What has college football come to?
by Pdizzle on Nov 12, 2008 2:50 AM CST
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PrintSorry this has really been bothering me lately.
Its a shame that the only way people think college football can be interesting is to have such a fickle system to make fans pumped. They should root die hard for their respective teams to win no matter whats at stake. If it takes the current system to make fans root hard for their teams, then college football is in bad shape. A loss should crush a fan no matter whats at stake. Are we not just as pissed if our basketball team losses a game. I am a Cowboys fan, and when they lose I am pissed. Its your team, act like a fan. With the current BCS system, if a team losses 2 games or more, you see them give up on their teams. Sure the top couple of teams fan still get all nuts, but the rest of the football community goes into a funk. Tell me how that is good for college football. Fans no longer feeling their teams are worth rooting for ... that's good how?
Every announcer has been running their mouths about how a playoff system would ruin the regular season. I don't think it would at all. We see so many teams play crap games at the beginning of the season. If every team played an awesome game in the beginning of the season that would be infinitely times more fun than watching the a season where you knew one loss meant near death for a team.
OK so knowing every weekend counts and could be a potential National Championship Game killer makes those games fun to watch, and makes upsets that much cooler. If you team gets upset you should be pissed no matter what the circumstance, and if someone else team gets upset you laugh at them and talk crap. But think about it, every week would still be an elimination game from the playoff system. If you mess up during the season you could still take yourself out of the playoffs. OK and 8 team playoff system - You take the winner of each BCS conference and 2 at large teams. We would still have to play our asses off to make those playoffs. Making EVERY game a big game still.
It would also make the conference races much more fun to watch, knowing that your team could win and have a chance to pull out a National Championship game. Remember high school football? Were we not crushed when our high school lost a game? The thought of making the playoffs and winning state still stayed in our minds, and made us continue to be die hard for our schools. Those non-district games against good opposition pumped you up so much and were fun to watch. If you lost the game you were crushed and pissed, but you knew your team could still pull through and be the best at the end of the season. Why is that system so bad? Did that make those early games less fun, or the conference game less meaningful? No if anything, it makes everything better.
I know that if we played a Florida or a USC or maybe both to start the season, I would have a hell of a lot of fun watching and going nuts for those games, and still have a hell of a lot of fun and go nuts for conference games. The media tries to completely ignore this fact.
This would also bring back the relevance of Conference Titles. It almost seems like people don't give a crap about these anymore if there is not a National Championship to go with it. Back in the day, a conference championship was what got you into a bowl game. Now you can get into one without being the head honcho in your conference. We could still keep the other bowls and have those for our pleasure, but now winning the conference is that much more significant. Lets make the conference race fun again!
So lets look at this in terms of what it would hurt and what it would help. This is what a playoff system with bowl games still available would do.
Conference Race: Helps, makes them more meaningful.
Pre-Conference Games: Helps, more fun games to watch.
Non-BCS Bowl Games: Push, still fun to watch, doesn't change anything.
Top Bowl Games: Helps because you still have to play your balls of to get there, and you get more awesome Top Bowl games. Some BCS games aren't even interesting because bad teams get there, but with the chance of those teams getting into the National Championship game those games actually become interesting.
National Championship Game: Helps. You finally get the two truly best teams into the title game, and no one can argue.
I hate to say this, but if anyone who disagrees with this has lost the true meaning of being a fan. Rooting for your team no matter whats at stake. The logic against this system is stupid, but unfortunately no one who matters will ever read this post and see all the logic that is in it. It would be a shame if teams as good as Texas/Florida/Alabama/Texas Tech/Oklahoma this year got screwed out of National Championship contention. Ask Auburn how that feels. Tell me, how is that good for the game.
Until then, Hook'em Horns. Keep pounding it out and hope for the best in the current bull crap system in place.
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Its not about your team
Fans will be excited about their team playing no matter what.
The argument for the excitement of the BCS, is that it makes you care about other teams. Because of the BCS, the Florida/USCe and Florida/Florida St games have become huge for me. I’m going to care who wins the SEC, and if Oregon State can win the Pac-10.
Iowa/PSU was an enormously interesting game to watch, as was the horrible offensive display at LSU/Bama.
It matters to me that TCU loses, that Rice wins, that Missouri wins out and that Arkansas plays well. I know and care about Tech’s schedule, OU’s opponents, Florida’s resume, the Pac-10, the Big 10, hell even have a passing interest in whats going on in the Big East and the ACC. I follow polls and computers, discuss and guess about who might jump who, and what impact it will have.
And the fact of the matter is, if right now, today, there was an 8 team playoff. Texas would be in if they win out, no question. And I would still root like hell for my Longhorns, and Id probably still watch the other marquee matchups to get an idea of our possible future opponents, but it would not have near the importance to me, and my team, as it does now in the BCS.
In my opinion, the only thing the BCS fails in, is adequately deciding a champion when there are more than two worthy contenders. Outside of that, I think its silly to ignore what it does to the regular season. College Football right now, and since the inception of the BCS, has the single most compelling regular season of any sport, bar none.
I can understand being pissed that it ends on a note of inadequacy, and Im not saying I wouldnt prefer a playoff. But the BCS is the current system, and currently, the regular season of college football is the most exciting of any sport, that is worth something.
by BoddickerIsClutch on Nov 12, 2008 8:48 AM CST reply actions
Playoffs are trickier than you think
Most fans would want one, obviously, but let’s go over a few things:
1. What does it mean to be #1 or #2 then? Do these teams have byes? Then it cannot be a simple 8 team playoff. Do these teams have homefield? No; there’s no way the current BCS bowls and TV networks will allow the games to be held elsewhere. If #1 is no different than #8, then there will still be quite a bit of controversy, because that is clearly counterintuitive.
2. In basketball’s 65-team tournament, teams left out have a rather small voice; it’s not like the team that just missed that 65th spot had a great chance to win it all. Not so for a small playoff like 8 teams or 6 teams or 4 teams. The #9 team would be causing some noise, although at the least it is less of an issue of the #3 team complaining.
3. Some fans would disagree that a playoff pits the two best teams against one another. If one of the “best” teams has a huge letdown, it might lead to a disappointing championship game. For instance, in 2005, everyone knew that Texas and USC were the two best teams in the country. Had their been a playoff and, say, Reggie Bush got hurt and USC lost in overtime to a team like West Virginia, many people would be quite unhappy that the mathcup between the Trojans and Horns never happened.
4. If there are advantages for being higher ranked as I discussed in #1, then we’re still getting a lot of complaining. A playoff system would most likely not jettison the current BCS ranking system; the BCS would simply be used to select teams for the playoff. So all the whining about the polls and computer rankings will still be there.
Those are just a few that show us that a playoff system wouldn’t bring complete peace to college football.
However, I do agree that the advantages of a playoff system outweigh its potential deficiencies, so I am in favor of a playoff. Nonetheless, as BiC and Bombilla say, the BCS, however imperfect it is, has been a success whether we like it or not. At least it’s loads better than what we had before.
by TheElusiveShadow on Nov 12, 2008 10:53 AM CST reply actions
This again
As I’ve pointed out so many times: for a playoff system to work, between one quarter and one third of the teams in the field have to qualify. That’s the way it is in every other sport. For college football that would mean either 32 or 64 teams, which means either a five or six game playoff. There just no way to schedule that.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. If they get mad, you're a mile away AND you have their shoes.
I think you need to check your figures and scale, Caradoc.
I agree that a meaningful percentage should be included, but that percentage should be closer to 15% or so, basically approximating the top standard deviation for the number of teams.
Basketball has over 340 teams (that may be off this year but it is in the general territory) and 65 represents about 20%, and I consider that a high percentage. However, the scale of the teams (the number of players) is relatively small, so this is manageable. (Historically, the basketball championship evolved over time and wasn’t set up in one fell swoop.)
If you took 16 football teams (11 conference champs + 5 at large bids), that would be around 13% or so and would include most everyone that had a chance to win the non-mythical championship (NMNC), 15 games over four weeks. If you make the first round somewhat regional in nature, that makes the cost a bit more manageable. And it doesn’t have to exclude non-championship bowl structure, either. So, like #66, #17 could bitch but the relative statement that virtually everyone with a chance was included negates most of those complaints. Besides, basketball has the NIT for the next tier.
I would agree some Flex considerations should be in play because seeding will be a serious consideration.
I would agree that perhaps some mid-major conferences could be rounded into a bowl structure of 4-8 teams and teams on the upper edge like Ball State this year could opt in to join the big boys, but normally they would get the seeding in the second bowl tier. This would reduce the number of conference champs at the upper level and allow conferences (like the Big 12 this year) who have a wealth of top teams to be better represented.
And I will say this about the old bowl system: it was hit and miss, but Texas-Navy and the first Texas-ND were simple great set-ups. There’s more examples, of course, but I don’t know if the BCS would have ever created similar results in all cases. Besides, if I remember correctly, there were 26 bowl games last year – that is, most bowl games were not BCS – and 52 teams traveled all over the country. So, arrangements can be made to accommodate the logistics, particularly so in the electronic era.
by whills on Nov 12, 2008 12:22 PM CST up reply actions 1 recs
Thanks. Good post, Pdizzle. Now we're getting down to the real contentious bones of the system.
The deeper we go, the less they have to do with football directly.
I don’t like the 12-game regular season; too many for students and the attrition of players is a serious issue. (It wouldn’t surprise me if parents eventually get involved in this issue.) A real playoff could scale back the regular season and, yet, keep the interest high. And I don’t like the conference championship games; prefer round robin or else scale back the size of conferences.
Last, one of the unspoken advantages of the basketball playoff is the distribution of monies throughout the basketball world. BCS simply allows the rich to get richer; that’s riding the horse the wrong way.
Agreed
College football has a huge affect on how I do in school. Meaning that as long as it is going on I am barely getting by. I have lived true to the old saying, School is really getting in the way of college.
I had a friend in school who was an avid outdoorsman.
He was in engineering and every fall he’d go on sco-pro and every spring he would make the Dean’s List. That was his MO.
For some, school truly does get in the way. He wound up just fine, too.
Indeed
Since the current system really only rewards the top two teams, at this point in the season I can only truly care about a handful of games. If we go with “The Obama Plan” for college football, I could be genuinely interested in games played down through the top 25, as they could still have an impact.
i really believe
that the only sport that crowns a true season champion is world club soccer. the reasons are simple. 1 every team plays each other twice, with no playoffs, and the team with the most points at the end wins 2 the regular season is nine months long, thus allowing teams to streak both hot and cold.
its a simple system, yet it has worked for over a century.
now i love the nfl system and i think it generates what the league is about. does the true best team win every year? not a chance. can you say with a straight face that the NYGiants were actually better than the Patriots last year? or were they the hottest team entering the playoffs?
what about ncaa tourney? i think the best teams typically make it to the final eight, and then after that its a toss up. which is pretty fair.
baseball? 162 games and then you have a 7 game series determine who goes on? not enough. again, you get hot at the right time and a team like the rockies can make it all the way.
i love college football more than anything in the world right now (wheres that teddy bear), and i really enjoy the current system (per BIC’s above comments), and i hope that the next change going to happen anytime soon.
Right
The question is how you define the best team.
The BCS tries to award the team that has the best season. That is, the two best regular season teams meet up after the season is over to decide whose is bestest. I think this is similar to Nascar’s point system? Or the World Cup as described above, where the best team that year wins, with consideration given to the whole season.
Playoffs award the team that is playing the best at the end of the year. Or in the true one and done setup, the team that is playing the best and potentially the most error free. Its really more accurately the playoff champion. Sometimes its the same thing, sometimes not (last years superbowl, Lakers+Gasol).
I think both ways give you a champion, people usually prefer the one that awards the best team at that time though, not the best year.
by BoddickerIsClutch on Nov 12, 2008 2:04 PM CST up reply actions
Ok I understand you BIC
I do think that the regular season is a hell of a lot of fun to watch, but I hate the end. I am interested in darn near every football game, and enjoy watching every single one. Minus Auburn vs Mississippi State.
Here’s a question though, would you still not care about who won their respective conferences if you knew you might have to go against a team in a playoff. I personally think Florida is a very dangerous team, and the idea of playing them makes me want to root against them. You would still pull for USC to lose so they wouldn’t have a shot, and if they don’t win their conference championship, hope they don’t get in. I mean I enjoy rooting for the other teams to go down every season and all the craziness of the BCS, but I wondering if I would still not enjoy all the craziness that would come from trying to get into a playoff. I would still be worried if Tech and OU would be ahead of us, so I would root for TCU to crap out, and Missouri and Arkansas kick butt, or else we are left on the outside looking in. The thing is I am still going to care about who wins other conference a lot, so LSU/Alabama still a very intriguing game.
I understand the its not for your team argument, and I would miss getting blasted after a huge upset of another team that put us in a spot for a NC. I mean that is fun as hell. That is a great point and I have no argument against it. I am just tired of having the system fail at the end of the year. I mean was Florida or LSU really the best teams at the end of the past two years. I mean they were great teams, but to claim them National Champs after winning against the Buckeyes I think is hardly a just thing.
Also your argument states about 5 games that made the season fun to watch, and those 5 games (estimate, probably more) were awesome. They were extreme and had a huge impact on what could happen, but besides those couple games and that handful of teams, how much do you really care about the rest of the 100 or so teams still battling it out. Their season have now become obsolete to us.
Oh and I think they could figure something out to make the playoff work. I know there are a lot of kinks, but everyone else has figured something out, why couldn’t college football.
Oh and Caradoc, could you please explain more, because that 32 and 64 playoff argument you made makes ZERO sense to me.
I am a fan of college football
So Ill watch other games, but I am primarily a fan of Texas football. So like I said, I would still be interested in marquee games, and scouting probably opponents, but no, I would not care who won their respective conference.
This is probably a bit skewed this year, as Texas is in the perfect (worse?) spot BCS-wise, where we find ourselves a couple key games from being in, and just a few percentage points from being jumped on the other end. There are a world of games that will thus affect us, and if it affects us, it has my interest in some level.
If you liken it to basketball, yes seeds matter, somewhat, and yes where other people get seeded matters, somewhat. But what really matters to the fan is making the field. There are a few weeks of seed speculation and bracket comparisons, but did I really care when Memphis lost in the regular season last year? Or how well UNC did? No, not really. Last year was probably more than most as we were pulling hard for the Houston regional, but even then, you couldnt speculate on that sort of thing until well into the season. And I would watch Kansas basketball with interest for our own conference championship hopes, but with no where near the intensity that I sat down last weekend to see OSU blow up against Tech, or even LSU and Bama, and those teams arent even in our conference.
In basketball, which is a whole different animal I know, but you take some losses and its not a big deal. If you are a good team you know you will make the tournament, and you are going to have to play those higher seeds sooner or later. While I still watch every game with interest, its not near the same intensity that the BCS forces on the football regular season. If there were a playoff the most important thing would be making the field, which for us right now means winning out. As it stands, winning out isnt going to be enough on its own, and therefore other games are just as nearly as important to me as our own.
As far as the big games that have already happened to affect us, I would say its more than 5. I was glued to USC/Oregon State when I saw the halftime score, Iowa/PSU, PSU/OSU, USC/OSU (the winner goes to the MNC right!?!?), Bama/LSU, Florida/Georgia, Georgia/Bama, Mizzou/OSU, OSU/Tech, TCU/Utah. Coming up we have SEC championship, big 12 Championship if we arent in it, Florida/USCe, Auburn/Bama (I hope im still watching in the second half), Florida/MSU, OU/Tech, OSU/OU, Mizzou/Kansas all while checking scores to hope that tOSU loses, TCU loses, Mizzou wins, all big 12 south beats Nebraska, KSU and ISU, and any unforeseen upset specials to help us (come on Baylor!).
by BoddickerIsClutch on Nov 12, 2008 1:55 PM CST up reply actions
Right I agree with you on the intesity difference
However, when a team loses in basketball I hardly affects the fans. But say that only 8 teams got into the playoffs, now that lose is a little more intense. I don’t like comparing it to basketball because basketball is what it is and football is a different kind of animal. But like you said we would be playing to make the field … well if we did the playoff system this year we still might not make the field. Therefore the games are still just as interesting. We still root for all the teams that you list above, and still end up biting our nails down to the bone.
As for the Big game, yeah I was way of when wrote 5, but that was all that we were actually discussing. I agree with all the games you listed above, but if the conference Championship made a team eligible to win the NCG, now I am interested in what is going down there. All of the sudden the ACC and Big East matters to me, and USC’s schedule is still bothering me. I would root against USC because I definitely wouldn’t want to see them in the playoffs. I am interested in whether or not Virginia Tech, Florida State, Wake Forrest, North Carolina, Pitt, Cincinnati, and West Virginia are really bad/good teams. Whether or not they could potentially beat us in a playoff? I am all of the sudden interested in which team is going to come out of which conference, so I am now going to root against the best teams in each conference. I could give a crap about the ACC or Big East right now, this would make them relevant to me. So in my opinion it wouldn’t take away from the big game, just add to the number of big games.
LSU and Florida
The system does not fail at the end of the year. The system gives the teams who had the two best seasons a chance to see who had THE best season.LSU and Florida had the best seasons, that’s why they were champions. Beating Ohio State was a great win both years, and I don’t think LSU and Florida get the credit they deserve for those wins because all anyone talks about is how bad Ohio State sucked instead of how good Florida and LSU were.
I don’t see why so many people want to see the hottest team over the last month of the season to be the national champion. You say that you love the regular season, but with a playoff you will devalue the regular season by giving teams a chance who don’t deserve it as much as the top 2. Last year, Georgia was the “it” team at the end of the year. With an 8 team playoff, they would have been a favorite to win it all. How could they be the champion of 119 teams, when over the course of the regular season they couldn’t even prove that they were better than the 5 other teams in their division?
by Sweed4Heisman on Nov 12, 2008 4:04 PM CST up reply actions
LSU Florida
I wasn’t questioning the teams that won the national championship, just the fact that they played Ohio State, who proved it was a flop two years straight. I still would have loved to see them play someone else last year for the national championship. I don’t think Ohio State should’ve been there. With a playoff that questioning if the best two teams made it would be less controversial.
Ok...
…but who else should they have played? Ohio State was Big Ten champs at 11-1, and the next best resume probably belonged to 2 loss Oklahoma. You can’t hold them out because of what the previous year’s team did.
by Sweed4Heisman on Nov 12, 2008 6:54 PM CST up reply actions
georgia
With an 8 team playoff, they would have been a favorite to win it all. How could they be the champion of 119 teams, when over the course of the regular season they couldn’t even prove that they were better than the 5 other teams in their division?
Every other sport does this. Do you claim that the Super Bowl, World Series, and NBA Finals are all illegitimate because they are open to teams that did not win their divisions? That would be absurd. Furthermore, is there any reason to believe that the system currently in place in college football is any more just than these systems? I would argue that it’s actually much less just.
by andy_wooster on Nov 13, 2008 12:42 PM CST up reply actions
agree with one point
that its hard for me to think a national champion could lack a conference title in same year. of course, i hate the two division, conference championship game to start of with. we should all play round robbin.
hook em
I would have liked to see the poll results if this question would have been asked
before the Tech Game.
That's the case, isn't it
It is amusing, but it’s true. Of course people complain more when they no longer control their own destiny. Look at Pete Carroll. How much did we hear from him before and after his 34 game winning streak compared to during?
Still, though, I think most CFB fans, even if their team is riding high, will agree that the system can be improved.
by TheElusiveShadow on Nov 12, 2008 3:56 PM CST up reply actions
we could end up seeing an epic clusterf*ck
Up to seven teams from BCS conferences could enter bowl season with just one loss.
Texas
Texas Tech
Oklahoma
Alabama
Florida
Penn State
USC
It’s not even that far-fetched of a scenario. There is absolutely no way that the BCS advocates can honestly say that the current system could accommodate such chaos. There would be a number of teams with legitimate grievances about not being in the title game. It’s a terribly unjust system.
Actually it easily acommodates any and all chaos. No matter what happens, two teams will be ranked #1 and #2.
I think the only argument for true injustice, is the case of three undefeated teams. But even in that case, the odd one out could have done a better job scheduling their OOC to ensure a championship if they go undefeated.
Everyone knows the system going in, which is why is silly for Pete to cry about it now, and not when it was happening to other teams. They love it when it works to their advantage and hate it when it doesn’t. Well if its so terrible inact change. Else its the same system that everyone plays under, work it to your advantage through scheduling or deal with results and consequences.
by BoddickerIsClutch on Nov 13, 2008 1:17 PM CST up reply actions
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