can face the same patsies it beat up on during the non-conference schedule. I'm sure that's what they're going to have to do to get the playoff. Doesn't mean I have to like it, but it's still a thousand times better than the current system.

You do make a good point about seedings not mattering as much. You could argue there's no difference between being seeded 1-8 if the only thing you get for it is one home game. If the top four teams get to play the Sun Belt champ, the MAC champ and a couple other worthless conference champs, it does make finishing in the top four pretty important.

Do you want to play Troy or do you want to play Arkansas?

 

Any extra money that colleges get from a playoff will be reinvested in five key areas:

1) Higher salaries for the football coaching staff.
2) Higher salaries for the basketball coaching staff.
3) Better facilities for the football program.
4) Better facilities for the basketball program.
5) Higher salaries for the administrators.

Baseball and women's tennis can suck it.

 

Why would the bowl games have to be out of business? They'd be no less relevant than they are now.

Fine, include all of the confereces. The Sun Belt gets Ice Cream!!!

The TV contract would be so much higher than the current BCS deal it's not even funny.

 

You can't "fix" one without screwing up the other. College football playoff advocacy is just short of mass hysteria. A classic case of people thinking they want a certain thing until they actually get it.

 

Yeah, I guess I "can't get" how the greatest sport out there could have such a worthless and shitty postseason.

 

I agree that any version of a playoff is better than what we have now.

I like Mizzou's pairings better than having to include the Sun Belts of the world. I would take a Friday off work to watch that first round.

One way they could set it up is the top 16 qualify, with the only caveat being if a conference has an undefeated team, they get in regardless of ranking (with a minimum of 11 FBS wins so Sun Belt schools don't schedule four D-II teams for non-conference).

If they could find a way to split the tournament TV money equally among all FBS schools without the piece being smaller for current AQ programs than what they currently get, it could work.

 

That's great but that's not how the NCAA works.

And more to the point, why the fuck would the Sun Belt, MAC, CUSA or any other football conference agree to a playoff system they don't have a hope in hell of qualifying for?

That the issue with the BCS now what you're proposing doesn't change that.

 

Yeah, unfortunately I think having the true top 16 teams is a pipe dream.

But, assuming the JV teams are gone in the first round you could still have a second round of

No. 1 Auburn vs. No. 8 Oklahoma
No. 2 Oregon vs. No. 7 Michigan State
No. 3 TCU vs. No. 6 Ohio State
No. 4 Wisconsin vs. No. 5 Stanford.

You would also have 15 games with big/huge ratings as opposed to the 3-4 bowl games that people actually watch.

 

The issue with the BCS is that there are plenty of years when more than two teams can stake a solid claim that they deserve to be in the title game. The BCS title game is soiled when a Nebraska or Oklahoma team that just lost by four touchdowns a week or two before can still be sent to the title game.

Settle it on the field.

 

Would it be such a great sport if the 11- or 12-game regular season was just a fox trot? To take the most vivid example, when Michigan and Ohio State played as #s 1 and 2 the day after Bo died, you simply could not ask for a greater college football environment. If there's a 16-team, that game is a dress rehearsal because both teams have a guaranteed home playoff game. Same deal with Alabama-Auburn this year -- if Auburn doesn't come back, so what? They're the fourth seed instead of the top seed.

The most meaningful matchups throughout the season are that way for a reason. Change that and you're going to get a lot of what Duke-Carolina in January is -- a pretty good game that ultimately means nothing.

 

That's true, but I think you're both right. The NCAA will not create a system that doesn't include all conference, but not all conferences are created equal.

Here's one way to solve that.

If the NCAA dusted off the attendance requirement, made it tougher (higher, maybe 25,000 per), and actually enforced it, you could say bye-bye to the MAC, Sun Belt and the bastardized conference the WAC has become as far as FBS football is concerned.

C-USA would barely qualify, but I don't have a problem with them or the Mountain West in FBS, they churn out teams that make legitimate runs into the top 16 on a more-than-regular basis. That would leave eight automatic conference bids (Big East, ACC, SEC, C-USA, Big Ten, Big 12, MWC, Pac-12) and eight at-large bids.

The other option is to do what FCS did and have a 20-team field ... then dump all of the crappy AQs into the first round.

But I don't think that would work and I think that the MAC, Sun Belt and sawed-off WAC belong in FCS ... and I say that as a grad of a MAC school.

There just isn't that much cache to being a low-level FBS school. I'd rather my alma mater fight for a playoff bid against schools that are its peers instead of trying to tilt windmills by getting that once-a-century season that might, but probably won't, get you into BCS bowl consideration.

The rest of the bowls? Totally irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. Couldn't care less.