NCAA playoffs - no room at the inn.

If you have home-field advantage, then the visiting team would get a limited ticket allocation. Not many college presidents would go for that. Plus, the difference in amenities for FBS stadiums is greater than the NFL.

I hope there is at least eight teams, instead of four. If every other division can have four-round or five-round playoffs, the FBS can as well.

 

Well, if money is the object, and of course it's the only object, than we must note that while there are a few college stadiums that are small, there are also a good many that are larger than almost all suitable neutral field sites. There are what, about a half-dozen college stadiums with 100,000 plus seats now? The teams most likely to have home-field advantage consistently in the playoffs all have really large stadiums.
I support neutral sites because there is really no objective and fair way to determine which playoff teams have "earned" home field advantage.

 

Stitch, you're absolutely correct. I can come up with dozens of very practical reasons NOT to.....and they're all valid. Still, I'd love to see it & believe the games themselves would benefit from being at home sites. No way it happens, though.

By the way, by "advantage", I meant less about home crowd, more about having an SEC / PAC 12 team travel to Columbus, South Bend, Ann Arbor (etc) in December.

 

The small-stadium argument is even more ridiculous when you consider that it takes finishing No. 1 or No. 2 to host. The BCS has managed to keep the peasants out of those slots for this long; I see no reason they can't keep it up.

Meanwhile, let's look at what an LSU fan could have experienced last year. They would bw expected to travel to Atlanta for the conference championship, Miami for a semifinal and Phoenix for a championship game, all in a month's time. Even if you have Tom Benson's money and Bobby Hebert's liver, that's an awful lot of strain. And now we have two more teams of (cough) student-athletes taking an uneccessary plane trip and hotel stay at finals.

 

If FCS teams can do it, so can an FBS team.

 

Which FCS teams play at neutral sites before the championship?

 

Just commenting on how FCS teams and die-hard fans have to travel, but it's too much for the poor old SEC football team and its fans to fly and stay in a hotel overnight.

 

Well, that depends on how they're going to pick the four semifinalists, Stitch.

Just pick the top three SEC teams and a team from either Texas or Oklahoma, and you've got home-field games well within traveling distance!

(I'm kidding, kind of ... this past season, that probably would have been the semifinals)

 

I'm for a playoff. My only point is that neutral sites before the final could backfire and produce stadiums that are a third empty. That and I like making fun of NCAA hypocrisy every chance I get.

 

I am not opposed to playing the semifinals at neutral sites, but what really pisses me off are the lameass excuses they try to use for why home sites won't work. They work just fine for the FCS and NFL and they could work for the FBS as well. The BCS bowls are the stumbling block in this scenario and have been for a while.

Of course they are not going to use home sites because then it is playoff and by God they do not want a playoff or postseason tournament. They also need to appease the Orange, Sugar, Fiesta and especially Rose Bowls (which still wants a separate deal). This is a "four-team event" don't cha know. Not, I repeat, not a playoff or tournament of any kind. The NCAA is still not running this. It is essentially using a third party to bid out its "four-team event."

This is the happy medium to have the BCS bowls remain relevant by hosting national semifinals and perhaps the championship. If you have home campus sites for the semis, you essentially kick to the curb two of your BCS bowls.

I am also guessing for promotion, TV, merchandising, etc., you don't want to have to scramble trying to figure out where your semis are going to be with only a few weeks notice.

Joe Fan, the person sitting at home to watch the semis could care less if they are played in South Bend, Eugene or as usual Miami. He just wants to see two semifinals that otherwise would never happen. But to the BCS folks with the millions of dollars at stake, satisfying the "logistics" of their bowl brethren and TV rights holders is paramount.

 

By the way, before every promo for the "four-team event" you run the Jim Mora Playoffs? Playoffs? clip just so everyone knows this is not a playoff. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

Any school president that argues for keeping the bowl cartels involved in this show deserves to see his or her business school lose accreditation. There is no rational argument for keeping the middlemen involved, short of widespread bribery.