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UGA prez: Bowls are "screwy", let's have a playoff

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by novelist_wannabe, Jan 8, 2008.

  1. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    If there's an 8-team playoff this year (6 BCS conference champs, 2 at-large), Georgia doesn't even make the field since it finished third in the SEC. Hello, Citrus Bowl, or whatever they call it now.

    If there's a 16-team playoff (11 I-A conference champs, 5 at-large), Georgia's just barely makes the field and most likely has to play a road game in the first round.

    For a two-loss team that didn't even win its SEC division, I'd say Georgia did quite well under the BCS format this year.
     
  2. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Yeah, well second place is just the first looser.
     
  3. HoopsMcCann

    HoopsMcCann Active Member

    jesus christ, i can't believe i'm about to say this... ugh.. i really, really don't want to defend el presidente (good god, would he get a little delight to hear me defending him, the fuckbag) but why do you say he's trying to get georgia in this year? good god, he says the future, and he says the same thing everyone else is yelling for

    and, well, if there are two at-large bids, based on say a current bcs formula, i'm guessing they do make it. but that's a different conversation
     
  4. Twoback

    Twoback Active Member

    What if the other BCS leagues got with the NCAA and said, "We're doing it without them"? You think OSU fans and Michigan fans and SC fans are going to be cool with that just so they can keep going to the Rose Bowl?
    To get a playoff through the governing structure, you'd need the votes of most of the Division I leagues. But not all. If you have four of the six bcs conferences, plust support from the fringe leagues, you could get it done. I'm not saying that's likely to ever happen, but I don't think Big Ten/Pac-10 intransigence is the only culprit.
     
  5. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    Just saying, for all the bitching this guy does about the BCS, it sure worked out OK for Georgia this year.

    Just using Georgia here as an example, but you could take virtually every team and the same holds true:

    With playoffs, the bowls disappear (anyone who believes the Peach/Sun/Cotton, etc. bowl committees are going to work all year to stage an NCAA playoff game, you're crazy. The only way I-A playoffs work is with on-campus games until the championship, just like in I-AA, II and III).

    So Georgia would have automatically qualified for TWO playoff fields in the past 25 seasons (SEC champs in 2002 and 2005). It might have earned one or two other at-large berths, in a 16-team field with 11 automatic qualifiers and five at-large selections, over that span.

    So that's three, maybe four, postseasons since 1982, as opposed to how many bowl appearances? Which system has been best for Georgia football?

    For 80 percent of Division I-A programs the bowl system, in which they get to participate at regularly, is far more attractive than a playoff, which 80-90 percent of the teams will seldom, if ever, qualify for, even under a 16-team format.

    The team in Microville has regularly played in bowls, but would have made one 16-team playoff field in the last 40 years. I can tell you which way that president will vote, should it ever get that far.
     
  6. Captain_Kirk

    Captain_Kirk Well-Known Member

    With the Big Ten being one of the major roadblocks, Adams' timing on this is pretty impeccable following Illinois getting the doors blown off and Ohio State losing in the title game to an SEC team two years running.

    Amd micro--a playoff system doesn't mean the end of the bowls. You can still have your 6-6 Okla State against a 6-6 Purdue team in El Paso. Or Shreveport. Those teams can still play the minor bowls.

    Incorporate the big boy bowls into a playoff--either as the quarters or the semis, and then fill in the additional games, could be at one of those locations, perhaps the site of the Super Bowl the week prior, etc.
     
  7. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    Sorry, those games go away. Under the bowl systemn, there's enough local corporate/sponsorship interest and TV money to sustain them. With a playoff, there's not.

    The idea of using the current bowls as playoff sites is the biggest falacy in the whole equation. The bowls don't want to have anything to do with the NCAA whatsover.

    If you think the Rose Bowl committee is going to be satisfied to work all year to hold an NCAA semifinal game, you're crazy. Because at that point it's no longer the Rose Bowl (or Sugar, or Orange, etc.) anymore. It's not anything special to the people of Los Angeles (or Miami, New Orleans, etc.).

    It's just an NCAA playoff game, when the team shows up on Thursday or Friday, practices a couple times, and then plays.

    I know some people on the Fiesta Bowl committee, some paid, some volunteer. They work because it's their deal, their game, something they take pride in and are invested in, because it benefits the greater Phoenix area. The minute you tell them, "This year what used to be the Fiesta Bowl is a quarterfinal game," they close up shop.
     
  8. Hammer Pants

    Hammer Pants Active Member

    I was just driving back from lunch and heard Mike Tirico make a great point. The most pissed off person in the world last night could have been Tommy Tuberville, whose undefeated 2004 Auburn team didn't get to play for the national championship. Florida and LSU had to get some breaks the past two years and still couldn't avoid at least one SEC juggernaut ... and Auburn did and got nothing for it.
     
  9. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    The bowls will never go away.
    The best anyone can hope for is a plus-one game after all the other games are over.
    The different cities have too much invested in the bowl system to let them become playoff games, as previously noted. Two of the big four conferences are dead set against the playoff system. From what I recall, Notre Dame doesn't think much of a playoff either.
    The comparison to the smaller division playoffs and D-I are false. A D-I playoff would be incredibly time-consuming for the players, the coaches. Just the media demands alone would take an a gigantic amount of time.
    Plus, the current system gets 64 teams in the post-season, that's an awful lot of smaller schools with a big incentive to say no to the playoffs
     
  10. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    Exactly. You can't have it both ways. Cut the regular season and the playoffs have a shot. 12 games and three more for playoffs? NFW. Finish third in your division (or in the case of those that don't, conference), tough shit, yer staying home.
     
  11. Yawn

    Yawn New Member

    Exactly. And someone will throw a lollipop at the Georgia guy and he'll shut up before the 2008 kickoff.
     
  12. MU_was_not_so_hard

    MU_was_not_so_hard Active Member

    You're dead on.
    It's not just the money that is brought in through TV contracts. It's the week-long events where people show up in advance, drop a ton of money on hotels, restaurants, stores, etc. No way in hell does Joe Georgia Fan do that for the Quarters, Semis and Finals of an NCAA tournament.
    I could see the minor bowls getting much of the same, but the playoff would take serious cash out of some of those economies (and yes, I realize they're all in big cities anyway).

    Just the same, regardless of Adams' reasons for choosing now to bitch, I can't say I disagree with him. Get rid of one of the worthless non-conference games and the title games and make it happen.
     
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