First BCS Rankings

It also wouldn't have shut out Hawaii the year they stunk up the Sugar Bowl against Georgia.

 

Nobody said you were. But the way people go about the BCS as if it was apartheid, asbestos and puppy killing all rolled into one horrible creation, well, it could (and has been) a LOT worse, and they forget that. And again: school presidents don't WANT a playoff. That's your target. Until they decide to get on board, this isn't happening, even if you get Louisiana-Monroe vs. Akron in the title game.

Throwing a hissy fit every year isn't going to do a damn of difference, yet every year people act as though they found the goose that lays the golden football when they start screaming PLAYOFFS! Only thing that happens is everyone congratulates themselves on such a cunning and brilliant plan, then tut-tut the powers that be and go "well, of course they won't go for it, it makes too much sense" (a phrase, for what it's worth, that seems to get used at least once a day on SJ).

In a perfect world, no BCS. But like it or not, a) no playoffs are on the horizon and b) you have to do the best you can with what you're given. For better or worse, that's the system we have now. Any fixes are going to have to be to that system, because the people with the power aren't interested in changing it.

 

A D1 playoff system would have to have, at a minimum, 16 teams.

You have to give automatic bids for any conference champion -- although I could see the NCAA capping the number of conferences at 9 or 10 and using criteria to jettison the weaker members of the Sun Belt back to I-AA (and the better teams likely join CUSA), at-larges for the next few teams, chosen much in the system of the NCAA BB tournament. About 1/2 the teams autobids, 1/2 at-large.

 

Zag, you know as well as I do that the BCS conferences would never allow a 16-team playoff field to include all 11 D-1 conference champions. They'd set it up so the six BCS leagues would have automatics, with 10 wild-cards, which might allow for 1-2 of the better teams from the non-BCS conferences to get in, but there would be no guarantee that that would be the case.

 

it would be horse crap for the Sun Belt and a lot of MAC champions to get an automatic bid in a tournament.

 

I have proposed a 16-team playoff that would give the big-money conferences an edge, but not a stranglehold:

--Champions of the six BCS conferences and the Mountain West.
--Winner of play-in game between champs of WAC and Sun Belt
--Winner of play-in game between champs of MAC and C-USA
--Seven at-large teams, picked by a selection committee.

Given that almost all the at-large teams would be from BCS conferences, it would be like the men's tourney: the powerhouses can be expected to dominate, but there would be room for Cinderella stories. And such a playoff would make the NCAA hoops tourneys seem penny ante, money-wise.

 

The resistance to a football playoff by college presidents and conference commissioners has nothing to do with cheapening the regular season, players missing class, etc.

It has everything to do with not wanting the NCAA to be in control of the money.

Now that that's been established, feel free to carry on.

 

Dooley - There are six BCS conferences

 

Just testing to see if you had me on the button.

 

Of course, some people seem to be living in the world that existed before the limit on scholarships.

 

Any argument that begins "the NCAA football tournament would not be right without Louisiana-Monroe or Troy or Ohio or Temple" dies on the cutting room table, automatically.

 

Cowbell, you get off Zag's log-on immediately!