NCAA playoffs - no room at the inn.

It could be interpreted that way I suppose, but it is still an idiotic statement to make because Eugene is larger than Ann Arbor and Tuscaloosa and Lincoln. State College, Pa. has one of the top five stadiums by capacity but is is smaller than all of those cities and it seems make do on home Saturdays.

Again, I think the logistics for a home national semifinal would work out better than having say the Pac-12 champ fly to New Orleans for a semifinal and then fly a week or so later to say Indy.

The national championship game you bid out four, five years in advance just like the Super Bowl and NCAA finals.

For the national semifinals, why not reward two teams and let them host it.

 

I'm all for the playoffs, but there's no reason not to have them on neutral sites. Remember, you're using a subjective system to determine the rankings. The outrage over Alabama being No. 2 ahead of Oklahoma State would have been obnoxious when we all know Alabama would have dismantled Oklahoma State on any field.

Put it on a neutral site and let things work themselves out. Rotate the title game and two semifinals between the current sites of the Rose, Sugar and Orange bowls. Lock it in that neither team can have home-state advantage for the semifinals unless it's unavoidable (i.e. Florida and Florida State both finish the regular season in the top four during a year that the Orange Bowl is slotted for a semifinal).

The Fiesta Bowl has been relevant for, what, 20 years? I have no problem kicking that one to the curb, particularly after the rampant corruption surrounding the bowl committee.

 

Play the semis before Christmas - play the final after New Years. I like the home field advantage though, it keeps every team in play and playing hard until the end.

 

Surely at some point a few weeks before the games, you'd have an idea of maybe 6-8 schools that are likely to be in a position to host a game. I would imagine that in most of the cities we're talking about, there's not much else going on during the weeks in question.

So you (the NCAA) pay the hotels a fee roughly equivalent to their normal takings to block out the weekend in question, and if you don't need it, you release the rooms back and they keep the fee. If their school makes it, then you release the rooms for sale via the visiting school.

It requires some outlay, but it would represent a fraction -- and a very small one at that -- of the TV revenue that would be generated.

 

They can easily do that deskslave. It is still the bowl folks they feel they have to satisfy.

Hell, you could play these games in Bismarck, North Dakota, and have 3,000 people in the stands and the TV money alone will be amazing, especially the first few years.

Guessing the first year of semifinals might even outdraw the first round of the NFL playoffs on millions of TV sets.

 

Especially given Jones' knuckledragging clown show's established record about integrity in ticketing . . . that would be a treat.

 

Besides the lack of hotel rooms in some BCS conference campus towns, do we really want a national semifinal game played in, say, a late-December snowstorm in South Bend?

I think neutral sites -- possibly at existing bowl games -- are the way to go.

 

Yes.

 

This times 1,000.

 

Just use the Super Bowl sites.

 

While I'm certainly grossly outnumbered, & see all the pragmatic reasons NOT too......yeah, I would. For the same reasons I love to see NFL playoff games in Green Bay, or New England, or (fill in the northern city blank). If a northern team has earned their 1 or 2 seed, why not give them that advantage? I love the game, played in it's "natural state."

I'd also love to see the semis in an on-campus environment. I've been to a number of bowls & conference championships & loved 90% of the experiences. Still, it's never matched the "feel" of a big game, in a home stadium.

It's not gonna happen....but I'd love to see it.

 

There's no shortage of neutral sites that would fall over themselves to get any of these games.