First the BCS screws Texas Christian...now it's costing me readers

Yeah. Piece of cake.

 

Ace, follow the money. Last year the Mountain West got $9 million in bowl money for TCU making the Fiesta Bowl against Boise. In the same year, the MWC, which is no slouch in basketball, split $4.5 million in NCAA tournament money.

That's not money to scoff at. As long as there is a chance to access that kind of money, you won't get the clamor for the playoffs. If they did not have that kind of access to bowl money, they would not only be complaining, there would be a movement akin to the Tea Party.

Now, I'll agree that if there was a playoff, I'd bet EVERYBODY except the bowl people would make more money. To the lay fan, there was only one significant post-season football game and that was the BCS title game. Everything else was a glorified exhibition. In a playoff, every game is significant, which I think would lead to more viewership and more TV money. It would be March Madness on steroids.

 

A football playoff would be huge...I know it's all that's holding me back from making Saturday's my day of TV watching.

I love the matchups that college football can offer, while the NFL has become a vanilla copycat league. But with college I just can't follow a full season only to have a fraud of a champion at the end.

 

Right.

The haves (big conferences, football powers, bowl executives making $200,000 or more a year) don't want to share with the have nots.

That's why it's not gonna happen.

 

Ole Miss would love to forget going up to Wyoming a few years ago and getting beaten.

 

Well, I'd argue that if they went to a playoff, the haves and have-nots would make more money. It's more a matter of a sure thing vs. something new and relatively unproven. The Mountain West got a $9 million dollar pay day last year and probably got a bigger pay day this year because of the Rose Bowl (I haven't seen the figures). There's certainly reluctance to leave a system behind that can produce that kind of pay day without having to go through any kind of post-season process to access it.

Let me put it like this. The Horizon League made a ton of money of Butler's run to the championship game. What was more difficult, what TCU did or what Butler did? I'd say what Butler did because not only did they have to have a special regular season, probably similar in accomplishment to what TCU achieved in its football regular season, but it also had to win five post-season games to get to the title game. All TCU had to do is go unbeaten in the regular season. Now, that's far from easy, but if San Diego State hoops goes 30-0, they'd still have to win four NCAA tournament games to access money even close to what football got.

So for a have-not, Id argue the the BCS system gives it easier access to big money than a playoff. Obviously, they have very little access to a national title, but the money is there for at least one mid-major conference every year. Hell, I'm sure the Sun Belt has visions of Troy running the table, upsetting an Alabama in the regular season, then bussing over to New Orleans not for the New Orleans Bowl, but as "this year's Boise State" playing in the Sugar Bowl. Heck, I've had that expressed to me before, along with what that would mean financially in the conference. "All we've got to do is start winning some of these (guarantee) games," they say. Yeah, good luck with that.

 

The have-nots do not have the power to make this happen. The BCS schools would threaten to break off and go their own way.

 

Congrats to Wyoming for that win a few years ago. And a few years ago Louisiana-Monroe beat Alabama. If ULM and Wyoming were in the SEC this year, they'd still be the two worst teams in the league. Wyoming was just awful this year. I think the bottom four teams in the MWC had a combined three non-conference wins, one against a I-AA, one against Idaho and the other against Toledo. That means half of the MWC is just gawd-awful.

 

I don't think that's nearly as much of a threat as some make it out to be. If the FBS wanted a playoff, I think there would be wider GENERAL agreement for it, not just from the BCS or non-BCS schools. The bottom line is the bottom line: How guaranteed can money from the NCAA playoff be? Can the SEC make as much money as it does in the current bowl system? Can the MWC have as much of a shot at a big payday as it has now? I think the answer to both questions, in their mind, is "We aren't sure, so we better not mess with the sure thing."

 

I hate the BCS. I'd rather have the old bowl system.

 

The 9 million TCU got wasn't just split between the members of the MWC. It was split between all non BCS teams. Is that fair? Nope. Same holds true for TCU's Rose Bowl payday.

 

From my understanding, the $9.8 million is the share the MWC got after the money was split between the non-BCS conferences. The "coalition" got $9.75 million off the bat, then $9.75 million more for having a team make a BCS bowl, then something like $4.75 million more for a second team (Boise State) getting in. It added up to $24 million split between the non-BCS leagues.

It's hard to say exactly how much the MWC got for having TCU in a BCS bowl because it's kind of hard to figure the difference in how the money was split versus the way it would have been split if the MWC failed to get a team into the bowl and the pot was smaller. But it appears that the MWC's share was roughly inline with what the Fiesta paid out to TCU.

Here's the Sports Business Journal's story on the 2010 bowl payouts. It's also notable that they were tweaked again this year:
http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/64647

I haven't seen 2011 figures. The non-automatic qualifier share should have gone down because there was only one non-BCS conference team, TCU (or am I forgetting one?). The Boise loss to Nevada was quite costly to the WAC and the rest of the non-BCS conferences.