First BCS Rankings

One thing I will say -- if the rankings are going to determine shit and the "regular season" matters because it serves as a 12-week elimination.......

Why aren't the top seven teams right now (seven weeks into the season.....)

Alabama
Florida
Texas
Boise State
Cincy
Iowa
TCU

Seriously - none of those teams have lost yet, why are they not the first seven?

Oh that's right, I forgot, because the rankings are a silly, subjective, bullshit way to determine who gets to play for a title.....

 

I disagree. An 8 team playoff, automatic bids to the champ of the six BCS conferences plus two at large bids. Rotate the major bowls as the venues for the playoff games, and keep all the other bullshit bowls the same way they are now. That way the bowl people get to stay in business AND we finally get a playoff and legitimate championship.

 

Got to include berths for all 11 Division I conferences. Otherwise, it's not a true national championship. And if I'm one of those conferences and the newly formed tournament excludes me, I'm teaming up with the other excluded conferences for a big-time lawsuit.

 

If you're Iowa State or Minnesota or Arizona or Kentucky or any other mid-pack BCS school, why would you vote to implement a system you don't have a hope in hell of qualifying for?

Also, if you think a playoff system that doesn't include all 11 conference champions would happen then you clearly don't know one fucking thing about how the NCAA operates.

 

And they'd quickly lose that lawsuit. There's no rule or legal authority declaring that every conference is entitled to a spot. The basketball tournament once didn't give a birth to evey conference and nobody sued or claimed they were so entitled.

A great non BCS team would still have a way into the 8 team tournament--go undefeated and earn one of the two at large spots. It might not be a perfect format, but it'd be a helluva lot more inclusive and better than what we have now.

 

There's no problem with a 16-team field. It's what they use for FCS, and it all works fine. That still leaves about 40 bowl-eligible teams, and we cut the number of bowls down to 20.

 

The number of bowls will be cut to 0 if the NCAA goes to a playoff system.

 

That's why you leave the bowls as they are (except, as already mentioned, you'd cut about 10 of them). They'd be like an NIT of sorts, and for programs like Kentucky and Iowa State and Minnesota, they'd still be a pretty good achievement. Kentucky fans don't expect to win national titles in football. That's why the argument for "there are too many bowls" falls on deaf ears so many times. Teams like Kentucky enjoy getting to play the extra game, plus it allows them an extra month of practice and a guaranteed game on national TV. Winning three straight bowl games has done wonders for the Kentucky program, even if they were horseshit bowls.

 

Cut the highest level of college football in half and that solves a lot of problems. The biggest problem is that it's almost impossible to declare a true champion in a league with 120 teams that only play twelve regular season games each.

The 65 team tournament for the DI basketball tournament is silly as well. There are multiple teams in the tournament every year that wouldn't come close to approaching .500 in a power basketball conference.

 

There will be no bowl system if a playoff is implemented. The NIT comparison is not valid.

 

If the NCAA runs a playoff, all the conference champions will be invited, at least to play in. The 16-team format -- 11 conference winners and five at-larges -- is the fairest, easiest and most logical.

And Steak Snabler hit it right between the eyes regarding the resistance to a playoff. It isn't that a playoff wouldn't make as much money as the current system -- done right, it could certainly make more. But the big schools don't want to share the bucks with the Arkansas States and Louisiana Techs of the world, amd if the NCAA takes over with a playoff, the little guys will get a cut. It's about who controls the money. Right now, that's the BCS conferences, and they aren't about to give that up to the NCAA without a fight.

 

A_QB: Why not?

Why can the bowls not exist exclusive from the playoff? If you're going to make a case for a 16-team tournament, there better be some postseason incentive for the lower-end BCS teams, or else the popularity of college football is going to plummet. No one at Kentucky, Iowa State or Minnesota will give two shits about the football season if there isn't some incentive at the end.