+191
A century of bowls and polls gives way to a bracket, but which bracket?
SI.com: It's about time, but celebrate change.
The Big Ten has already given up on its call for top playoff semifinalists to host games at their home stadiums, instead preferring to outsource the whole deal to the Rose Bowl. But at least, for Midwesterners, the title game could end up in Chicago or Indianapolis or Detroit or ...
"The one thing that kind of gets left out of this discussion that maybe ought to get some weight are the kids," he said Friday during WTKA's Mott Takeover. "Now, I know a lot of people don't really care about that part, but I do, and if you polled our players and said, 'If you played a really tough, successful, long regular season, the award you're going to get is to travel to Ford Field or Lucas Oil Stadium,' they would look at you and say, 'Huh?'
"They love going to warm weather. They love going to some of these locations they, in some cases, have never visited."
That's Michigan Wolverines AD Dave Brandon, commenting on how much better it is down South. He's talking about semifinal locations, of course, but it's hard to think how the same criticism wouldn't apply to the neutral-site championship game as well. It's believed the title game's location will be bid out every year.
I'd kind of think the award for playing a really tough, successful, long regular season that ends with a playoff bid is playing in the playoffs, but I'm not infatuated with the Rose Bowl, so what do I know.
Buckle up, y'all:
Jack Swarbrick & Jim Delany both told me they believe final decision on playoff format decided on June 20 in Chicago
— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyCBS) May 23, 2012
Like, spend almost a month buckling up. That's how many buckles we need.
Next up on the list of conferences weighing in on the key issues still surrounding college football's coming playoff system: the Big East. While they're definitively no longer a power conference, they do retain BCS status for two more years and include a few schools (Boise State, Louisville, South Florida) that have had their shots at the top over the past decade.
Big East football coaches want preference for conference champs in playoff, want standings-based selection (not committee).
— Andy Staples (@Andy_Staples) May 21, 2012
By wanting to go with standings instead of a committee, the Big East is at odds with certain major Big Ten and Big 12 representatives. However, preferring conference champions puts the Big East in league with the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC and at odds with the SEC.
If a champs-only playoff had been in place for the entire BCS era, No. 6 Louisville would've made it in in 2006.
The Big Ten and Pac-12 aren't the only major football conferences with official buddies now. The SEC and Big 12 have linked arms -- setting up a "new January bowl tradition," as Mike Slive calls it -- pairing their conference champions or runners-up beginning in 2014.
While SEC and Big 12 champs missing the playoffs would be a very, very rare event, the importance here is that the two have effectively created another Rose Bowl, and one that would quite often trump the Granddaddy, at least in terms of highly-ranked football teams. It also creates a very clearly defined upper tier in college football, with everyone from the ACC on down all but walled off from the highest level.
The joint release from the new best buds (how awkward will group dates be with Mizzou and Texas A&M in the SEC?):
The Big 12 and Southeastern Conferences have announced a five-year agreement for their football champions to meet in a postseason bowl game following the 2014 season.
The champions of the two conferences will be in the matchup unless one or both are selected to play in the new four-team model to determine the national championship. Should that occur, another deserving team from the conference(s) would be selected for the game.
"A new January bowl tradition is born," said SEC Commissioner Mike Slive. "This new game will provide a great matchup between the two most successful conferences in the BCS era and will complement the exciting postseason atmosphere created by the new four-team model. Most importantly, it will provide our student-athletes, coaches and fans with an outstanding bowl experience."
"Our goal is to provide the fans across the country with a New Year's Day prime-time tradition," commented acting Big 12 Conference Commissioner Chuck Neinas. "This is a landmark agreement between two of the most successful football conferences during the BCS era to stage a postseason event. The creation of this game featuring the champions of the Big 12 and SEC will have tremendous resonance in college football."
"I am very excited by the prospects for a game between our champion and the champion of the Southeastern Conference," added incoming Big 12 Conference Commissioner Bob Bowlsby.
During the 14-year history of the Bowl Championship Series, the Big 12 and SEC lead the nation with 11 seasons in which each conference has had at least one team ranked in the top four of the final BCS standings. Both conferences share the top spot all-time with 14 teams each that have finished in the top four of the final BCS standings. The two conferences have combined for 16 appearances in the BCS National Championship Game, with the Big 12 ranking second behind the SEC's nine appearances with seven trips to the National Championship Game.
The two league champions have met twice in BCS bowl games since 1998, both in BCS National Championship Games. In 2010, Alabama defeated Texas, 37-21, in Pasadena, Calif., and in 2009, Florida defeated Oklahoma, 24-14, in Miami, Fla.
Specific details, including host site(s), will be announced at a later date.
The SEC and Big 12 have a new partnership that will send their champions to the same bowl if those teams don't make the four-team playoff field, the leagues have announced. Which bowl isn't certain yet -- likely either the Sugar or the Cotton, and boy, won't it be fun watching those two fight over this.
So, basically, we're getting another Rose Bowl. The SEC and Big 12, like the Big Ten and Pac-12, now have a guaranteed blockbuster game to fall back on, playoffs or not. And since the SEC is the conference most in favor of sending the top four teams to the playoffs, no matter their conference status, this pact could mean the Big 12 agrees.
The Rose Bowl is the most important thing in the world, apparently. The Big Ten has sacrificed its own potential playoff advantage just to make the Rose Bowl remain as important as possible, with the Pac-12 going along. Now the SEC and the Big 12 are cooking up something that would be just as big as the Rose, if not blessed with quite the history:
Champions of SEC & Big 12 will meet in a bowl if neither team in natl semis, sources told @CBSSports & @MrCFB
— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyCBS) May 18, 2012
I'm told the meeting between the SEC and Big 12 champions would probably take place at Dallas Cowboys Stadium.
— kbohls (@kbohls) May 18, 2012
That could be a deal that would add the Big 12 champ into what could amount to a version of a travelin' Sugar Bowl, though the Sugar itself is expected to be part of the playoff format. Or just a Cotton Bowl with a little more on the line. This could be a move to get the Cotton into the "six-bowl event" Stewart Mandel reported.
(Of course, the important thing to note is that both the SEC and Big 12 champs missing the playoffs would almost never happen. The Big Ten is having a hard enough time keeping the SEC runner-up out of the tournament.)
Tony Barnhart reports the SEC will make the announcement in about an hour.
At this point, I have no idea whether the Big Ten likes cold weather or not. If it asked all its schools to relocate to the equator, I'd be less surprised right now than at any other point in history. Try to square these two thoughts:
Now that we all but know college football's playoff games will be played at existing bowl sites, to much rejoicing by ... people who work at bowl games, the two major issues remaining are how to choose which teams get in and who does the choosing. With the ACC, Pac-12 and Big Ten in support of conference champs only, we could call that plan the favorite there, while whether to use a rankings system or a selection committee may be the most unsettled.
The Big Ten ADs are talking it over, finding as much to fret about as reasons for or against anything, while Texas' DeLoss Dodds is pro-committee, as is Wisconsin's Barry Alvarez. Commenters, however, might not be the biggest fans.
SI.com's Andy Staples makes the case for a committee:
The committee would eliminate several of the major problems posed by the polls and computer rankings. First, the committee wouldn't begin deliberation until the entire body of work was submitted. This would keep preseason poll bias from creeping into the selection process. It doesn't matter what I or anyone else thought Alabama would do in August. All that matters is what the Crimson Tide did from September through the first weekend in December. Second, committee members would be intelligent enough to avoid the trap of, as Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott calls it, tracking one loss.
With a playoff on the way, things are about to change for the bowls. There will probably be fewer of them, which raises the (sometimes) tough question of which ones must go. Big Ten ADs want to require seven wins for eligibility, up from six. Fewer bowl teams equals fewer bowls, unless Arkansas State's offense gets speedy enough to play in like three or four.
The last time we looked at this, we used TV ratings and attendance to find the BBVA Compass, Beef O'Brady's and Military among the bowls that would evidently be least missed. Now here's a look at which bowls have been most likely to feature six-loss teams over the last six years, according to CollegeFootballPoll.com's records:
College football's playoff system will not involve games played on home sites, Michigan St. Spartans athletic director Mark Hollis says. Letting teams have home-field advantage doesn't square with the Big Ten's mission to ensure the Rose Bowl remains as big a part of the postseason as possible, though decision-makers also previously cited concerns about whether college stadiums could handle college football games.
Hollis says the hope for home sites in the playoff has been eliminated. Preserving value of Rose Bowl, he said, "is critical."
— Joe Rexrode (@joerexrode) May 15, 2012
Ironically, this also surely pleases the SEC, which now no longer has to worry about playing tournament games up north. Though that wouldn't happen all that often based on previous years, plenty of Big Ten fans have wanted to see whether Southern teams can handle the road trip for a change. If semifinals games are going to end up tying into current BCS bowls, Southern teams will continue to enjoy the relative home edge.
The playoffs get lamer and lamer by the day, don't they?
So far, the Big Ten and Pac-12 are united in favoring conference champions only in college football's eventual playoff system. The SEC opposes, as it should, while others have yet to publicly state their cases. And here we might have the first instance of the SEC and ACC disagreeing on a playoff issue:
Second interesting thing from Fisher: ACC coaches want conference champs in the playoff.
— Andy Staples (@Andy_Staples) May 14, 2012
The SEC and ACC were the first two conferences to propose a playoff in the first place.
This stance would obviously make sense for the ACC, as anything that would make it possible for teams ranked lower than the top four to make the playoffs would benefit the league. A champs-only format would've benefitted the ACC in 2003, when No. 7 Florida State would've made the cut at the expense of No. 1 Oklahoma (how smart is that?).
As far as I can tell, that's the only change that would happen in the ACC's favor. If Jim Delany's top-six plan were instituted, there would be no change over the last decade.
While the top level of college football is combing over every detail of 2014's four-team playoff plan, FCS football is already building its way to 24 teams. "Slow pokes," FCS football must feel like saying. "You are so slow."
The world's premier college football tournament is set to expand from 20 teams soon, making way for an automatic entrant from every conference that wants in. With some worried that the FBS tourney will rapidly expand beyond four teams, here's a look at what a 24-team field would've looked like last year.
(On the FCS side, the change would've meant the automatic entry of Pioneer League champ San Diego, plus three teams that missed the bubble -- perhaps Central Arkansas, Liberty, Delaware, Illinois State or Bethune-Cookman.)
The FBS bracket (made at the neato Challonge.com), along with a poll at the bottom:
"To say we're interested in being a part of the conversation would be an understatement," said Rob Higgins, executive director of the Tampa Bay Sports Commission. "We'll continue to monitor the discussion and we'll be ready to present our case if given the opportunity to do so."
Tampa is among several sites that have expressed interest in hosting college football's national championship. Indianapolis' Lucas Oil Stadium, Detroit's Ford Field and St. Louis' Edward Jones Dome also would pursue the game, ESPN.com reported.
College football's getting a playoff, and conference commissioners are currently hearing from their member schools on what sort of playoff each league would prefer. BCS executive director Bill Hancock, having stepped down from his role as the sport's Wizard of Oz, now seems free to talk about actual discussions had by actual people, rather than hammering home an unpopular party line.
While on with WFNZ in Charlotte, Hancock talked about a couple of the biggest issues, listing the conference champions thing as perhaps the most disputed so far. He also downplayed the chances of an eventual eight-team playoff, but that sort of already feels hard to avoid. Via Sports Radio Interviews:
On the time frame for finalizing a playoff format:
"Well it's always good and helpful to talk about the time frame, and first of all there's still two more years to go on the current agreement. But the rest of the time frame is: during the next couple of months the conferences will be talking about the future and I hope by early summer we will be able to announce a change in the BCS."
On what the format might look like:
"It's a very interesting question. And when the commissioners elected to present this four-team playoff concept to the conferences, they intentionally didn't resolve that as well as where to play the games and how the teams are selected. And I'll be curious at the end of this to see what your listeners are thinking about it. But generally, there's up sides and down sides to everything. Obviously if you have 1, 2, 3 and 4, you've got a pure bracket: 1 versus 4 and 2 versus 3. But if you take the conference champions - the top four ranked conference champions - then the regular season, which is the best in sports anyway, may mean even more. But then you would have a question about, ‘Well, what about No. 2 Alabama?' This year, if it had been the conference champions, it would've been teams ranked 1, 3, 5 and 10. And is that what the public wants to see? I really don't know. From what I've heard, folks are about divided 50/50 on it."
On schools potentially having the ability to play home games in the playoff:
"There's still a long way to go in our conversations, so we're not to the end of the game yet and that certainly is one of the things that is still on the table. I was director of the Final Four before I went to work in football and we experienced it in basketball back in the eighties. Which was too much of a home-court advantage in basketball, and so we went away from it in basketball. And I don't know what the response will be in football after awhile. Will people decide that the 1 and 2 teams have earned too much of an advantage? I dunno. And another thing is the infrastructure on campuses may leave something to be desired. And would you have the celebratory pageantry of a postseason event on campus? That's an unknown. But of course one of the advantages to campus play is you're assured of a huge crowd of enthusiastic fans. And another one is, if you're dealing with semifinals and a championship, then if the home team wins of course then their fans have not had to travel across the country two different weeks, a week apart, to go to these games."
On who is involved in this decision and where they're leaning:
"There's 11 conference commissioners and the Notre Dame AD. That's basically the board that runs the BCS. And I wouldn't hazard a guess as to where they are on this. They haven't come to a final conclusion. But they're split. It's safe to say that - they're split. ... The commissioners will collaboratively come to some agreement about what the format should be. There won't be a vote - they will just sit and talk it through until they come up with something that everybody can live with."
On the likelihood that this is a stepping stone to an eight-team postseason:
"I don't think it's likely. I don't wanna speak for the next 30 years, but I don't think it's likely."
You may find yourself reading Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany's term "that team" a certain way, Alabama fans:
"I don't have a lot of regard for that team,'' Delany told The Associated Press. "I certainly wouldn't have as much regard for that team as I would for someone who played nine conference games in a tough conference and played a couple out-of-conference games on the road against really good opponents. If a poll doesn't honor those teams and they're conference champions, I do.''
Update! Nick Saban responds all "Hell no!"-ishly to the conference champions-only proposal while on with CBS Sports' Tim Brando:
After 14 years of the BCS, most college football types have had about enough of computers. They weren't used properly from the start, so they had to be outweighed by humans at some point along the way to keep fans from destroying their waffle makers in a fit of anti-technological rage.
Should college football's playoff thus use a selection committee to pick its four (for now) entrants, which would seem to render moot concerns over whether conference champs or top-four teams make it in? Wisconsin Badgers athletic director Barry Alvarez has come out in support of a committee:
"I like a committee and I like a committee that might be diverse enough that maybe you have some national sportswriters in it," he said recently.
"(Herbstreit) is neutral, is on top of it, talks to coaches around the country," Alvarez said. "And every week you come out with your rankings and possibly explain the process."
However, Gainesville Sun columnist Pat Dooley reports "a bowl official" says the selection committee "won't happen."
Committees work in basketball, but the biggest controversy there is whether to choose the, like, 30th or 31st best team in the country. It might be harder to sell a committee tasked with telling, say, either a Big Ten or SEC fan base that its conference champion isn't good enough. Easier to let some machines do it.
What do you think?
BCS frontman (I mean that in the rock band sense) Bill Hancock was on the Dan Patrick Show early Friday, dispensing a few morsels on the state of college football's looming playoff system. He went over the timeline and clarified when the new tournament's games could happen.
"It's down to a four-team playoff with some options," Hancock told the show. "They are working on where to play, how to qualify and the dates. For example, will the games be at neutral sites or a team's stadium? How much time will teams have between semifinals and finals? They're looking at between Christmas and early January to have this happen."
College football people want to get back to making New Year's a college football day. Its title game has gotten lost as it has drifted further and further into NFL-land. Starting up playoff action around Christmas could be amazing, as that's when we're usually just watching the Hawai'i Bowl and what have you. I don't know how that would square with the "six-bowl event" plan, which would tie four BCS bowls in with the two playoff games, since the Rose and others are going to insist on still being played in their usual dates.
Hooray, college football playoffs! College football's getting a playoff! The commissioners said they're gonna figure out which four-team deal we're getting, and all that's left to do is bang out some details, and the biggest controversies for now will be whether to play the things on campus sites and whether to let only conference champs play, and WAIT WHAT:
"It is clear the presidents will still make the final decision," Nebraska president Harvey Perlman told ESPN.com "We've had some informal meetings, the Big Ten presidents and the Pac-12 presidents, and I think we're largely aligned in thinking a plus-one with a different ranking after the bowl games to select No. 1 and 2 would be acceptable. Our second choice would probably be a four-team playoff inside the bowls. Our highest priority is to preserve the status of the Rose Bowl and our connection to it."
That's odd, because Pac-12 presidents are publicly pro-playoff:
Leaders of the Pac-12 Conference agreed in principle Saturday to try to end college football's Bowl Championship Series, proposing its replacement with a playoff system that would allow only conference winners to play for college football's national title.
[...]
[Arizona State president Michael] Crow had gone into the meeting pushing for an eight-team playoff that would leave the best teams out of the Fiesta Bowl and other BCS games. But [Oregon State president Edward] Ray said it would be easier to have a four-team playoff in the near future, though the Oregon State president didn't rule out a larger playoff pool down the line.
Guys, I really like the Rose Bowl. But I'm really, really starting to kind of hate it a little bit. It's a great game. The greatest game. But if we have to hear one more time about it unsettling our chances of getting a playoff, my head is going to fall off.
Nebraska blog Corn Nation seems to think this is no big deal, with the anti-playoff Perlman having a record of similar statements. However, let's try to come to an accord here.
There are three issues to figure out regarding a college football playoff: where to play games, how to decide who plays in games, and whether to limit entry to conference champions or not. There's reportedly a favored response to the first concern, while either a reconstructed BCS system or selection committee will choose the four teams.
But what about the conference champions issue? One idea, which many fans have proposed already:
Per Jim Delany: 1 potential way to get 4 teams in playoff: conference champs must finish in top 6. If not, highest-ranked at-large fills in
— Matt Hayes (@Matt_HayesSN) May 2, 2012
That would solve the problem we would've run into in a year like 2011, when the four-team playoff would've had to reach all the way down to No. 10 to find a fourth conference champion. Passing over six teams is inexcusable for obvious reasons.
It still seems kind of silly for a team ranked No. 2 to have to root for team No. 6 to lose, since what does team No. 6 have to do with team No. 2 anyway? But it's a better idea than going by the top four conference champs with no stipulations.
College football will have a playoff beginning in 2014, but the bowl game system will survive in some form. Four to six bowls could even be directly included in the playoff bracket somehow. As for the survivability of other bowls, all we really need to know is that they're trying to start up a new SEC bowl in St. Louis:
"Can Manhattan (KS) take care of 1200 media?" -- Bill Hancock. Bill, the Superdome press box didn't have a ladies' room for the title game.
— Holly Anderson (@SIHolly) May 1, 2012
Among the issues raised by Bill Hancock, BCS figurehead, about playing college football playoff games on campus sites: what to do with all the media members in the event of a semifinal game being played in a smaller town? We've already dispatched worries about little stadiums hosting playoff games, so let's keep going. Let's just say the college football media isn't buying Hancock's concern.
First on the agenda for the BCS as conference commissioners decide what to do about this four-team playoff they're now stuck with delivering: figuring out where to play the games. SI.com's Stewart Mandel reports that while the model that would tie each current BCS bowl to a certain conference (a "six-bowl event" featuring two upgraded bowls, likely including the Cotton) is the favorite, campus games shouldn't be ruled out just yet.
The bowl plan would associate each BCS conference with a bowl, which would provide some really vague semblance of home field advantage to the higher seed. Mandel notes he actually proposed the plan three years ago. However, about 40 percent of commissioners are still into the idea of holding semifinal games at the regular home venues of higher-seeded teams, Mandel reports.
As for what the bowl plan would've looked like over the last 14 years of the BCS, Pacific Takes has the complete breakdown. A sample:
Top four team format
#1 LSU vs. #4 Stanford (Sugar)
#2 Alabama vs. #3 Oklahoma State (Fiesta) (since Oklahoma State won their conference, can't imagine anyone consenting to two Sugar Bowls)Championship Game somewhere.
Rose Bowl stays intact, Oregon vs. Wisconsin
Conference champions format
#1 LSU vs. #10 Wisconsin (Sugar)
#3 Oklahoma State vs. #5 Oregon (Fiesta)Rose Bowl probably becomes consolation Big Ten/Pac-12 game, like Michigan vs. Stanford. Tradition preserved!
BCS commissioners returned to their conferences after Thursday with what Bill Hancock called "two to seven" sketches for a future college football playoff. Expect morsels of those plans to leak here and there over the next two months as conferences work to come to their own accords on which work best.
Here's one, as reported by Mark Schlabach, that looks to compromise on several issues surrounding where to play the games and what to do with existing bowls:
The ACC champ would play in the Orange Bowl, Big 12 champ in the Fiesta, Big Ten and Pac-12 champs in the Rose Bowl, and SEC champ in the Sugar Bowl. For instance, if Alabama finished No. 1 in the retooled BCS standings, the Crimson Tide would host the No. 4 seed in a national semifinal game at the Allstate Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. If Oregon finished No. 2, the Ducks would host the No. 3 seed in the Rose Bowl Game presented by VIZIO in Pasadena, Calif.
That means we wouldn't know until the regular season ends which BCS games are playoffs and which are just bowls. This would also give the top-ranked teams some semblance of home advantage, or at least a regional advantage. Alabama fans know how to get to New Orleans, I'm saying.
I'm really not sure why the bowls currently given BCS status would still need to be favored above non-BCS bowls -- the Cotton and Chick-fil-A have tended to do about as well as the Fiesta and Orange, as far as attendance goes. The whole thing's largely about preserving the Rose Bowl and, to a lesser extent, the Sugar, but most fans will go along for the time being with whatever gets a playoff.
Schlabach also reports having a bidding process for the national title game is the strong favorite.
Might this kind of thing be a winning compromise?
So! College football's about to get itself a four-team playoff. This is great. At least the second or third biggest news in the sport's history, perhaps. The BCS says it's listening to the fans now, so how about we hear from those fans? Especially fans of teams uniquely affected by all of this? Let's check in with some of SB Nation's many fine college blogs.
First up, Boise State fans from One Bronco Nation Under God. While BSU still plans to head to the Big East even though it won't need automatic qualifier status any more (everybody knew that was going away in 2014 anyway), the sweetest news is this:
No longer does BSU need to get into the Top Two to have a chance at a national championship. Now, the top four will be good enough, and getting to the top four will be much easier when playing a Big East schedule devoid of New Mexicos and UNLVs.
We've got plenty of time to haggle over the details (or pretend like our haggling actually means anything to the hagglers) like where to play the games, but Penn State blog Black Shoe Diaries focuses on priorities:
I'd love to see Penn State host a Final Four game on the final Saturday in December, with driving snow and wind, and some poor southern team freezing their asses off. But, right now, that's not going to get this deal done. And now is not a time to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Independents Notre Dame and BYU also have choices ahead of them. While the Irish were represented at the BCS table and insist they'll come out just fine, the Cougars weren't. How will schools without conferences fare in a system that may prefer conference champs? BYU fans at Vanquish The Foe aren't quite sure, while Notre Dame blog One Foot Down ain't worried, offering up a revenue prediction:
Notre Dame receives the equivalent to the payout for a Big Ten team under this agreement, calculated annually, and an equal opportunity to participate for the national championship and the other bowls. Notre Dame receives the same payouts as any top four or top fourteen teams for participation. The BCS receives access to five of the top ten TV markets, a huge fanbase and a non-compete clause.
Representatives from the party most responsible for all this (both on-field and off), SEC blog Team Speed Kills, see no necessary reason for the SEC's dominance to end:
In the "SEC golden era" that started in 2006, there have been three seasons (2006, 2008, 2011) in which the SEC would have taken up half the slots based on the last regular-season BCS rankings. That's half of the time, which might not be too annoying to fans of other conferences, but is probably going to get under the skin of guys like Jim Delany.
The fan base with good reason to hate the BCS more than anybody wants an even bigger playoff to ensure the little guys have a chance. Sayeth Utah fans at Block U:
The playoffs help produce a truer champion than what we've had. With four teams, instead of two, it's not hard to see why this is the case. However, it's hard to imagine any non-BCS team, outside an amazing multi-season run or extreme parity among other BCS teams, getting into this new playoff. Especially if it's based on a certain BCS formula. Only TCU in
'08'10 would have qualified for a spot in the postseason under the current BCS rules.
BC Interruption's Boston College fans agree, seeing as a top-four finish is unlikely for the Eagles, while even the Texas partisans at Barking Carnival favor a bigger field. Patience, fellas!
As for the fate of the bowls, Oregon State blog Building The Dam is confident it will still mean something when the Beavers make it next.
But let's get down to specifics! Every Day Should Be Saturday devises a plan that ... YEP we'll totally end up stuck with something just about this amazing:
IF finalist equals PAC-12 CHAMPION THEN game reverts to JOHN WOODEN VIRGIN SPACELINES MOONBASE BUBBLEFIELD SPONSORED BY RICHARD BRANSON.
IF finalist is Boise THEN rule is invalid SEE BOISE EXCLUSION RULE
IF omitted team on edge of four spot is TEXAS THEN place MACK BROWN in BATHYSPHERE and lower to BOTTOM OF MARIANAS TRENCH for silence initiation and isolation process.
Now that we're even more sure than we were previously that college football will have a four-team playoff for 2014 and beyond, our attention now turns to what sort of four-team playoff we'll get. This is sort of what's been happening all week, but now it's all official-like.
We also know the order in which the various issues will be determined by each conference as they deliberate before meeting again in June:
First format will be hammered out. When and where games will be played. How teams are selected to be debated later, Larry Scott said.
— Ralph D. Russo (@ralphDrussoAP) April 26, 2012
Semifinal games can either be played on campuses or at neutral sites. They can either incorporate certain bowl games or none at all. They could be put up for bid and tour the country. The title game itself could either land at a bowl or at a bid site.
The whole shebang can be scheduled to end on New Year's Day, as God clearly intended, or at some super strange time that makes no sense.
Selection could come down to a human committee, a revamped BCS computer system or some combination of the two. Conference championships could be a prerequisite for entry, or just any-ol'-body could be let in.
And, most importantly to the decision-makers, somebody's got to decide who gets what cut of money. But! Now we have some general sense of which debates are going to happen first.
The BCS has made its' official announcement regarding the future of college football's playoff: two to seven four-team playoff plans will now be taken back to the conferences for further discussion. Two-team plans, eight-team plans and 16-team plans have been ruled out*. But the biggest news here is that a four-team playoff beginning in 2014 is all but unavoidable now.
BCS director Bill Hancock called the development a "seismic change," saying conferences are "listening to the fans."
Automatic qualifications for certain conferences will be done away with, Hancock also announced, rendering a portion of the latest conference realignment scramble moot. This means all conferences will hypothetically have a fair shot at making the tournament.
Concrete decisions will begin to be made later in the summer. Hancock hopes for July. Plenty remains to be squabbled over, chief being who gets which slice of money. Conferences will also need to work out where to play the games (on-campus games are still alive, said Hancock), how to choose which teams get to play, the fates of the bowl games and when exactly games will happen.
And, officially, that Rose Bowl plan the Big Ten proposed is not going to happen.
The full statement from the BCS:
"As part of our deliberations, we have carefully considered a number of concepts concerning the post-season structure for the BCS. From the start, we set out to protect college football's unique regular season which we see as the best regular season in sports. We are also mindful of the bowl tradition and seek to create a structure that continues to reward student-athletes with meaningful bowl appearances.
"Having carefully reviewed calendars and schedules, we believe that either an 8-team or a 16-team playoff would diminish the regular season and harm the bowls. College football's regular season is too important to diminish and we do not believe it's in the best interest of student-athletes, fans, or alumni to harm the regular season.
"Accordingly, as we proceed to review our options for improving the post-season, we have taken off the table both an 8-team and a 16-team playoff.
"We will continue to meet and review the exact structure for what a new post-season could look like. We are making substantial progress. We will present to our conferences a very small number of four-team options, each of which could be carried out in a number of ways.
"We have discussed in detail the advantages and disadvantages of in-bowl or out-of-bowl games.
We have discussed in detail the advantages and disadvantages of campus sites or neutral sites. We have discussed in detail the advantages and disadvantages of various ways to rank or qualify teams.
"Our process is proceeding as we have planned and we look forward to further conversations."
* Yes, this mean we can start advocating for a 32-team playoff, but we're not going to get very far.
BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock provided the college football-loving public with some good news on Wednesday, declaring that progress has been made in discussions regarding the reform of the college football postseason. Things are going to change, but he was a bit inconclusive on the details.
"I think that's what everyone wants to do. Get down to two maybe three,'' Hancock said. "I think we're making good progress on that. I think we're going to make it.''
One thing is clear: "The status quo is off the table,'' Hancock said. Though he cautiously added they have not ruled out making over the current system that guarantees only a No. 1 vs. No. 2 championship game.
The status quo is off the table. Excellent. Everyone, rejoice! But ... what exactly does "making over the current system" mean? Changing the way the No. 1 and No. 2 teams are determined? Well, that's not necessarily a straightforward process.
Andy Staples of Sports Illustrated had some quotes from Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott about how teams might be selected for a playoff, and whether a selection committee would work.
"I'm trying to stay open-minded about how a committee could work, because I know people feel good about it in basketball," Scott said. "It's established. But, on first blush, it seems a little counterintuitive to me given the way the world has gone in terms of what our fans want -- which is more objective, more transparent." Scott, by far the most outspoken commissioner on this particular topic, does not want selection carried out behind a veil of secrecy. "The difference between two and three could be a decimal point in some set of formulas that I can't explain to you because they won't disclose how it works," Scott said. "That's not satisfactory."
Unfortunately, what Scott says here is the equivalent of a weatherman saying that a hurricane is on its way to the Eastern United States, and it's going to come ashore somewhere between Miami and New England. Even though Hancock wants to narrow the college football postseason debate to two or three options by Thursday, they seem to be a long way from figuring out the details of each option.
Some really interesting news from the BCS meetings in Florida, as it appears the current system for the college football postseason is dead. Stuart Mandel from SI.com tweeted remarks from BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock:
Bill Hancock on BCS scenarios: "I can officially say that the status quo is off the table."
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) April 25, 2012
Hancock says the goal is to be narrowed down to 2-3 models by end of day tomorrow.
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) April 25, 2012
Commissioners will take tomorrow's two to three "finalists" back to their conference meetings in late spring. Presidents get final say.
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) April 25, 2012
CBS' Brett McMurphy had the further news that commissioners spent four hours today discussing how to pick teams for a playoff, so, yeah, the current system will change in 2014.
This isn't exactly shocking: it had become clear that the current system, featuring just one national championship game for all the proverbial Tostitos and no luck for teams ranked No. 3 or worse, was on its way out. But this is confirmation on that front.
For more on the BCS meetings and the march toward a college football playoff, stay tuned right here.
The primary revelations through much of the first day of BCS-ish meetings in Florida on the future of college football's postseason: the Rose Bowl is the most important thing in the world, and the Fiesta Bowl is totally fine with making more money and having a seat at the table, just so you know. The alternative for the Fiesta Bowl would be that it would be just another bowl game instead of part of the championship tournament, so this is mighty generous of the Fiesta Bowl.
The latter, first, since it might be the closest thing to actual news yet:
The big thaw is coming: Fiesta open to hosting national semi or champ game without its Fiesta brand.
— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) April 25, 2012
And here's Texas AD DeLoss Dodds with the biggest #ShotsFired so far:
"The only way it's going to get fixed," Dodds says, "is for the rest of the country to have a playoff of some kind and let [the Pac-12 and Big Ten] do their (own) deal. And then after five years, their coaches would go berserk because they're not in the mix for a national championship. And they'd have to join it."
In response, Big Ten commish Jim Delany said Dodds was wrong and, at some point, discussed ostrich racing. Onlookers seem to have discerned that Delany's fine with a four-team playoff so long as the Rose Bowl provides the site for ... something involved with the playoff.
The general course of events at this juncture seems to be that BCS bowls are angling for inclusion as playoff sites, meaning the campuses of competing teams wouldn't get any games -- unlike the FCS playoffs -- and fans would have to travel across the country twice during the holidays.
The great debate over what to make of college football's postseason has appeared to come down to either a plus-one game tacked onto the current bowl system or a four-team playoff distinguished from the bowls entirely. If the BCS is replaced with a four-team model, then the next point of contention centers on where to play those games.
CBS Sports' Brett McMurphy reports the four-team plan with semifinal games hosted off campus is the most likely playoff model to succeed. Out of the four plans, which include the widely lampooned Rose Bowl plan, this one looks to have the fewest detractors, according to the report.
The SEC isn't a big fan of the on-campus proposal, which would send warm-weather teams way up north on occasion. The Big Ten and Big 12, among others, prefer to have semifinal games played on campuses. One concern for everybody, however, is money. Some schools don't offer big stadiums, and in some cases games would be able to pack in a few more fans if held at stadiums previously vetted for sufficient capacity.
This seems silly to me, but we've already got one proposal on how to make this work.
But I have no idea what "plus-one-model" could stand in for. You'd think drugs, maybe, but that's not the Dooley family style.
Derek Dooley: "Ever since I was a child I’ve been in favor of the plus-one model."
— Dave Matter (@Dave_Matter) April 24, 2012
There's still a better solution than either leaving semifinals games in current BCS cities or putting them in, say, Houston and Nashville every year.
If you want to simplify the process, just have four potential sites every year similar to what the NCAA Tournament has for the second weekend (four regional sites depending on region), then when the final matchups are announced, pick the two sites that are most favorable to the top two seeds depending on the matchup.
So you'd have a regional setup like...
- Western team semifinal site: Santa Clara, Los Angeles, Glendale, Denver, San Diego
- Southern team semifinal site: Atlanta, New Orleans, Nashville, Miami, Tampa, Charlotte
- Midwestern team semifinal site: Indianapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia
- Eastern team semifinal site: New York City, Foxboro, Washington D.C., Baltimore
- Southwestern semifinal site: Dallas, Houston, St. Louis, Kansas City
Then you'd pick two of those sites depending on who ended up with the top two seeds. You'd have a few weeks to get things ready for each matchup. Sites that don't get it this season get bumped up to top preference for next time.
With important college football haircuts gathering in Florida to map out the future of the sport's postseason, now's the time to air any last worries about what sort of playoff we might end up with. The four-team plan, with top seeds getting home games in the semifinals round, seems to be the most popular one, outside of SEC country at least, but there's a new obstacle emerging from Big Ten territory.
College football hot shots will meet again next week to try and narrow down the plans for the future of the sport's postseason. SI.com's Stewart Mandel reports the sentiment is indeed that a plus-one game will happen, at the very least, though a four-team tournament is still in play.
Elsewhere in that piece, Mandel passes along the frustrations of bowl committee people, who've found themselves largely left out of the debate. BCS bowl reps will have 30 minutes each to plead their cases next week, but that's it. It takes quite a bit to get a playoff supporter to sympathize with bowl suits, but that almost did it.
Luckily, elsewhere the head of the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl laments the lack of quality bowl teams that would result from a playoff. Last year, that bowl's participants combined to field a losing record. So. Sympathizing was further stunted when the Fiesta Bowl chief says his game would do a better job of hosting a major college football game than State College would, thanks to its many volunteers.
Penn State seems capable of handling major college football games, as far as attendance goes. They do it seven times a year, while the Fiesta Bowl does it once. And I'd imagine a football-crazed college campus could round up a few volunteers for a national semifinal involving the home team.
Also, the Rose Bowl denies having anything to do with the now-infamous Rose Bowl plan, which would've turned the storied game into a third-wheel playoff game. With the Pac-12 also previously washing its hands, that leaves only the Big Ten, since nobody's buying my theory that Conference USA just really loves the Rose Bowl.
The idea of a legitimate playoff structure in college football has been batted around for quite a long time, but the NCAA has been unable to find a solid system to replace the current BCS structure. That looks like it may be the case for the foreseeable future, too, as BCS executive director Bill Hancock says there's no system currently in the lead to renovate the college football postseason.
"There's no leader in the clubhouse on this,'' Hancock told The Associated Press on Thursday night before he spoke at a leadership banquet at Southwestern Oklahoma State University.
The problem isn't that ideas aren't being brought up to Hancock, but rather he isn't sure that a wholesale change is necessarily needed, according to the comments he made to The Associated Press.
"The most important question is, `Is there a need to make a significant change, and what are the reasons why a significant change is important?' If there's a need to do it, then it should be done,'' Hancock said. "Many fans would like to have a tournament in the postseason and the commissioners hear that. They get it. But can you have a tournament without detracting from the regular season?''
Considering that every other sport has a postseason tournament to determine its national champion, one would have to believe the answer to Hancock's question is "yes." It remains to be seen if there's a possibility of steering the BCS committee toward that answer, however, or if they're determined to find ways to make the BCS work.
For more on the march toward a college football playoff, stay tuned right here.
The college football playoffs debate's various parties may not agree on much, but there's one thing everyone can agree on: that Rose Bowl idea was the worst. Common ground!
Add SEC commissioner Mike Slive to the list. Slive and Conference USA chief Britton Banowsky spoke Monday at a gathering for reporters, with Slive saying of the Big Ten's idea, "It's not one of my favorites. What we're trying to do is simplify in many ways. I don't think that adds to the simplification of the postseason.''
That should surprise nobody, as the plan would benefit the Big Ten and the Pac-12 at the cost of everyone else. Even the Pac-12 has said it has no idea where the proposal came from.
The SEC seems to prefer a plus-one round over a bracketed, four-team tournament, especially if the latter means sending its teams up north to play in the cold, as the most popular model includes. For the time being, the basic battle line appears to be between the SEC and the other power conferences. Though the ACC hasn't yet weighed in, it sided with the SEC years ago when the two first tried to get a playoff going.
For more on the march toward a college football playoff, stay tuned right here.
Though that Rose Bowl monstrosity would've benefited both the Pac-12 and Big Ten at the detriment of everybody else, somehow you just knew the Pac-12 wasn't the one behind it. And here's Pac-12 CEO chair Ed Ray of Oregon State:
Ray said, "we as a group never discussed that option. This is the first time I'm hearing it. But that doesn't mean that people weren't in conversations where all these things came up and somebody suggested it."
Still kind of think it's Conference USA's doing.
Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott has met with players from the USC Trojans and Stanford Cardinal, and plans to meet with players for the Utah Utes, to get their input and feedback on various proposals geared towards overhauling college football's postseason, Stewart Mandel of SI.com reported.
Three of the players Scott met with on Thursday included Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck and offensive linemen David DeCastro and Jonathan Martin — three players projected to hear their names called in the first round of the 2012 NFL Draft.
"It's interesting for us to be able to give our opinion as student-athletes, or former student-athletes," said Luck. "We talked about how bowl games affect everything from our classes to finals, how much it takes our family to travel, the plusses and merits in our mind. And also what we thought of a playoff."
Luck has the unique perspective of being the son of Oliver Luck, the athletic director for the West Virginia Mountaineers. The two-time Heisman Trophy runner-up and three-time member of the Pac-10/Pac-12 All-Academic Team prefers a playoff system that doesn't interfere with academics.
"One thing I don't think he (Scott) had heard before was the bowl games going into second semester of schools," said Luck. "Guys had missed school for a week, week and a half. As a quarterback, I was always a little frustrated about having a month off between games. You definitely lose a little rhythm with your receivers.
"As a competitor, who wouldn't want a playoff? Who wouldn't want a chance to be the best and settle it all on the field?" he said. "If that can be done in a way to keep the historic bowls happy, to keep the academic integrity of a student-athlete, that'd be awesome. But if it cant, hopefully there's a good alternative."
So what happens if the Big Ten and Pac-12 obtain the Rose Bowl some sort of special status as an unofficial third semifinal game in college football's eventual playoff? (If that sentence confused you, here are the details. Don't worry; you'll still be just as confused.)
If the Rose Bowl were free to pluck top-four teams away from the playoffs pool, here's what the tournament field would've looked like for each of the past five years, as far as I understand the proposal (no one understands the proposal):
Important suits will meet throughout the summer to determine the successor to the BCS Championship Game as college football moves towards a playoff in 2014. The two plans that have gotten the most attention -- the plus-one and the four-team, conference champions-only model -- are still being discussed, as is one that would make the Rose Bowl a ... well, a something entirely different from all other surviving bowls.
In the latter plan, the four highest-ranked teams at the end of the regular season would meet in semifinals unless the Big Ten or Pac-12 champion, or both, were among the top four. Those leagues' teams still would meet in the Rose, and the next highest-ranked team or teams would slide into the semis. The national championship finalists would be selected after those three games.
A hybrid plus-one/playoff, with special circumstances for two of the country's dozen or so* conferences? That's so college football.
The Big Ten has made it clear that one of its highest priorities is preserving the status of the Rose Bowl, perhaps the only bowl that still really matters nationally. The Pac-12 has a special stake in the game as well. But rerouting the semifinals round through the game at the expense of all other (admittedly lesser) bowl games?
Seems a little too close to the weird, regional, selective postseason we have now. Incorporating a few traits from the bowl system into the playoff itself might be nice, but bowls will still exist outside of the tournament. And the SEC would surely argue the Sugar Bowl is important enough to get special consideration as well, as would the Mountain West with the MAACO. Maybe not that last one, but you can see how this could get tangled.
* Oh, like you know exactly how many conferences we'll have in 2014. The SUN BEAST has caught you slipping.
As it stands, college football bowl games pretty much just run themselves, under the NCAA's eye. They set up deals with conferences so they can have specific teams to choose from, then send some money back to their partner conferences, which is then distributed to each of the league's teams. So what happens to bowl games if college football adopts a playoff plan?
The popular thinking, especially among close observers of the Big Ten-Pac-12 partnership that sort of centers around the Rose Bowl, is that conferences could take over control of bowls themselves, thereby cutting out the bowl committee middle man and leaving pools of colorful blazers underfed. Each league could issue forth its own non-champion, like some sort of gladitorial contest. Bowls are sounding better by the minute!
CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd discovers* this is exactly what's being discussed by a NCAA task force. Dodd adds some interesting specifics:
The NCAA board of directors will consider the proposals at its April 26 meeting.
The task force prefers that the NCAA - basically president Mark Emmert -- retain oversight over approving title sponsors. More than one source mentioned NCAA concern over the image projected by title sponsor GoDaddy.com aligned with the Mobile, Ala.-based bowl.
So the NCAA's role could be to come up with some sort of classiness standard for sponsors, while conferences handle the business of determining which teams get to play in these exhibition games.
* I'm gonna be honest. I'm not entirely sure what's new between this and what the NCAA said a few months back, other than the GoDaddy thing, but that part is indeed something.
College football will soon have a playoff, even if it's just a two-team title game that uses the entire bowl season as its play-in round. It could still be a four-team playoff, which would be fine, or even an eight-team deal, as NCAA president Mark Emmert sort of predicts:
"The momentum seems to be -- and I'm just reading the tea leaves, pretty much like you -- the momentum seems to be toward an eight-team playoff," he said.
"We'll have to see how it works. I don't know whether it will really occur or not. I think there's a reasonable possibility it could."
What Emmert predicts isn't really all that critical, since his outfit has never had control of football's postseason, anyway. There's no guarantee it ever will, either, as commissioners aren't going to want to hand all that money over to the NCAA when their conferences can get the first cut of playoff spoils if they do their own thing. Still, that's what he thinks, in case you were wondering.
Important BCS people met in Dallas to talk about the future of college football's postseason this week. They didn't reach any major conclusions, of course, as they still have several months left to figure out a playoff plan for 2014. They do seem to be seeing eye-to-eye on a number of factors, though, which Brett McMurphy's survey of conference commissioners displays.
The survey's responding commissioners favor semifinal games played on the higher seed's campuses, a travelin' road show of a title game, semifinals "around Christmas" and a championship right around New Year's Day. There's not yet a consensus on whether only conference champs should get to participate, which is kind of surprising, as only the SEC has come out in tentative opposition of that idea so far.
The two-team, post-bowl model ("plus-one") is still on the table, while the fate of the four current BCS bowls remains a concern. Once they get all this squared away, there's the question of how much it's all worth in television money. That last part was a joke, as television money is pretty much concern No. 1 all the way through.
BCS commissioners continue to meet to come up with a new college football postseason, and you'll be astounded to note they haven't figured the whole thing out in only two days. Here's a round of quotes from various commissioners big and small regarding the latest meeting, and they all sound quite invested in working through a lengthy process.
Any time you get Mike Slive talking about the matrix, you know big stuff is happening. According to Slive's own description, the first meeting of commishes centered on the sport in general, while this one zeroed in on the BCS issue. They'll meet again in late April in Florida.
At issue is what to do about the current BCS deal expiring in two years. Two plans, a four-team playoff and a two-team, post-bowl game, appear to be the favorites, with multiple power conferences supporting the former and the SEC not quite so set on it if it allows only conference champs to participate.
It appears the talks for the BCS to move to a "plus-one" playoff format have taken the next step. According to CBS, the 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame's athletic director met in Dallas Monday to discuss logistics for how to implement a playoff system, though they haven't decided whether or not to actually adopt said system. Here's the full statement from the BCS:
As part of our continuing discussions about how to decide college football's national champion while maintaining the best regular season in sports, we met today in Dallas. The meeting was constructive and highly detailed.
While no decisions have been made about the overall structure, our talks have entered the "brass tacks" level. For every concept that enjoys broad support, there are a host of intricate details that we're talking through.
For example, if we change the current format, would we play some games on campus or all games on neutral sites? If some games are on campus, is that too much of a competitive advantage? If all games are at neutral sites, would fans be able to travel to two games in a row? How would teams be selected? By a committee, by the current ranking formula, or by a different formula? When exactly would games be scheduled, considering finals, holidays and our desire to avoid mid-January games?
As we discuss the upsides and downsides of our decisions, we are united in our desire to protect our great regular season and honor the bowl tradition, while maintaining the collegiate nature of our sport.
We're making good progress toward our self-imposed goal of making a final recommendation this summer to our governing bodies.
Sports Illustrated's Stewart Mandel talked with a few of those in the room, and came away with a few other interesting nuggets:
From talking to several in the room, sounds like today's meeting focused more on the where and when of a playoff than who would be in it.
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) March 26, 2012
Bill Hancock: No discussion of 8 or 16 team playoff. Everything else still on the table, including "pure" plus one (title game after bowls)
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) March 26, 2012
For continuing updates on this developing story, be sure to keep it with this StoryStream.
If the 2014 college football season concludes with a championship game whose participants are determined by a bracket, no matter how small that bracket may be, Jerry Jones would like to host that game. You are not surprised to learn this.
To the Dallas Morning News, a Cowboys Stadium spokesperson:
Stadium spokesman Brett Daniels said, "We're very interested in the future of the BCS and bringing a game to Cowboys Stadium."
BCS commissioners are meeting in that very city for another round of talks about what to do with college football's postseason once the current BCS deal runs out. A "plus-one" playoff remains the most likely format for starters, but since they've last met, a four-team model with semifinalists getting home field advantage has emerged as the public favorite, despite the SEC's opposition.
They have all summer to work out a transition plan, so don't expect any major news any time soon. Whenever there is major news, surely Cowboys Stadium will offer to host the breaking of it.
Even though the BCS might not exist in two years, Utah's attorney general is still tooling up anyway. It would amuse most parties involved if he went ahead and sued it even after it's demised, just to make good and sure.
Mike Leach is a popular football coach. His offense is a blast to watch, he says hilarious things, he knows trivia about everything, his players graduate, he's stuck it to The Man, and he counseled Coach Taylor in Friday Night Lights. If only there were some way he could become even more popular. Maybe this could do the trick:
Today in "SEC people standing against the four-team playoff notion popular among non-SEC conferences", we have Alabama Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban. The plan calls for four conference champions to make up the tournament field, with home field advantage going to the top semifinalists. The SEC is the only conference to sort of come out against the idea, with commissioner Mike Slive expressing concern about travel and so forth.
Saban, from a conversation with Outkick The Coverage:
Power conferences are settling in to figure out what happens to college football's postseason once the BCS expires in two years. The Big Ten, Pac-12, and Big 12 appear to be in favor of a four-team setup, while the SEC doesn't like losing its warm-weather bowl advantage.
But what about the people who actually, as much as anybody else, run the sport? Former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson revealed Monday that his outfit proposed an eight-team playoff 20 years ago:
SEC commissioner Mike Slive had a word with the Memphis Commercial Appeal over the weekend, clarifying his position on the coming changes to college football's postseason. The Big Ten, Pac-12 and Big 12 have sort of tentatively (rock solid!) agreed on a four-team playoff model as one worth pursuing for the time being, but the SEC hasn't made its position all that clear, other than expressing concerns about the popular proposal.
From the Commercial Appeal:
"I never use the 'P' word, because I'm not a playoff guy. I've always felt a plus-one wasn't going to a playoff, because it could be done in the structure. I don't favor an NFL-style playoff with eight or 16 teams.
"I still think it's important to protect the regular season and the bowls. The college football regular season is the best regular season in sports. We have some concerns about the dates of postseason games, that they need to be played more in the traditional bowl season calendar.
A plus-one is a playoff, whether it's called that or not. It's a very, very small one, and one that will get people even more worked up for a multi-round tournament. It's a playoff with a really, really broad opening round.
Slive says the SEC is also in talks with its TV partners after adding Missouri and Texas A&M, working to strengthen its bowl tie-ins, and sending the conference basketball tournament to St. Louis. But is the matter of adding teams to the football schedule without ending annual rivalries still being discussed? Why, it still is!
College basketball's postseason is better than college football's. Very few people under the age of 55 would disagree with this assessment, and those who do get a little bit quieter once March Madness really gets rolling. Yet the bowl system continues, even with a new BCS deal likely to give football its first playoff in two years.
EDSBS captain and Shutdown Fullback co-host Spencer Hall explains why a massive, 64-team tournament wouldn't work in college football, demographic differences in college fandom, why any old playoff format would probably work just fine in football, and the BCS' excuses for insisting on sticking with bowls for so long:
The Pac-12 has been at the forefront of whatever college football postseason movement has surged forth in the past year. The Pac-12 is at the forefront of most things, via it's in the future already. So it's little surprise to see the conference's residents have informally agreed among themselves that the BCS must be replaced.
What emerged, according to [Oregon State president Edward] Ray and [Arizona State president Michael] Crow, was consensus that the current BCS system needs to significantly change and that it should be replaced by a playoff system that may or may not include current BCS bowl members, including the Valley's Fiesta Bowl.
The Pac-12's primary concern with the whole thing is making sure the Rose Bowl still means something even after the creation of a playoff to replace the BCS. The Big Ten's main worry is the same.
Dignitaries from Stanford and elsewhere around the Pac-12 had already situated themselves on #TeamPlayoff as the BCS' clock winds down. With the Big Ten and Big 12 also seemingly in favor, and the SEC only tentatively objecting to the home field advantage portion of the current popular proposal, we're getting closer by the week to some sort of general agreement on ... something.
From SI.com's Andy Staples, conversations with nine FBS presidents on the future of college football, in which we learn the full cost-of-attendance issue could break up FBS, not all admins are pro-playoff, some want a very brief postseason, and others want to go ahead and start the thing up with eight teams.
It's the motherlode of rich academics in suits talking about sports, so get to clickin'.
The Pac-12, Big Ten and Big 12 all more or less agree on a similar college football playoff plan for when the current BCS deal expires: four conference champions, with the highest-ranking two getting semifinal home field advantage. This led one to wonder about the obvious conference missing from that list, and wonder no more! The SEC has now weighed in via the Birmingham News, albeit thoughtfully and artfully:
"I'm willing to have a conversation about (only conference champions), but if you were going to ask me today, that would not be the way I want to go," [SEC commissioner Mike] Slive said. "It really is early in the discussions, notwithstanding what some commissioners say publicly. There's still a lot of information that needs to be generated."
Slive also expressed concerns about road team attendance at campus playoff games, noting basketball's playoff doesn't feature home games. It makes sense that the SEC would be the least likely conference to immediately support the so-called Big Ten Plan, as true home games could mean trips to snowy locales, the conference champs stipulation would mean we can't have an all-SEC West final four, and it's the so-called Big Ten Plan. The SEC would be hesitant to support a plan to make everyone say, "THE SEC IS GREAT," if such a plan were called "the so-called Big Ten Plan."
Slive also denied the SEC is interested in expanding to 16 teams. But remember: at one point, he insisted the SEC was fine sticking with 13 teams. So.
For more on the SEC, visit Team Speed Kills.
Count the Oklahoma Sooners in:
Bob Stoops says he supports the plus-one, prefers to play the 4-team playoff within the BCS bowls.
— Trav Haney (@TravHaney) March 5, 2012
We've now heard from the Big Ten, the Pac-12, the President of the United States, and the architect of the BCS that a four-team playoff plan limited to conference champs, with top semifinalists earning home advantage, is the preferred college football postseason. Let's sort of add the Big 12 to that list, and then notice who hasn't appeared yet.
Though Chuck Neinas won't be the Big 12 commissioner for much longer, he's still come out in tentative support of the plan:
"I like the idea, if you're going to take four, take four champions," Neinas said. "They're not hard to identify. The selection process is one that would concern me. The easiest is taking four conference champions."
Among power conferences and power executive branches, this leaves the SEC, the ACC, and every executive branch on earth besides the United States'. Since those branches don't matter all that much, that leaves the SEC and ACC.
The two paired up to propose a college football playoff way before it was cool among elderly academics, but were spurned by their peers. Now they're holding off on jumping in the pile praising the four-team plan, and the SEC appears to have insisted on bringing its own media consultant into the latest money thing round. It would make sense that the two most Southern (until the ACC fulfills its dream of locking up the Toronto TV market by adding St. Michael's College) conferences would hold off on favoring a system that could mean road playoff games in Michigan or Idaho, if that's what's happening here.
Just act natural, and we'll all get through this. Yes, President Barack Obama appeared on the BS Report with Bill Simmons, all recorded at the White House. Don't even flinch. Don't even think about what you've just read. Just proceed.
The Sports Guy asked the president (don't reflect; don't react in any way) about the future of college football, specifically regarding its evolving postseason. The two (just keep going) also talked about Jeremy Lin, the Bulls, Chris Paul and so forth. A transcript of the college football portion:
The upcoming adjustment to college football's postseason is likely to be popular with at least the SEC or Big Ten, if it's popular with anybody. As the two big dogs at the table ("No dogs at the table," you shout at your dog, but dogs never stop doing what they want to do), Mike Slive and Jim Delany should each be in position to get his way for the most part*.
So it's with little surprise that you'll greet a Sports Business Journal report that new BCS media consultants Chuck Gerber and Dean Jordan already have respective relationships with the two biggest leagues. Gerber has worked with the SEC before, while Jordan has associations with the Big Ten, among many other conferences. Jordan's wider range of ties could suggest the SEC is the conference at odds with the others, but now we're trying to discover tactics by reading consultant resumes.
At stake is the new BCS deal that begins in 2014, which ESPN gets the first bid on. SBJ notes Fox, NBC, and Turner are also interested.
* Except for that thing about playing semifinal games on campuses. The Big Ten loves the idea, which therefore means the SEC might not be so wild about it. But getting a SEC team in cold weather sounds about as fair as getting a Big Ten team in Death Valley.
The Bowl Championship Series has had more than its share of detractors over the years, while fans and pundits alike have long bemoaned the lack of a traditional (or perhaps, more logical) playoff system in NCAA football. But a new system for determining a champion in 2014 and onward should be in place by the time the 2012 college season kicks off.
Pete Thamel of The New York Times spoke to Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott via phone interview, and Scott was vocal that there is plenty of room for improvement in the current system. Scott's line of thinking seems to match that of the Big Ten, which means that there could be an agreed-upon format already in motion.
Scott said that a one-game playoff would not be enough to mute the critics of the current system and that an eight-game playoff would be difficult to fit into the academic calendar, a priority for Pac-12 leaders. He would not say directly that he favors a four-team playoff, but his view appears to be in line with many of the top B.C.S. officials.
As for the potential playoff format, Scott agreed with the position of the Big Ten, first reported by The Chicago Tribune, which favored home sites for the semifinal games and a neutral site for the championship game. After a number of discussions with the N.F.L., Scott said, following its model made sense.
Final decisions are still far from final, but the Pac-12 and Big Ten being on the same page is a good first step on the road toward a playoff system.
For more college football, visit SB Nation's NCAA Football hub.
Important college football people are meeting to talk about what to do once the current BCS deal expires. Reports have a plus-one model (it's OK to call it "a really little playoff!") being the favored route, with the BCS turning control of the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange back over to the committees themselves.
The responsible parties have released a statement saying not a whole lot but providing a sort of deadline, and you'll be so kind as to not giggle at the thought of the WAC being called a BCS conference in this first line here:
Statement by the eleven BCS Commissioners and the Notre Dame Athletics Director:
In an effort to grow college football's great popularity and success, we just completed two days of productive meetings in Dallas, Texas.
We have until the fall of this year to finalize any possible changes to our current structure. That's when contractual obligations require us to begin negotiations with our television carrier for future coverage decisions. We have a self-imposed deadline of sometime this summer to decide what changes we will propose to our governing bodies for football's post-season. It's still early in our process and we will continue to meet with our conferences and review options.
Whatever we do, we want to protect college football's regular season which is the best and most meaningful in sports. We want to preserve the great bowl tradition while making it better and more attractive. We also have heard the message about playing bowl games closer to or on January 1, the way it used to be.
As we proceed, we will evaluate the many pros and cons of numerous possible changes. Every idea has exciting up sides, as well as complicated consequences. From the realities of the calendar to the issues presented in terms of venues such as who hosts games, we have tremendous responsibilities and opportunities.
The bottom line is we will continue to talk about how to make a great sport even better for student-athletes, fans and everyone who loves college football.
It has been clear for quite awhile, at least to most college football fans, that a BCS replacement is needed. Things are luckily moving in that direction, too, with the recent reports indicating that it'll likely begin with a "plus-one" system.
Meetings as far as what that would consist of are being held this week in Dallas, featuring all 11 conference commissioners, the athletic director of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and BCS executive director Bill Hancock. Hancock didn't have many specifics when talking to the media regarding what's being talked about, but did give some general quotes in a Sports Illustrated report.
While there seems to be growing support for creating a four-team playoff to determine a champion, how exactly that would work and when the games would be played remains to be seen.
"It's very clear the commissioners do not want the championship game to be played too late,'' Hancock said in a telephone interview. Hancock added the commissioners were "resolute about not having BCS games in the midweek after Jan. 1''.
It seems that a four-team tournament involving three games -- essentially a pair of semifinal games before determining a national champion -- is going to happen much sooner than an eight- or 16-team tournament, according to the sources the Sporting News was able to gather.
The next meeting regarding the BCS replacement is scheduled to be held on Wednesday, but Sporting News quoted Hancock as saying he'd be "surprised" if anything happened before this summer.
For more college football, visit SB Nation's NCAA Football hub.
College football suits and haircuts are also frazzled about beautiful flowers attracting beautiful butterflies, pretty good opening bands, Christmas Eve leading up to Christmas, whatever OK show precedes Parks & Recreation coming just before Parks & Recreation, dinners being followed by desserts, spring giving way to summer, The Godfather II and the Theory of Evolution:
Filed to @sportingnews: BCS official says concern at negotiating table is 4 team playoff becomes 8 and eventually 16. Posted soon.
— Matt Hayes (@Matt_HayesSN) February 20, 2012
A college football playoff system seems to be coming much closer to fruition after plenty of complaints over the past several years. The Pac-12 is the latest conference to seemingly agree that change is needed as far the NCAA football postseason is concerned.
It isn't a surprise, of course, but the Register-Guard's George Schroeder quoted a Pac-12 insider with some positive comments regarding a playoff system in his Tuesday morning column.
We're not sure what form it will take -- no one is at this point -- but when the next BCS TV deal kicks in two years from now, well, there might not even be a BCS. Whatever it's called, it won't much resemble the current postseason structure.
"I would be shocked if it doesn't get significantly changed."
Those words come from a Pac-12 insider who didn't want to be identified. The league's commissioner was traveling Tuesday and unavailable for comment. On Monday, Scott told the San Jose Mercury News the Pac-12 "has stopped short of taking a position" on potential changes.
Schroeder's report coincides with the Arizona State president saying last week that the Pac-12 isn't a strong supporter of the present model.
It certainly isn't a surprise that the Pac-12 would be in favor of some sort of change -- there are quite a few reports that have adamantly said change is coming -- but it's nice to know that they seemingly won't hold anything up.
For more on the Pac-12, be sure to visit SB Nation's Pac-12 blog Pacific Takes. For more on football around the country, check out SB Nation's College Football Hub.
Ohio State president Gordon Gee, a man Jim Tressel has not yet fired, once called a college football playoff system "a slippery slope to professionalism" while praising the BCS for excluding inferior teams. He's apparently changing his tune these days:
Now that the Big Ten has reportedly talked up a four-team playoff proposal, it seems like the rest of the college football world is a little more confident in stepping forth with BCS slams and calls for postseason tournaments. Michael Crow, Arizona State president, however, has been #TeamPlayoff for a while now.
Since telling CBS Sports in January that he'd like to see an eight-team playoff restricted to only conference champions, he's remained on message, telling the Arizona Republic the Pac-12's members "are not strong supporters of the present model."
Coincidental that a school president who operates in the same state as the Fiesta Bowl, the crowning glory of bowl corruption, is among the strongest critics of the BCS? Probably not!
We're at the point where we'll continue to see proposals and counter-proposals, even once something is finally settled upon (and for decades after), since everybody wants to be the guy who came up with the perfect college football playoff plan.
For more on ASU football, visit Arizona State blog House Of Sparky, plus Pac-12 blog Pacific Takes and SB Nation Arizona.
Guess which two states would prefer a four-team model? No, just guess. OK fine (via ESPN via r/cfb):
You'd hate to presume, but I do believe we've stumbled upon a favorite strategy of SEC commissioner Mike Slive's. Back during conference realignment, Slive swore the SEC was perfectly content with 12 and then with 13 teams, even while many of his coaches and administrators publicly insisted the league would soon jump to 14.
Now, regarding the latest swell of attention for a playoff*, specifically the creation of a four-team deal, Slive said Wednesday that we should all slow down just a second.
"What would it look like and whether it's actually going to happen, all of that is premature,'' Slive said. "I think we need the time to sit down and analyze it. We need time to take ideas back to our respective conferences and ... a decision to be made sometime later this year as we begin to talk about the ... next format.''
Moments later, University of Georgia president Michael Adams said, "My best guess is we’re going to end up with either a four- or eight-team playoff by the time we get to 2014." So just come right out and say it, sir.
* An item Slive was among the first conference commissioners to express support for.
For more SEC, visit SEC blog Team Speed Kills.
With the Pac-12 and Big 12 formally or informally lending their support to the push for a college football playoff, an abandoned joint project of the SEC and ACC from a few years ago, only one power league has remained opposed. And that could be changing, with two Big Ten athletic directors telling the Associated Press it's time to think about a playoff system that still leaves the bowls intact.
The AP quotes Michigan St. Spartans AD Mark Hollis ("All of the Big Ten athletic directors are comfortable exploring the possibility of a four-team playoff") and his Ohio St. Buckeyes counterpart, Gene Smith ("It's time to be curious about everything").
The Big Ten's favored postseason plan, reported by the Chicago Tribune, calls for home field advantage for the top two semifinalists, with bowls remaining as they are. That would leave the Rose Bowl in working condition for the time being, satisfying Jim Delany's primary public concern with the whole ordeal.
And with the Pac-12 and Big Ten entering a long-term partnership, it's not out of the question that the Rose could become a joint property of the two conferences at some point, further ... well, further solving all that stuff even more. It would be so darn solved.
For more wholesomeness, visit Big Ten blog Off Tackle Empire.
Sources told the Tribune that a Big Ten plan would remove the top four teams from the BCS bowl pool and have semifinal games played on the college campus of the higher seed.
See? This isn't so hard! Say, that's actually a pretty good idea.
One athletic director to CBS Sports:
Only the best 16 bowl games should remain with the remaining "bowl games" held on campuses of the remaining bowl eligible teams - whether six or seven wins is required for bowl eligibility.
As always, to the argument that even the smallest bowl games benefit their communities, the counter is to simply say that they would benefit the home team's local community even more.
Michigan Wolverines athletic director Dave Brandon doesn't like the idea of a college football playoff, partly because lower-level teams would have to play storied power programs from the biggest BCS conferences, all of which would be just too much for the smaller schools to handle without being injured into oblivion.
In case you're wondering why important people in the college football world are making more and more noise about finally making do with a playoff, here you go: 2011-2012 bowl TV ratings were the lowest of the BCS era.
(And that's no indication of the popularity of the sport itself, as the year included the most-watched regular season game of the BCS era and then some.)
We shouldn't be surprised to read NCAA president Mark Emmert revealing his support for a plus-one system. The NCAA's only real current product is its March Madness tournament, so why wouldn't it want to finally start making playoff money off a sport even bigger than basketball? It's schools and conferences who've outsourced the postseason, not the NCAA.
We'll also note the NCAA says it's worried about making football teams play as many as four postseason games but has expanded March Madness 10 times in the last 61 years, with a move to 96 or more teams not exactly ruled out.
Monday night's BCS Championship Game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and LSU Tigers could be the beginning of a radical change in how college football determines its national champion, reports Matt Hayes of The Sporting News.
Hayes writes:
"Over the next six months, the leaders of the sport will meet at least four times to iron out a plan that protects the importance of the regular season—the one aspect BCS leaders believe separates the game from every other—while embracing a new frontier for the poll-driven sport."
According to Hayes, conference commissioners will begin discussing plans towards moving towards a national playoff system in a meeting in New Orleans on Tuesday. Other meetings are scheduled to take place in Dallas and Miami over the next few months and "at least 60" different plans are on the table, varying from a four-team playoff to one game after the bowl games.
Mountain West Conference Commissioner Craig Thompson thinks it's time for a new system.
"There needs to be some kind of different culmination of the season," said Thompson. "We need a process after which we can truly say, ‘This is the national champion.'
BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock discussed the issue on Monday.
"Anyone who loves college football would love to be a fly on the wall during these discussions," Hancock said. "Everything you can imagine will be brought up, from who plays who to where they play to the business aspect of it. It’s all going to be on the table. We’ve got a lot of work to do."
I think we all know Mike Slive just wants to see if he can take every spot in an eventual college football Final Four:
"Knowing that any team in our league with one or two losses is one of the top two teams in the country, then I'd have to think very hard about the plus-one absent other kinds of changes. There may be other changes that are laid out on the table that need to be clearly thought out. But we'll go to the table with the plus-one very much in mind."
Slive's gone from reacting to Auburn's 2004 snub by forming a renegade mini-playoff faction with ACC commish John Swofford (which was hooted down by other conference bosses) to saying he'd prefer stipulations first. That'll happen when you beat them at their own game.
Meet the five sports fans who just might stir up enough trouble to fix college football's postseason:
These days, you need a scorecard to keep track of all the investigations the PAC is helping stir up. NCAA president Mark Emmert set up a task force that hurriedly recommended disbanding the NCAA's licensing subcommittee and now favors subjecting bowls to more financial oversight. All told, the PAC has fired off 13 legal complaints against BCS-related entities, not to mention more than 200 public records requests.
College football will have a playoff one day. NCAA president Mark Emmert has called it "inevitable." The move for a plus-one game has gained support from nearly every FBS conference. The public overwhelmingly supports the institution of a legitimate postseason tournament.
Since gradual and eventual success is all but guaranteed and whoever finally gets it done will gain everlasting praise, now's the perfect time for Congress to get involved:
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) will announce the formation of the Congressional Collegiate Sports Caucus at a press conference TODAY.
The new caucus will examine pressing issues facing college sports, especially issues that undermine the integrity of some of our nation's most prestigious, tax funded academic institutions. The event will feature the announcement of a national campaign to push for a playoff in college football. This effort includes the introduction of legislation that will advance this cause.
If this helps, then great. Personal political views aside, I'm for just about anything that delivers an actual postseason to the country's finest sport. We can leave it at that.
That's one highly possible end game if the Mountain West somehow achieves its desired BCS AQ status despite losing Boise State, TCU, BYU, Utah and San Diego State.
The Mountain West will request an exemption from the Bowl Championship Series that would give the Mountain West champion an automatic spot in the BCS after the 2012 and 2013 regular seasons, according to Brian Murphy of the Idaho Statesman.
The Mountain West has met the performance thresholds necessary to request the waiver. Now, it's up to a BCS Presidential Oversight Committee to approve the exemption. The committee consists of one president or chancellor from each of the 11 FBS conferences and Notre Dame's president. The Mountain West will need nine votes from the committee in order to get approved.
MWC school Boise State's President Bob Kustra was a member of the committe but was replaced now that the Boise will be leaving the MWC for the Big East. New Mexico's David Schmidly replaced him.
Former Penn State President Graham Spanier was the chairman of the committee until he was fired by the school over Penn State's recent sexual abuse scandal.
According to BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock said there is no timetable for a decision.
For more on this development, visit Mountain West Connection.
If you're keeping a really weird score card, four of the five biggest conferences are now on board with a plus-one game being used to determine the champion at the highest level of college football. The SEC and ACC have supported the idea for years -- though it's reasonable to wonder whether the SEC's changed its mind, now that it can get two teams into the title game this way -- and the Big 12 and Pac-12 have recently joined.
At this year's IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, the Big 12 voted to support the plus-one format, while Stanford athletic director Bob Bowlsby says his conference is ready. And he has "bowls" in his name!
Smaller conferences will support change any way they can get it, leaving one major conference that's yet to throw its weight behind one extra round of college football. At the same conference, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany lamented that a plus-one would lead to calls for a full college football playoff.
Yes, that would be so very awful.
It's not like you want to go out of your way to make Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany the face of the anti-playoff movement*, but he makes it pretty easy.
@Andy_Staples Moderator asks why playoff can work for every CFB division except FBS. The other commissioners stare at Delany and make him answer.
* There is no anti-playoff movement.
The SEC tried to avoid this scenario, but other conferences just wouldn't let it. In 2008, SEC commissioner Mike Slive and ACC associate John Swofford attempted to talk the rest of college football into adopting a plus-one postseason format, which would essentially turn the top four teams into playoff teams. It was shot down without much consideration by other conferences.
Former Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen was among the strongest playoff opponents, often referring to playoff scenarios as impossible. But he's since been replaced by the future-minded Larry Scott, who's reportedly been interested in a refined postseason. And there's this, from Sunday:
In case we've had any notions about reported BCS proposals being good for the little guys, all we really need to do is look at who's doing the proposing:
According to a person in the room at Monday's BCS meeting, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany pitched a model whereby only the No. 1 and No. 2 teams would be matched in the postseason. That would basically eliminate the other BCS bowl tie-ins in the 14-year-old system.
The proposal essentially is a roll back to the old Bowl Alliance that was in effect from 1995-97. On its face, the proposal seemingly benefits the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12 and Pac-12 the most.
The BCS as we know it will only last for two more years. This is not news, as a new contract must be agreed upon for 2014 and on, but the construction of the next championship game occupation could look quite different than what we have at the moment. Gene Wojciechowski reports, there's an informal proposal among BCS leadership to give up all BCS games besides the title game.
That would free the Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, and Orange to invite their own pairings. Each would still work to maintain some conference allegiances -- the Rose would still want the Big Ten and Pac-12 champions -- but none would be required to take any teams beyond those obligated by its conference deals.
More importantly, it would also do away with automatic BCS qualification for the winners of anointed conferences.
Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas and BCS patriarch Roy Kramer have supported eliminating the collective's AQ provisions. Out of the goodness of their hearts and only for the sake of the nation's smaller programs, of course. There's speculation (there is!) that this is all a move to break up the college football postseason monopoly as Congress grows more and more interested by the year.
The idea of eliminating automatic qualifier status from the next round of BCS deals has popped up a lot lately. New Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas told CBS Sports he supports eliminating AQ rights for conferences, a move he thinks would slow down conference "gerrymandering" for BCS bowl bids.
Now former SEC commissioner Roy Kramer, the so-called father of the BCS, is mulling the switch. Appearing on the Paul Finebaum show, Kramer considered the possibility.
@dennisdoddcbs Kramer suggests elimination of AQ status. "Could be controversial." Wow, if Kramer sez it must be gaining traction.
He did go on to defend the BCS, saying it's opened up opportunities for Boise State and others and has increased college football interest. So it's not an outright call for overhaul by any means, but if perhaps the BCS' oldest fan is calling for a significant change, it's a good sign for the future of the sport's postseason. Not in the short term, because this would mean Boise State could be screwed out of a bigger bowl even if it wins a power conference, but in the long term.
If such a rule were to have been implemented for this season, for instance, Boise State wouldn't necessarily be a BCS doubtful after having lost only one game.
Our own Sean Keeley of Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician fame put together the following deconstruction of college football's championship arrangement. You don't get to enjoy many perfect things in the average day, so you might want to watch it twice.
There are two ways to read Utah athletic director Chris Hill's sudden fondness for the bowl system, but modified by a plus-one game, after the Utes and the state of Utah itself have spent years agitating for a full college football playoff. Either he's won the battle over himself and now loves Big Brother, or the beginnings of a playoff system really are as inevitable as NCAA president Mark Emmert once predicted.
Yes, college football's championship process is asymmetrically crooked in every direction, like a broken fractal, and this New York Times piece does a fine job illuminating the effects big-name school branding can have on top 25 polls. Teams like Ohio State and Notre Dame get the benefit of the doubt over your Mississippi States and your Big East schools.
(Referring to everything in the second person plural: solid sportswriter tactic.)
The 2009 title game might not be the best example, though. The polls did the world's tender stomachs a favor by keeping upstart Cincinnati away from that Alabama monster.
The strongest resistance to any change to the current BCS monstrosity format for choosing a national championship has always comes from the Pac-12 and the Big Ten. That's not entirely fair -- the Pac-12 and the Big Ten fought the BCS to begin with, preferring to stick with the Rose Bowl, until reality prevailed on them.
But now, if a report in The Seattle Times is to be believed, the resistance to at least instituting a plus-one might be crumbling. Athletics directors in the two conferences have apparently thrown their weight behind the idea, as long as the Rose Bowl is protected from having to host such meager games.
The proposed format the ADs favored in a straw vote calls for adding a BCS bowl, probably the Cotton in Dallas, and seeding the top four teams, which would play semifinal games in two BCS bowls on a rotating basis. Presumably, the current BCS formula still would be used to rank teams. Winners would advance to a title game in what has become known as a "plus-one" format.
In this format, the Rose Bowl wouldn't host semifinal games in exchange for the right to preserve an annual matchup of the Big Ten and Pac-12, but would host the title game every five years.
There's still a long way to go before this becomes anything like a formal proposal, most notably the fact that the even more anti-playoff presidents will still have their say. But the fact that officials in the two leagues who have traditionally formed the core of the pro-status quo faction would move toward a playoff is still significant. If the Pac-12 and Big Ten can be convinced to go along with a plus-one system, convincing some of the other conferences shouldn't be that hard.
The BCS and the Justice Department had their long-anticipated meeting Thursday. Bill Hancock sat down with the DOJ for 90 minutes to discuss concerns about fairness and anti-trust legislation. Hancock came away from the meetings "confident."
"I went into it confident that the BCS complies with the law, and I left the meeting even more confident," Hancock said. ". . . They asked good questions. They asked how the BCS operates, and talked about access and finances. I gave them some history.
"We had an opportunity to explain what we do and why it doesn't pose any antitrust concerns . . . that it improved access (to top-tier bowls) and attendance and the (championship) game is much more of a national game and fans have benefited.
Hancock also slyly mentioned "No. 1 and 2 have met 13 of 13 years by our standards," which is a sneaky way of throwing that out there, especially since the BCS' "standards" of what constitutes the No. 1 team and the No. 2 team have not always been eye-to-eye with other voting bodies.
A Justice spokesperson said there would be no comment from the department. Alrighty.
For more college football, visit SB Nation’s NCAA Football hub.
After announcing that he would file an antitrust lawsuit against the BCS, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is now seeking law firms to join his case against the football entity. The Deseret News reported that Shurtleff's office filed a request of information on a government website designed for law firms. Readers are directed to this link to see the filing.
From there it is possible to read the 11-page filing, which includes a list of questions to be answered. Outside of fee arrangements, the questions ask if the answering law firm has had experience litigating the BCS or similar institutions.
Respondents have until Aug. 8 to submit their paperwork, so we shouldn't expect anything a legal team to appear overnight and challenge the BCS immediately. However, the BCS will also need to look out for the United States Department of Justice, which will hold a meeting with BCS officials on June 30.
Just don't get any hopes up of a change to the current bowl setup. It will likely take years for anything to come of this.
For more college football, visit SB Nation’s NCAA Football hub.
So when the Justice Department requested a meeting with the BCS for some time this summer, most probably assumed that would mean late July or early August or something. Turns out they're actually meeting on the very first day of the 2011 summer, with CBS Sports reporting a Tuesday meeting.
The nature of the meeting is apparently a voluntary visit by Hancock to describe how the BCS system works to Department officials. By no means is it yet an antitrust investigation, though the Department has publicly pondered the fairness of the bizarre method used to determine the NCAA's premier sport, to which NCAA president Mark Emmert shrugged.
If anything is to come of this or something like it, it probably won't be for years. Go ahead and assume you'll be mad about one thing or another this bowl season, because it's good for you.
For more college football, visit SB Nation’s NCAA Football hub.
One regent from the University of New Mexico is encouraging the Lobos to join the Utah Attorney General's suit against the BCS. This is just one regent at one small school, but it is enough to get people somewhat excited about the prospects of a legal showdown between the BCS and schools who accuse it of violating antitrust law.
While NCAA President Mark Emmert has responded to the Department of Justice's inquiry into the BCS, that has not quelled concerns over college football's postseason. The Justice Department has requested and will receive a meeting with the BCS this summer. This doesn't appear to be anything more than a preliminary examination of the system the BCS has set up. A federal investigation of the BCS system is not in the discussion yet.
BCS officials want to show that its system fits in with existing antitrust legislation. Though the BCS has made changes in recent years to open up its postseason games to teams that play in non-automatic qualifying conferences, critics of this system still aren't satisfied.
A playoff system like the Football Championship Series is often brought up as a replacement for the BCS, as the previous system still relied on conference tie-ins to bowl games and the polls establishing the national championship.
For more college football, visit SB Nation’s NCAA Football hub.
NCAA president Mark Emmert is throwing resources at the NCAA’s bowl licensing subcommittee, we remind you, in the form of a Task Force (capitalized and everything!) mandated to investigate the process. The Association announced the Task Force(!) members yesterday, meaning it’s time for the internet to fire up the public records request generators and figure out how many of these guys already took free stuff from a BCS game.
The Fiesta Bowl has been dodging bullets left and right this offseason and has survived the storm relatively scot-free. On Wednesday, the NCAA granted the Fiesta Bowl's license for 2012, though it did come with a probationary period. If bowl officials stay out of trouble and complete the requirements set forth, the Fiesta Bowl should live to fight another day.
The ruling, handed down for both the Fiesta and Insight Bowls, requires officials to meet with the NCAA Bowl Licensing Subcommittee in 2012 to present its progress report and detail the management changes put in place in the aftermath of this year's investigation. While the committee was troubled by the allegations, it was comfortable enough with the plan Fiesta Bowl officials presented to re-license it for this coming season.
"The subcommittee was greatly concerned with the apparent lack of oversight and integrity associated with previous Fiesta Bowl management," said Carparelli. "Considering the business model changes and new direction of the bowl, along with the actions from the BCS, the subcommittee felt comfortable with reaffirming the Fiesta and Insight licenses on a probationary status."
After all the investigations and allegations, the Fiesta Bowl is back and ready to rumble again as part of the BCS, as long as officials keep their noses clean while on probation.
For more local perspective on the bowl's future, visit SB Nation Arizona.
NCAA president Mark Emmert responded to the Department of Justice’s inquiry about the BCS and possibility of a playoff system. As you can imagine, Emmert’s response was akin to shrugging his shoulders and saying “not our problem.” It’s passing the buck, in a way, as Emmert notes the Football Bowl Subdivision member institutions must propose an alternative to the system.
Here is an excerpt of Emmert’s response to the DOJ’s most basic question: Why not a playoff?
“Unless the membership decides to discontinue the existing BCS system and formally proposes creation of a championship for FBS institutions, there is no directive for the Association to establish a playoff. As noted, the FBS has never offered for consideration and vote a proposal to create an NCAA FBS championship.”
When asked whether the BCS is the best choice and whether any alternatives exist, Emmert responded with a single sentence that, essentially, said “go ask the BCS that one.” You can read the full letter, in PDF form, here.
I was wondering when this inquiry would get wacky and it appears we’ve hit that point. A DOJ inquiry seemed odd in the first place, and the whole ordeal seems to be little more than a fun public relations war Emmert refuses to touch.
For more college football, visit SB Nation’s NCAA Football hub.
Due to the obvious benefits associated with being a part of the Bowl Championship Series, the Mountain West Conference has been trying to become a BCS league for quite some time. The imminent departures of power schools Utah, BYU, and TCU put a serious dent in their quest for admission into sports' ultimate old boys network, the Mountain West is adding some new teams that will keep them in the hunt for a BCS spot.
Boise State, Hawaii, Fresno State, and Nevada all have strong football programs, and their additions will keep the Mountain West the seventh best football conference in college football at absolute worst. They have an outside shot at getting into the BCS with these new schools, but they'll have to get in upon appeal. There are three criteria that conferences have to meet to get an automatic seat at the BCS table, and the Mountain West would meet two of the three if their numbers were calculated with Boise State and TCU in the conference, but with Utah and BYU out.
1. The conference must finish among the top six in a listing of the average of each conference's highest ranked team at the end of each regular season.
2. The conference must finish among the top six in a listing of the average computer rankings of every conference's full roster of teams at the end of each regular season.
3. The conference must accumulate a score of at least 50 percent of the highest ranking conference's score in the Adjusted Top-25 Performance Ranking, which measures how many teams each conference placed in the BCS top 25 and adjusts for conference size.
Criteria No. 2 is the big hang-up for the Mountain West, as SB Nation's MWC blog Mountain West Connection explains:
Category two which is the average of all the teams in the league is what is holding the Mountain West down with struggling teams like Wyoming, UNLV and New Mexico.
Even with the bottom teams hurting the overall strength of the league, and looking just at the numbers the Mountain West is in a good position to gain a waiver because they are ahead of the Big East and ACC in two separate categories, but it will still come down to a petition to get in.
Of course, Congress might make sure that the BCS is not even a thing before the Mountain West gets a chance to play with the big boys, but that's a completely different animal. As long as the BCS exists, the Mountain West conference wants to be a part of it, and they have an excellent case for joining.
For more on the Mountain West Conference and this developing story, check out Mountain West Connection.
As expected, the BCS presidential oversight committee has decided to sanction the Fiesta Bowl following a lengthy investigation into hilariously widespread corruption among the game's organizers and connected politicians. And in even more predictable news, the bowl is getting off so easy that other BCS game organizations may well wonder whether they haven't been a little light-handed with their own bribes.
The Fiesta Bowl will cough up a fine of $1 million, an ominous-sounding number that's really about half of what UConn lost traveling to Arizona last January to get pantsed by Oklahoma on national television. Checks and balances in the form of additional administrators will also be installed, and overall everyone's just promising real, real hard to make sure this never happens again. And ... that's it. Ever feel like you're in the wrong line of work, gentle readers?
Still to come, of course, is the NCAA bowl licensing committee's decision on whether to credential the Fiesta, but the prospect of an eventual national championship game in the Cotton Bowl has dimmed, for the moment. Better luck next time, Jerry Jones!
The NCAA has responded snippily to reports of a letter from the Justice Department on the subject of the Bowl Championship Series and whether the governing body has looked into a playoff for FBS football. In the brief statement, NCAA vice president of communications Bob Williams says the NCAA will respond shortly, but to the Department itself:
When we actually receive the letter from the Department of Justice we will respond to its questions directly. It should be noted that President Emmert consistently has said, including in the New York Times article, that the NCAA is willing to help create a playoff format for Football Bowl Subdivision football if the FBS membership makes that decision.
We have the full text of the letter right here, sir! The NCAA knows it doesn't have PR on its side on this one, and is thus wise to operate one-on-one instead of letting this continue to air out in public.
For more college football, visit SB Nation's NCAA Football hub.
Christine Varney, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for antitrust, sent a letter to NCAA president Mark Emmert about the Bowl Championship Series, essentially asking why the BCS shouldn't be considering in violation of antitrust laws. This didn't quite come out of nowhere, as Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff has previously met with the Justice Department about the matter, and Varney cites several other experts who've joined the cause.
Varney asks Emmert why FBS college football doesn't have a playoff, when other NCAA sports do.
The full text of the letter:
Dear Dr. Emmert:
Serious questions continue to arise suggesting that the current Bowl Championship Series (DCS) system may not be conducted consistent with the competition principles expressed in the federal antitrust laws. The Attorney General of Utah has announced an intention to file an antitrust lawsuit against the BCS. In addition,we recently received a request to open an investigation of the BCS from a group of twenty-one professors, a copy of which is attached. Other prominent individuals also have publicly encouraged the Antitrust Division to take action against the BCS, arguing that it violates the antitrust laws.
On March 2, 2011, the New York Times reported that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was "willing to help create a playoff format to decide a national championship for the top level of college football." In that context, it would be helpful for us to understand your views and/or plans on the following:
1. Why does the Football Bowl Subdivision not have a playoff, when so many other NCAA sports have NCAA-run playoffs or championships?
2. What steps, if any, has the NCAA taken to create a playoff among Football Bowl Subdivision programs before or during your tenure? To the extent any steps were taken, why were they not successful? What steps does the NCAA plan to take to create a playoff at this time?
3. Have you determined that there are aspects of the BCS system that do not serve the interests of fans, colleges, universities, and players? To what extent could an alternative system better serve those interests?
Your views would be relevant in helping us to determine the best course of action with regard to the BCS. Therefore, we thank you in advance for your prompt attention to this matter.
So what does all this mean? If a suit is launched against the BCS, Dan Wetzel, for one, thinks it could succeedwhether a judge finds the system to violate antitrust law or not.
For more college football, visit SB Nation's NCAA Football hub.
Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff will file suit against the BCS after years of threatening (literally!) to do so. This all started when the Utah Utes were denied a shot at the national title in 2008 despite going 13-0, finishing No. 2 after obliterating the Alabama Crimson Tide in the Sugar Bowl. Shurtleff says he expects other state attorneys general to join his effort.
This isn't about bragging rights, it isn't some kind of frivolous deal, there are serious antitrust violations that are harming taxpayer-funded institutions to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Shurtleff had previously met with the Justice Department to attempt to activate its involvement. His timing in announcing this suit couldn't have been better, considering it's breaking on the heels of the NCAA investigation into the Fiesta Bowl.
BCS executive Bill Hancock, of course, was ready with a retort, telling USA Today the parameters of a hypothetical antitrust lawsuit wouldn't apply to the BCS.
For more on Utah sports, join Block U. For more college football, visit SB Nation's NCAA Football hub.
The Fiesta Bowl has fired CEO John Junker after a report by the Bowl's oversight committee found evidence of lavish spending, political dealings well beyond the scope of a non-profit organization, and inappropriate political donations made by employees of the Fiesta Bowl who were then reimbursed with bogus bonus payments.
In a report released on the Fiesta Bowl's website on Tuesday afternoon, the committee explained the firing was a result of three key instances of mismanagement that occurred during Junker's tenure.
• An apparent scheme to reimburse at least $46,539 in improper campaign contributions.
• A flawed initial investigation and an apparent conspiracy to conceal the reimbursement scheme from the Board of Directors and state officials.
• Unauthorized and excessive compensation, non-business and inappropriate expenditures and inappropriate gifts.
That "unauthorized and excessive compensation' and other inappropriate expenditures included paying to shuttle around Arizona politicians and throw private parties for them. The parties were not limited to politicians, however: Junker himself threw a $33,000 party for himself for his fiftieth birthday, flying his family and bowl officials to Pebble Beach at the Bowl's expense. The Bowl also covered wedding travel expenses totaling $13,000 for Junker's assistant.
The most entertaining expenditure and subsequent testimony surrounds Junker's visit to a Phoenix strip club where he and the security consultant for the Fiesta Bowl spent $1200 of the Bowl's money. This was his explanation (via the NY Times:)
According to the report, Junker explained to investigators: “We are in the business where big strong athletes are known to attend these types of establishments. It was important for us to visit, and we certainly conducted business.”
Big strong athletes do visit strip clubs, so it's hard to argue with that element of Junker's logic. There was evidently enough corruption elsewhere to dismiss Junker outright according to the Fiesta Bowl, with the organization now vowing to clean up its image through a series of internal reforms.
So Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has decided he's going to fix college football by privatizing its postseason. We've learned by now that Cuban isn't one of those crazy, flighty rich guys -- he's one of those crazy, obsessed rich guys. So the fact that he's founded a company in an effort to kill the BCS isn't a surprise.
It's just that the name of the company is so awesome. Radical Football, LLC. It doesn't just sound like a video game; it sounds like a video game sequel that tried to use roman numerals to signify which edition it was and got itself confused.
It probably isn't too shocking a revelation that most bowl games are concerned with just one thing, selling their tickets and getting good TV ratings. (Well I guess that's two things.) So maybe we shouldn't be so shocked to learn that after six Ohio State players were found to have received improper benefits and that they would be punished by the NCAA, that the Sugar Bowl decided they needed to go into full lobby mode to keep these players eligible for the their game.
Sugar Bowl CEO Paul Hoolahan, being the shrewd business man that he is, found out about the infractions well before the general public, and knew he had to save his event from becoming monumentally less interesting.
"I made the point that anything that could be done to preserve the integrity of this year's game, we would greatly appreciate it," Hoolahan told The Columbus Dispatch. "That appeal did not fall on deaf ears, and I'm extremely excited about it, that the Buckeyes are coming in at full strength and with no dilution."
I don't know if you can blame old Paul for fighting to keep his product appealing, after all he has been saddled these past three years with two non BCS teams, two blowouts, and a Cincinnati team without a head coach. Wouldn't you fight to keep the first really exciting match up between two nationally known programs you have had in years?
The Sugar Bowl made a business decision in choosing an Ohio State team with Terrelle Pryor, and they are simply trying to protect their investment. Because nobody but nobody wants to see Jon Bauserman lead his team out of the tunnel in New Orleans, including television sponsors.
What this should teach us all is this: when we are talking about a few hundred dollars and some tattoos, the NCAA rules are clear and rigid, when we are talking about millions of dollars of ad and ticket revenue, well we can probably fudge them a little.
Friends, it seems as though we've stumbled upon a true Festivus miracle. This is one of the strangest, funniest stories I've seen all year. It starts strange, and gets stranger.
We mentioned last week that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is exploring the possibility of introducing a playoff system to college football. On his blog, he lamented that, in fact, three people had already registered a method patent for a college football playoff system, which Cuban describes as his first roadblock.
I understand that ideas can be patented, but it's strange to me that a patent for something as simple as a playoff system could be awarded. Anyway, that isn't the strangest part.
The best fans in the land are Nebraska fans. If you don't believe me, just ask them, and they'll tell you the same. Famous for their devotion, Cornhusker fans travel politely and in great numbers, so if they're declining the opportunity to go to their bowl game, you know things are bad for the bowls' revenues this season. And they are bad.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has about 3,900 unsold tickets to the Dec. 30 Holiday Bowl in San Diego, which is rare for the Huskers, who are known for packing fans into home and away stadiums.
Nebraska fans would like you to know they said "No thank you," which is an important distinction given their rep. Nebraska's doing very well relative to other schools in selling their tickets. Michigan sold only 7,000 of their 12,500 allotted tickets for the Gator Bowl. West Virginia, another traditional ticket-gobbling horde, hasn't sold half of their Champs Sports Bowl tickets. Iowa, UConn, and Oklahoma are ganging up to depress the market for all non-BCS Title game Arizona bowl games, a market already suffering from dramatic price hikes.
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says a lot of things that win a lot of attention. Some get attention because they're ignorant (calling Nuggets players "thugs"), while others get attention because they're actual good ideas. He famously made a run for the Chicago Cubs -- a mediocre team that could have only benefited from some new energy at the top -- last year. After the comments he made on Thursday, it seems as though he's found a new project: instituting a playoff system in college football.
Cuban said he has talked to two athletic directors from BCS conferences who were extremely enthusiastic about the idea. He intends to contact several school presidents and state senators in the coming weeks to determine whether the idea is worth pursuing.
Without specifics, it's hard to say whether Cuban has a good idea on his hands, but Mr. Jacobi over at CBS Sports makes a good point:
Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, a tiresome man with the stage presence of a perpetually irritated owl putting on its very best Commodus act, did some mic-grabbing Wednesday at the IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum on the subject of the BCS haves and have-nots. He'd like to take this time to remind college football's institutions currently relegated to mid-major status that in the eyes of the law, young man, you're still a minor, and that as long as you live under his roof, you will abide by his rules:
If you think you can continue to push for more money, more access to the Rose Bowl, or Sugar Bowl. I have tremendous respect for Boise and TCU. ... I think they are tremendous teams that can beat any team in the country on a given day. I think the only question is, 'Does one team's 12-0 and another team's 12-0 equate?' And that's where the discussion plays out, not whether or not they're elite teams or deserving access to the bowl system.
Oh, Bill Hancock, the man the BCS didn't hire to speak for the BCS because the BCS doesn't exist. You are a valiant man, sent into battle against axe-wielding college football fans in your underwear, armed only with a banana and a skimpy pair of cheap white cotton boxers to repel the blows of his critics.
The results are bloody, but you must admire the valor. From USA Today's Hancock-penned defense of the BCS.
We've been called communists, a cartel, crooks — and worse — but that's malarkey.
Hooey! Fooferaw! Hoodilly Stew! Everyone from the squarest old bluenose to the hip-hippiest shieks and shebas knows the BCS is the bees' knees! Now where's my bathtub gin? I gotta get my favorite gal ossified before she closes the bank on me!
The highest level of college football can't have a playoff because that would devalue the regular season. That's been the BCS advocate's go-to talking point for years, but one BCS ranking factor appears to have taken the line as a marching order.
CBS Sports' Jerry Palm discovered an error in Wes Colley's BCS rankings that incorrectly jumped the LSU Tigers to No. 10, ahead of the Boise St. Broncos. Colley's data set failed to include a FCS playoff game between Appalachian State and Western Illinois, which all the other BCS formulas accounted for.
How could that game possibly affect top-ten standings? LSU beat the Florida Gators, who beat Appalachian State. So removing the Mountaineers' win over Western Illinois from the equation messed with Florida's rankings in such a way that the ripple effect made LSU look better than it should.
You may already know that the 2010 Fiesta Bowl features the Connecticut Huskies, unranked in the Week 15 USA Today poll and the final BCS rankings, and the first such team to be snubbed in the last BCS top 25 and still make it to a BCS bowl game. And you may have already surmised that the presence of possibly the worst BCS team ever may make this the worst BCS bowl ever.
But is it, really? There are more than a few other candidates.
The Big East was bound to provide the BCS with a champion seemingly undeserving of its automatic bid. However now that four-loss UConn has emerged as the Big East Champion, it's time to start asking the obvious question...are they the worst team ever to compete in the Bowl Championship Series?
First off, there's the fact that they are only the 2nd four-loss team in the history of the BCS. Not a great start.
They are, for the time being, unranked. If that holds, it will be a first. Again, not a great sign.
This season they only scored ten points on Greg Robinson's Michigan defense, lost to the MAC's Temple, lost to 4-8 Rutgers and got shutout by 6-6 Louisville. Once again, really not good.
So we know what UConn has to offer, let's compare to some of the other contenders (pre-bowl records):
This is a picture of Jeff Anderson's laptop. It's open to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. It may look just like the computer you are on right now! So who's Jeff Anderson?
Jeff Anderson is one half of "Anderson & Hester" ... which is one of the six BCS computer rankings.
If you assumed that the BCS used a collection of super computers that sit in an all-white, dust-free room and calculate Will Hunting-like formulas, Playbook's report (Game of Numbers: How the BCS Rules College Football), will change your thinking -- did you know that at least three of the six computers use Excel, C++ and Fortran -- a programming language created in the 1950s -- to churn out the BCS rankings?
Wes Colley runs his calculations in a database from his home in Alabama. Jeff Sagarin works from his home in southern Indiana, using Fortran, a once popular program used by old-school mathematicians.
Peter Wolfe compiles his rankings baked in C++. Anderson and Hester use a complex spreadsheet and an ordinary HP laptop in Southern California. "When we started, it took Excel half an hour to calculate the rankings," Anderson says. "Now it takes a fraction of second."
From there, a quick double-check of the math is in order before releasing the latest BCS rankings to the public.
Gordon Gee, esteemed president of An Ohio State University, whose football team is perhaps best known on the national athletics scene for losing back-to-back national championship games by margins that weren't particularly cozy, would deny undefeated Boise State and TCU teams a slot in the BCS Championship:
In an interview with The Associated Press, the president at the university with the largest athletic program in the country said that TCU and Boise State do not face a difficult enough schedule to play in the national championship game.
As the presiding figurehead over a squad ranked 59th nationally in strength of schedule, Gordon Gee would know from undeserving, we suppose, but why should the Broncos and Horned Frogs be denied the chance to embarrass themselves on a national stage, just like Ohio State?
SB Nation's Mountain West Connection picks apart an interview BCS head honcho Bill Hancock gave to a Phoenix radio station, and finds the cartel's Executive Director to be about as adept at doubletalk as his prized system is at dealing with multiple undefeated teams. Here's Hancock, talking about the tweaks over time that have refined the BCS into what he sees as an efficient sorting machine:
I think one thing is that all those changes early on led to a little bit of a lack of public understanding of how it all worked. Now that we've settled in and had the last five or six years of the same, I do think that the public is coming to a better understanding of it which is a good thing."
And here's MWC, reminding Mr. Hancock just where that lack of understanding came from:
The reason the fans never understood the BCS is because the computer formulas are still kept secret from the public (the BCS does not check the math either) and the formula to determine what qualifies a league to gain access was just released this summer for the first time in the 13 year history of the BCS.
Sure, at this point it seems unlikely that either TCU or Boise State will get a chance to play in the BCS National Championship Game this year. Neither team has the strength of schedule to get it just by going undefeated, and both are likely to be less appealing than a one-loss SEC champion, be it Auburn or Alabama.
But what if Oregon loses, or both Auburn and Alabama fall out of the race? That's what BCS Evolution is wondering, too, and our BCS expert comes up with two possible narratives.
If TCU or Boise State go to the BCS championship game, the big conferences will want a playoff to weed them out in the early rounds.
The idea of this argument is that the major conferences support the current system to exclude potential outsiders from championship consideration. Based on this premise, if TCU or Boise State make the championship game the BCS will have failed this, and these conferences will have no reason to fight a playoff.
If TCU or Boise State go to the BCS championship game it will prove the system works, removing the need for a playoff.This is certainly the angle (BCS executive director) Bill Hancock would take. This would put a serious dent in arguments that it is impossible for teams from outside the automatic qualifying conferences to earn their way to the championship game. This could be further argued by pointing out that the MWC is on pace to be considered for an automatic qualification for 2012 and 2013.
I would tend to agree with the former verdict — sure, the BCS tossing a bone to the scrappy mid-majors once in a while would quiet the playoff clamor, but the big conferences want the prestige and the cash that comes with national championships as often as possible.
You can vote on which verdict is right at BCS Evolution.
It's still too early to freak out about the current BCS Standings. In a perfect world, the BCS would hold off on releasing any of these standings until the end of the season. But since we're here and the BCS Standings are out there anyway, we might as well take a peek at what the college football postseason might look like.
[peeks]
Oh, GOD. Have you ever imagined the opposite of a perfect world? Crimson and Cream Machine gives us a taste of the bowl matchups if the BCS standings stay the same:
National Championship Game: Oklahoma vs. Oregon
Rose Bowl: Michigan State vs. Boise State
Sugar Bowl: Auburn vs. Ohio State
Orange Bowl: Florida State vs. LSU
Fiesta Bowl: TCU vs. West Virginia
I know it's early, and lord willing, the country will be spared a Rose Bowl between Michigan State and Boise State, TCU/WVU in the Fiesta, or Oklahoma/Oregon for the title. But even the possibility of all this is kind of infuriating. I mean, in a civilized society, West Virginia and FSU shouldn't be part of any "championship" series.
PlayoffPac is an organization dedicated to the abolition of the BCS and installation of a college football playoff by the government, and they're going about their mission like one would any other political campaign. This is nice, because college football is not at all oversupplied with shrill malarkey as it is (greatest resource: the state of Arkansas).
There's a "Conservative Case for College Football Reform" on their website, but there's also this:
[College] football reform is Congress’s business because it is the people’s business.
Careful, PlayoffPac! That smacks strongly of collectivism.
The SEC Media Days has gone retro for 2010, or at least that's the way I prefer to think of a complete internet outage at the SEC's annual media circus. It helps keep the killing rage at bay, and turns an ISP meltdown into a festive, stylish ode to our journalistic forebears who had to work without a functional internet connection.
BCS head Bill Hancock's appearance coincided with this complete internet outage, and just as well. He labored through a regurgitation of the BCS's standard talking points with a PowerPoint presentation.
It's still a bit premature to write obituaries for the Big 12...but at the pace a possible Pac-10 expansion is going, things are moving rapidly towards the demise of (at least) one of the six power conferences. And that begs the question: how exactly did we get here?
Yahoo!'s Dan Wetzel provides an excellent breakdown and dates the moment when things began to fall apart for the Big 12 to 2008, when league commissioner Dan Beebe sided with the Big 10 and Pac-10 in turning down an offer to create a plus-one playoff system in college football. Indeed, while the constant refrain has been that we as fans are stuck with the BCS "because of the money", the (obvious) reality is that a college football playoff system would be much more of a cash cow. As Wetzel notes, Big 10 commissioner Jim Delany conceded in congressional testimony that a 16-team playoff would garner about four times the revenue as the BCS system.
So why did the Big 12, Big 10 and Pac-10 conspire to kill it? Well, according to Wetzel, the Big 12 did so because they were dopes. But the Big 10 and Pac-10 apparently wanted to position themselves to take a bigger cut further down the line. If the major conferences had come together on a plus-one playoff system a few years ago, the revenue would have been split more or less evenly between them. By voting down the system, the Big 10 and Pac-10 bought time to aggressively pursue expansion, and set up their own television networks that create a new system of haves and have-nots in the college football landscape. If the two manage to cannibalize the Big 12, with the SEC likely to follow suit and do so to the ACC as well, these new mega-conferences will be positioned to rake in monumental sums if and when a playoff ever does come to college football.
So, in short, the Big 10 and Pac-10 were playing chess, and the Big 12 didn't even know there was a game going on.
The general opinion of the college football blogosphere regarding bowl bloat is a laissez-faire one. My reading of the zeitgeist is "let them eat cake in Shreveport" if someone—these days usually ESPN—is willing to pay for it. The continued existence of bowl games in New Mexico, and Boise paying teams that participate in them a combined total of $1.5 million, is an economic miracle along the same lines as perpetually rising home prices that keep aloft an ever-more-frantic housing market and -- oh wait, that didn't work out very well after all.
With the quiet announcement that the requirements for bowl eligibility are now "have a bowl that is interested in you" and nothing more, it's time to call a stop on bowl mania. This is the point where bowl executives are packaging up Somalia and Juarez and selling them to unsuspecting local populaces without disclosing their contents.
Scrubby bowls harm small college football teams coming and going. The scrabble for six wins (or, now, the prettiest five wins) causes low-end teams to load up on I-AA schools when they could be fattening their wallets in marginally more watchable contests against big schools. The bowls themselves end up huge money sinks because bowls require schools to buy thousands of tickets they know will go unsold. Yours truly in December:
Since a sizable cut of their guarantee is being fed right back to the bowl in the form of ticket guarantees that aren't coming close to being met even for BCS games, the result is a net loss for everyone except the bowl operators. (One reason you'll never see this story on ESPN: the network now operates a half-dozen bowl games of little repute.) The MAC received a $2.1 million kickback from the BCS last year; bowl games the conference actually played in lost more money than they brought in.
Bowls 25 through 37 are parasites rather than fun junkets for underappreciated gladiators from Division I's obscurer conferences. Teams like Western Michigan are all but guaranteed to take a significant loss when more than half of their payout is eaten up by mandatory ticket purchases at exorbitant rates. Western Michigan dares not turn down a bowl bid, however, because it would strip them of critical practice time and crush recruiting when other MAC schools crow that, even if the Broncos get invited to the Mongolia Bowl, they won't go.
Three steps to minimize these perverse incentives:
Whereas my rattling on about guarantee games and horrible scheduling incentives has the potential to drain money out of the system, these steps are either revenue-neutral or actually profitable for beleaguered athletic departments facing hard choices. Therefore they are feasible. Six or seven bowl games would probably evaporate, but no one would miss them, especially not the athletic departments currently shelling out to keep them afloat.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
So the NCAA's new president isn't Michael Adams, which is displeasing to Georgia fans but should get a thumbs up from everyone else. The new guy is Washington president Mark Emmert, and he's going to get right on something or another right away:
"We want to continue the reforms that Myles and his colleagues got started," Emmert said. "I do not have specific academic reform I'll be championing in the next 30 days. … I don't foresee revolutionary change in academic … it's an evolution (from) where we are now."
(Questionable ellipses in original. Academic what? Don't know.) All right, then. Nothing on the docket.
With nothing about to explode, the inevitable first question: what about a college football playoff? Before he was selected, Emmert gave a quote that's been cited all over the Internet today:
"I happen to be one," insists University of Washington president Mark Emmert, "that thinks it's inevitable we'll have a playoff."
Excitement! Cynical gremlin on your shoulder reminding you that opinions can change rapidly in these situations!
Point Gremlin. Emmert yesterday:
"We'll join in those conversations [about a playoff]," he said. "I do not expect the NCAA to lead in that charge."
Same as it ever was. Just like the barely (and possibly temporarily) averted move to 96 teams in the basketball tournament, the NCAA follows the lead of the people with the sponsorship dollars. When the possibility of delirious amounts of money overwhelms the entrenched interests currently offering up millions, then we'll see a playoff broached and, eventually, implemented. It just takes one network making a preposterous offer.
There is one thing in the Emmert file that should encourage, though. In that same article cited above he dismisses "illusory arguments" like missed class time against a playoff. No more "think of the children" from the NCAA when the hockey schedule stretches from October to April and dozens of sports with zero pro potential have schedules far more demanding than the moneymaker. Heck, I-AA schools play up to 16 games.
Anyone who could cite class time as a reason not to have a college football playoff is an empty suit more concerned with maintaining the status quo than anything else. Emmert's not that. Once that red herring is disposed of, a discussion of the relative merits of a playoff can be had. So at least there's that.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Much has been written about "automatic qualifiers" for BCS games -- that is, conference champions who are guaranteed a BCS bowl berth -- but there was never a defined list of criteria for how a non-automatic qualifier conference could become one. Now there is.
The evaluation includes the following for each conference (1) the ranking of the highest-ranked team in the final BCS Standings each year (if a conference does not place a team in the final BCS Standings, then its highest-ranked team is determined by the conference member that has the highest average ranking in the computer rankings used in the BCS Standings), (2) the final regular-season rankings of all conference teams in the computer rankings used by the BCS each year, and (3) the number of teams in the top 25 of the final BCS Standings each year, with adjustments to account for differences in the number of members of each conference.A conference will become the seventh automatic qualifier if it finishes among the top six conferences in both No. 1 and No. 2 and if its ranking in No. 3 is equal to or greater than 50 percent of the conference with the highest ranking in No. 3.
That's good news for the Mountain West. Well, maybe.
The MWC has been the premier non-AQ conference for the last couple of years, buoyed by TCU, Utah, and BYU. TCU was fourth in the final 2009 BCS rankings, and Utah was sixth in 2008's last BCS standings. They satisfy the first criterion for the last two years; that's essentially half of a third of the battle, because results from the 2008-2011 period are going to determine whether the MWC crashes the BCS party.
The latter third seems easy enough, too: TCU, BYU, and Utah have all been in the top 25 of the final BCS standings in each of the last few years, greater than 50% of the Big 12's five schools in 2008 and the Pac-10's five in 2009.
It's that second one that will be tricky. Graham Watson writes that neither the MWC nor the BCS says the conference passed the threshold for the second criterion in 2009, and though there are exceptions...
Further, a conference will be eligible to apply to the Presidential Oversight Committee for an exemption if it finishes among the top six in both No. 1 and No. 2 and if its ranking in No. 3 is equal to or greater than 33.3 percent of the conference with the highest ranking in No. 3, ORIf it finishes among the top seven in either No. 1 or No. 2 and among the top five in the other and if its ranking in No. 3 is equal to or greater than 33.3 percent of the conference with the highest ranking in No. 3.
...it's not entirely clear whether the MWC would be in the top seven conferences, because the formula for the rankings in the second criterion is some compilation of several computer rankings that isn't spelled out.
It's all fascinating for college football dorks like me, and leads to a ton of other questions. Do late-season losses by fringe top 25 teams drag down conferences? Could AQ schools lose their status if they don't meet the criteria? Do any biases of computer rankings tip the scales one way or another? How could superconference expansion screw all of this up?
It's hard not to get lost in the enigmas. To return to the point: yeah, there is a chance the Mountain West becomes an automatic qualifier after the 2011 season. We kind of know how it might happen. And we sort of don't.
College football's magical mystery tour rolls on.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
An expected rule change is yet again making a larger gap between the haves and have nots in the world of college football. The change will affect smaller leagues such as the Sun Belt who have only one automatic bid for a bowl game, and then three secondary options, and only if that conference does not have eligible teams.
The gist of the rule is that all teams who have six wins are treated equally for bowl slots. The current rule gives teams with winning records preference over 6-6 teams when coming to selecting at-large bowl teams. The new change is expected to pass next month:
The NCAA is expected to approve legislation that will make it easier for teams with mediocre records to play in bowl games. Under the proposed new rule, teams with 6-6 records - the minimum record needed to be bowl-eligible - will be considered just as eligible to play in bowls as teams with winning records. Under current rules, the NCAA requires bowls to give priority to teams with winning records.
The best example of this which would have affected teams last year was that GMAC Bowl could have taken Notre Dame (6-6) over Troy (9-3). The fear of the smaller leagues is that if there is a choice, an eight-win team will get passed over in favor of a six-win team from a BCS school.
The rule was proposed by Big XII Conference Commissioner Dan Beebe, and the reason behind the proposal was that some 6-6 teams are more deserving because they play a tougher schedule. The irony in that is that strength of schedule is not technically included when figuring out who plays in BCS games, go figure. According to Beebe:
The rule would create "greater flexibility by allowing the marketplace to play a more significant role in determining whether a team is offered the opportunity" to play in a bowl, according to the proposal.
Or just a reason to get the most bang for their buck. The reason this will pass is because the NCAA recently took on the free-market approach to the bowl system, which is different from their former goal which would reward excellent teams with postseason berths. This rule change brings back memories of the late eighties and early nineties, when high profile teams and bowls made back door agreements in October to set up the best possible matchup for television.
Bill Hancock, first executive director of the BCS, was hired to provide political cover to college football's ruling cartel, and as such is a man whom I am not predisposed to like. So it dismays me to report he's put me in the uncomfortable position of having to agree with him:
The head of the Bowl Championship Series thinks Congress "has more important things to do" than look into the way his group distributes money to college football conferences.
Still, BCS executive director Bill Hancock said Wednesday he will respond to a question-filled letter sent to him by two U.S. Senators.
Look, I'm no fan of the current system (though not a playoff proponent, either; I'd rather see things go back to the chaos of the old bowl system), but slimy Bill Hancock has a point: Y'all are Senators, right? Don't you have things to do?
There have to be a lot of problems to be dealt with if you're at the Justice Department. The President's been criticizing the Supreme Court and trying to come up with an answer to a recent ruling. There's always some public corruption to be tackled. And, you know, there are murders and things to be investigated.
But the Justice Department has found an item that has attracted its attention above the din of elected officials on the take and people being shot: The BCS. A letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, seems to indicate that the DOJ is considering challenging the college football championship system.
"The Department of Justice is reviewing your letter as well as other materials to determine whether to open an investigation into the legality of the current system under the antitrust laws," wrote Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich. "Importantly, and in addition, the administration also is exploring other options that might be available to address concerns with the college football post-season."
Some of you are thinking, "This is great. Someone is finally going to fix the BCS." But consider some of the federal government's greatest hits of the last ten years: The War in Iraq. The response to Hurricane Katrina. Oh, yeah, and helping the banks almost destroy the American economy.
This is avoiding the obvious point that Sen. Hatch -- who asked DOJ to look into this -- has otherwise been busy with writing paens to limited government. Apparently, regulating college football must be in the enumerated powers somewhere.
In every interview that has discussed what it takes for BCS qualification by a conference, it has always come down to three criteria: 1. The final BCS ranking of the league's highest-ranked team; 2. The number of teams the conference has in the Top 25 of the final BCS standings; and 3. The final regular-season rankings of every team in the league by the six BCS computers.
The BCS has repeatedly said that they will not release how each of the three are weighed, which has been the company line, even with the most recent quotes from executive director Bill Hancock when asked which was the most important.
"That's more detail than I'm allowed to divulge."
However, back in November, Bill Hancock did an interview with SB Nation's own Mountain West Connection where he gave this answer to the following question:
Q: There are three rules listed for determining AQ status. Is each rule given an equal weight? If, not which categories are worth more?
A: All are the same weight.
It seems unlikely that Bill Hancock did not fully understand the question since it is pretty straight forward, and the criteria to determine who gains an auto bid has always been the same three requirements. He could have thought that he was granting an interview to a small site and gave an answer to appease the pro Mountain West crowd. Or could it have been a slip of the tongue that resulted in the truth? If so then the Mountain West looks to be on their way to gaining an automatic BCS bid.
Orrin Hatch hasn't kept his hate for the BCS any sort of secret. He urged President Barack Obama to investigate the BCS back in October. Now he's written a letter to President Obama asking him to invite both Boise State and Alabama to the White House:
In the coming months, as you engage in the time-honored tradition of inviting the champions of major sports leagues to visit the White House, you will have an opportunity to honor the best teams and athletes in the country. I write today to respectfully suggest that the Boise State University football team be included among this year's invitees.The end of another college football season has brought with it a new set of controversies surrounding the Bowl Championship series (BCS). The BCS has crowned the University of Alabama – an excellent football team, no doubt deserving of the honor and attention they’ve received as – national champions. However, as you know, the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) has yet to institute a playoff system to decide its national championship, leaving fans to speculate whether more than one team is worth of the sport's top honor, particularly in those years, like this one, when more than one team finishes the season undefeated. In 2009, Boise State's football team had its third undefeated regular season in five years and, on January 4, 2010, capped its season with a Fiesta Bowl victory over a very good and highly-rankled team from Texas Christian University. Indeed, as Senator James Risch recently wrote to you, "the BSU football team showed the country that they are true champions." Yet, even with its perfect season and long track record of success, Boise State was not given an opportunity to play for the national championship.
You can read the full letter here in PDF form.
Yahoo's Dan Wetzel proposed the same thing back on Jan. 5 and it would be a true eye-opener. (Whether it should be a major concert of the President is another matter.) That being said, if he wants to follow through on that "throw his weight around" claim regarding the BCS, this is his chance.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
The American Football Coaches Association polled all 120 Division-1 head coaches and found that an overwhelming 73% of them want to keep the current BCS system exactly as it is. You'd think there'd be some logical explanation for this. And you'd certainly think that schools like TCU and Boise State, which got hosed by the BCS this year, would want to impliment a playoff.
Of course, you'd be wrong on both counts. Behold: Stockholm syndrome:
TCU coach Gary Patterson and Boise State coach Chris Petersen are also in favor of the BCS, even though their teams finished the regular-season undefeated and got left out of the national championship game in favor of Texas and Alabama.
"The biggest thing as far as TCU or Boise State or Utah, what's to say that if you went to a playoff it would be any easier for us?" [TCU coach Gary] Patterson said. "The other thing I brought up is injury. Say you've got a guy who has a chance to be a first-round draft choice like Colt McCoy. What happens if those guys have a chance to make millions of dollars? Well, I helped you get to 12-0, but I'm going to bow out of this playoff because I have to think of my future. What's going to be the answer to that one?"
1. What wouldn't be any easier in a playoff system? Finishing the season ranked sixth, never having been given a shot at playing for a title?
2. The implication here is that star players would sit out the playoffs, which is ridiculous, especially given that star players don't sit out their postseason games currently. Plus, McCoy was hurt in a BCS game, which means the likelihood of injury in a BCS game is equal to that of a playoff game, because both are football and injuries happen. Related: The risk of injury in a regular season game against [insert directional school] is also the same.
3. Why am I trying to debate with insanity?
4. Wait, there is an explanation: money. The BCS brings in the cash, which means more money for the school, which means more money for the coach. That's why they do this, right? For the paperstacks. And the kids, of course. Don't forget the kids.
I'm not entirely sure why they asked me to do this thing about what happens over the next decade in college football; everyone knows that Skynet's but a few years away from seizing control of our nation and its infrastructure, throwing the balance of society into chaos and bloodshed. That's science, people. But if we must pretend that the Reverse Robot Dinosaur Revolution won't happen, here's what changes would theoretically await the world's greatest sport. And really, there's nowhere to start but sports' most controversial (and by that we mean "hated") postseason.
1. A college football playoff will finally... not happen: Look, I don't want to write this. I want to write that college football will implement an eight-team playoff with the top six conference winners and two wild cards and that it'll be in a Super Bowl-style method of placing games--much easier to sell out a home game than a neutral-site game--and that the BCS will get stabbed into oblivion by a nuclear missile like in one of those terrible action movies. That's not going to happen, because that's not the way a power structure operates. The BCS is comfortably in place and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Sorry.
2. That's okay, because a non-BCS school will compete for the national title: Setting aside the total hose job the BCS put on TCU and Boise State this season by placing them in the Separate But Equal Bowl, it's important to realize just how close the Horned Frogs came to the title game. If Texas doesn't pull off the quick drive for the field goal against Nebraska and Cincinnati doesn't come back from that 21-point deficit against Pittsburgh, TCU's in the game. Both Texas' and Cincinnati's comebacks were major improbabilities; fate will not continue to side against the non-BCS schools forever.
3. The opt-out is coming: This won't be pretty, but with the Marcus Jordan situation and the immense, wasted moneymaking potential of Tim Tebow, eventually the NCAA's going to throw its hands up and let its most marketable players get theirs. Thus, if an athlete approaches his school with written contract offers totaling more than his scholarship's cost, the NCAA will let him (or her) explore those professional opportunities without blowing their eligibility. It won't go smoothly, and it'll be an even bigger headache than before. If that surprises you, please allow us to introduce you to the NCAA. They are where good ideas go to die.
4. Oregon will begin changing uniforms after each quarter: This will continue for a few years until Phil Knight perfects the color-changing jersey technology that has eluded him for decades. It'll be visually stunning, but the jersey will--on rare occasions, we assure you--burst into flames fueled by the complex polymers in the fabric and pads underneath. It'll place Oregon players' lives in mortal danger, but did you hear us? COLOR CHANGING UNIFORM TECHNOLOGY.
5. The Big XII is about to look very different: The Big XII isn't as much "dysfunctional" as just plain underutilized; no conference with Texas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska should be such an afterthought on the national landscape. But lo and behold, a defection to the Big Ten by Missouri (that's very, very happening, by the way; the Big 10 would love to get in on the St. Louis market, and Missouri's brass have been writing "MIZZOU + BIG TEN 4EVER" on their Trapper Keepers ever since the BXI mentioned the word "expansion") will shock the conference into action. It might be ugly, and we're highly skeptical that Baylor survives the, ahem, restructuring.
But CBS should and probably will be throwing gobs of money at the conference, which is struggling with an uneven, undercompetitive deal with Fox at the moment. There's frankly no reason why the Big XII should be taking in more than $100 million less than the Big Ten or SEC--to say nothing of the fact that most Iowa State games aren't even televised--and we're sure CBS would like to fix that situation.
6. San Jose State will just start skipping games and wondering if anybody notices: Nobody will notice.
7. And finally, concussion prevention will dramatically change the nature of the game: The darkest, most unmentionable aspect of college football is undoubtedly head injuries and the treatment thereof; by the end of the decade, we'll look back on Tim Tebow missing one whole game after his brain rearrangement against Kentucky and conclude that the sport was run by barbarians and ignorant savages back then. But if you were to go to a sports physician and say "we want that (this is where you point at college football; look, this would be so much easier if it were visual, but SBN wouldn't pony up for a full film crew), but with no concussions," you'd be laughed out of the building.
We won't make any predictions about how the league deals with concussions, mainly because it's obvious the NCAA has no idea how to do so. Currently, the word is that they'll empower officials to remove players from a game if one has signs of having suffered a concussion. That's a silly idea for multiple reasons; first, that's completely not the referee's job. They're field judges, not doctors, and they shouldn't be counted on for something as serious as determining a player's well-being. Second, the issue isn't whether guys are playing with concussions, it's that they're suffering too many of them over the course of a career. And frankly, there are way too many idiot athletes without the capacity to demonstrate that they haven't recently suffered a concussion to begin with.
We're not sure what the move will be; to guess the NCAA's reaction is, frankly, a disservice to their talent for imagining new and odd ways to make their athletes' lives more unsatisfactory. So we don't know what it is, but we know you're going to hate it. Can't wait.
Dick Vitale tweeted this earlier, once more affirming that it is impossible to read anything written by Dick Vitale without hearing his voice. (If I just got you to do it, my apologies.)
Of course, Dickie V may have changed his opinion while doing today's Georgetown-Connecticut game. The last bit of of that game, in sequence: UConn turnover, Hoyas nearly lose ball, Huskies fail to get back on defense, G'Town gets easy lay-up, UConn clangs fallaway three from 28 feet off iron. (Georgetown won, 72-69.)
But, hey, the NCAA Tournament is great. And married to Tom Brady!
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Another year of college football is in the books. And another title belt on only one of two undefeated teams. So it is no surprise that the other one is bellyaching and bellowing for a playoff.
Boise State puts forward this statement from their president, Bob Kustra:
“A college football team with a perfect 14-0 record was not crowned this year’s national champion. That team was Boise State University.“The Bowl Championship Series does not determine a true on-the-field national champion as other sports do. The BCS system is unfair in its access, governance and revenue distribution. Reform is necessary to provide the opportunity for the non-automatic qualifying conferences to compete on equal footing. Our invitation to play in a BCS bowl depended on another’s fate. Our payout equaled the lowest of any BCS bowl participant. Our hopes of playing in a BCS bowl each year require near perfection with no guarantee.
“The BCS should espouse the values of fairness and access so often invoked in higher education. Boise State has benefitted from the BCS system with two glorious moments at the Fiesta Bowl, but the BCS remains fundamentally flawed. College football and its fans deserve better.”
It's not going to work, of course. But the Broncos shouldn't be complaining about fairness; rather, they should find a way to make things unfair in their favor.
That task starts this fall. The Broncos will return nearly everyone from their unblemished squad this year, and should occupy a lofty enough perch in preseason polls to be able to make a title game with an undefeated season. (Even if they don't, a win against Virginia Tech in Washington D.C. and a top-ten preseason ranking would make them a compelling one-loss choice.) Finally making the title game is the sort of breakthrough that would give Boise the stature to both bust the BCS and then undermine it with a "We still don't like this system, but we'll take the result" media blitz.
But Boise's best chance at truly busting the BCS for good is probably to find a way into the Mountain West, creating a pseudo-superconference with TCU, BYU, and Utah that would be in better position to negotiate for more TV money and an automatic BCS berth.
Sometimes, to beat the system, you have to find a way to be the system.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
While you watch the Fiesta Bowl, check out this ad created by Playoff PAC, which describes itself as "a new federal political committee dedicated to discarding the Bowl Championship Series and instituting a competitive post-season championship for college football."
The sound from the ad comes from an interview on The Dan Patrick Show on Nov. 18. A 30-second version of the spot above will air in Boise, Dallas and Salt Lake City later this week, according to a press release.
Speaking of ads, give it up for the least subtle product placement ever during tonight's game.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
As you probably know already, both Boise State and TCU are undefeated, but neither even got a shot at the national championship (somewhat amazingly, the senior class at Boise has gone 48-4 ... and never played for the title).
Anyways, all this unjustness and fan outrage and been channeled into something more productive than some angry tweets directed toward @insidetheBCS.
Playoff PAC, "a federal political committee dedicated to establishing a competitive post-season championship for college football" has produced a television commercial that will air in select markets on Fox before Thursday night's National Championship game between Texas and Alabama.
The select markets are Boise, Idaho; Salt Lake City and Dallas-Fort Worth.
Coincidentally, those markets cover undefeated teams that have been snubbed in the past two years by the BCS championship - Boise State, Texas Christian and Utah.
(via SportsbyBrooks)
Finally, bowl enthusiasts and playoff fanatics can have it all. Over at Kotaku, Owen Good details an elaborate video-game experiment of his own devising, simulating a 16-team college football playoff run concurrently with a 27-game bowl schedule.
It's a scenario I'd never considered, and you likely haven't either. Good is careful to point out that this is far from scientific, but the results are enticing, to say the least. Among the highlights from this alternate reality:
• Central Michigan gets a playoff nod despite being ridiculously excluded from the final BCS standings in the world we currently occupy (though they're mown down by Cincinnati in Round 1 in the simulation).
• Round 2 brings a Florida-Alabama rematch (the Tide prevails again).
• The Outback Bowl gets to keep its precious boneheaded Auburn selection.
• Both pizza-based bowls are eliminated. Dry your eyes.
• Your major matchups on the bowl side: West Virginia and Ole Miss in the Sugar, Penn State and Arizona in the Rose, Clemson and Nebraska in the Orange, and Stanford and Oklahoma State in the Fiesta.
• And your final four in the playoff bracket: TCU, Alabama, Oregon, and Texas.
I cannot encourage you strongly enough to read this entire thing through. It's amazingly plausible for such a sweeping set of reforms, and about all it will cost you, the viewing public, is the Little Caesars Bowl.
Meanwhile, SB Nation's Mountain West Connection is running their own 16-team playoff simulation, with winners decided by fan voting. So far, five games have been "played," with No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 Texas, No. 4 TCU, No. 9 Georgia Tech and No. 12 Penn State all recording wins (the latter an upset over No. 5 Florida, no less). Currently, No. 7 Oregon has 75% of the votes against No. 10 Iowa, which, unless the Hawkeyes have a sudden surge of fan support, would set-up a second-round matchup between the Ducks and the Longhorns (which, of course, if this were real life, would be so very awesome).
See, coming up with a playoff system isn't all that difficult. Are you paying attention, BCS?
Every year around this time, there's a flurry of articles complaining
about the number of bowl games. Usually these pieces start off with
something along the lines of "Who cares about [7-5 CUSA team]
versus [7-5 MAC team] in [place no one would ever go]?"
The answer, obviously, is no one. Last week, Mike Tunison linked to a piece that highlighted schools that had incurred some huge losses after bowl games, what with transportation and conference splits eating up supposedly huge bowl payouts. A lot of smaller bowls are basically money sinks at this point.
How is that possible when the NCAA mandates a minimum payout of $750,000? The bowls are robbing Peter to pay Peter in the form of ticket guarantees:
To make the bowl berth official, all [Western Michigan] had to do was buy 11,000 tickets to the game against Rice. The Broncos did so, paying $450,000 to the bowl for the tickets.
Go ahead and guess how many tickets Western Michigan sold to last year's Texas Bowl. Too high, too high, too high: 548. Western ended up eating over 400k in ticket expenses and the Texas Bowl got away with a functional payout of less than half of the NCAA's minimum.
Sure, some of the pain suffered by bigger programs is self-inflicted. When West Virginia ends up a million dollars in the red but drags 400 band members to the Fiesta Bowl at a cost of 700k, that's largely on West Virginia. When Florida makes a trip to the national championship game and pays for over 500 band members, cheerleaders and "VIPs" to go and takes a -- surpise! -- loss, that is 100% on Florida. Any time you see a big name school go to a big bowl and come home with a big red number, the reason is that the university is using the trip as a junket for a cast of thousands. The bowls shouldn't have any shame about that.
Tiny bowls that cater to the Western Michigans of the world, on the other hand, appear to be skirting the NCAA's regulations with these ticket guarantees. Hell, some bowls have the audacity to charge the schools considerably more than the market will bear:
Last year, Virginia Tech earned a berth in the Orange Bowl and was required to buy 17,500 tickets at $125 each. It only sold 3,342 of them, leading to a loss of $1.77 million for the university and the Atlantic Coast Conference, records show.
A Hokies athletics official speculated the reason for the weak sales was the weak economy, the expensive trip to Miami and cheaper tickets available to fans on the Internet. "Many Hokie fans bought that way rather than through our ticket office," Assistant Athletic Director Lisa Rudd said.
The Orange Bowl still has a major television deal and put more into the ACC's kitty than it took out; the Texas Bowl almost certainly can't say the same.
So if you're a small school with a tenuous budget and you get to 7-5, you've got a nasty choice. You can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to send your team to a bowl that will be on ESPN on December 23rd, or you can kill your program. Imagine trying to recruit against other members of your conference if you said thanks-but-no-thanks to a bowl. You'd get killed.
Since a sizable cut of their guarantee is being fed right back to the bowl in the form of ticket guarantees that aren't coming close to being met even for BCS games, the result is a net loss for everyone except the bowl operators. (One reason you'll never see this story on ESPN: the network now operates a half-dozen bowl games of little repute.) The MAC received a $2.1 million kickback from the BCS last year; bowl games the conference actually played in lost more money than they brought in. This is a familiar story: programs unable to actually pay players spend money in a thousand other ways, competing against each other on the margins and introducing a cottage industry of middlemen taking a cut.
I'm not making an argument that they should actually pay the kids here, but the NCAA might want to step in and make these guarantees a thing of the past. A half-dozen bowls would wither and die, but that would be a relief to the athletic directors that had to prop them up.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
A common defense of the BCS -- at least on the financial side -- is that it yields a financial windfall for the schools that are able to get a berth in one of its bowl games.
The problem is that this argument is often a misconception, as well. In the last three years, there are a host of examples of colleges ending up in the red after receiving what is supposedly a prized bid.
The Big East's payout to West Virginia for its trip to the 2008 Fiesta Bowl was $2,425,600, but the team's expenses totaled $3,495,000. That's a loss of $1,069,400.Florida and Ohio State ran up more than $5 million in expenses in the 2007 BCS title game, finishing with a combined deficit of more than $600,000.
Texas A&M racked up losses of $489,978 for its trip to the 2006 Holiday Bowl.
Ball State lost $142,398 on its appearance last season in the GMAC Bowl.
Northern Illinois reported a loss of $154,125 for its trip last year to the Independence Bowl. That's considerably better than the $317,898 it lost for an appearance in the 2006 Poinsettia Bowl.
Ohio lost $277,550 for its trip to the 2007 GMAC Bowl. The university dipped into general reserve funds to pay the tab, weeks after the school dropped track, swimming and lacrosse. Funding those sports cost less than $200,00 annually.
Someone has to be making money off these games, right? It shouldn't come as too big a surprise that the bowl game executives aren't faring too badly, often with six-figure salaries. How can the participating schools suffer so badly? Because of arrangements between the bowls and conferences, the school are locked into commitments to sell out their ticket allotment and get fans to stay in hotels that have agreements with the bowl, lest they lose money. With more and more bowls in existence, the cachet of making one is diminished, and with it, fan interest. Throw in a fallow economic period, and a lot of schools that should be excited about making a bowl game will instead worry about how it will affect the bottom line.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
The BCS cartel can hire all the Ari Fleischers and inept PR interns it wants. The movement to implement a college football playoff may have found an accidental folk hero in one of this year's BCS darlings, Colt McCoy. Via BCS Evolution, see for yourself: McCoy speaks for the undefeateds. All of them:
I've thought about it a lot. I'd have to say eight-team playoff and maybe cut the season one game short. I don't think you would lose that much money because the playoffs would generate a lot of interest and ultimately you could find out who the national champion was for sure.
That's right. One of this year's most fortunate sons would do away with the system that's giving him the opportunity to compete for the crown. It's likely the affable McCoy didn't intend to set the world on fire with his comments, but two things are certain: First, that there are hordes of hardcore playoff loyalists out there who are going to take this very, very seriously. And second, that a certain someone's Pasadena gift bag is going to be shorted a fetching fleece hat if a certain someone doesn't watch his mouth.
I can't imagine anyone other than Iowa and Penn State fans* watched the BCS selection show with particular interest after Oklahoma State's pratfall against Oklahoma cleared up the BCS at-large picture. This is not Selection Sunday, when 65 teams across the country find out not only if they're in, but where they're going and who they're facing. But dang if they didn't use the same script:
That's TCU fans exploding in joy after finding out they'd be... reprising last year's Poinsettia Bowl against Boise State? You mean to tell me not one single Horned Frog fan thought flipping the bird at the powers that be was in order? Do these people not have any idea what's going on?
So the team is there, coach Gary Patterson is there, the Fox camera crew is there and Fox reporter Charissa Thompson is there. According to [TCU baseball coach Jim] Schlossnagle, the producers were there pumping their fists and getting the crowd jazzed with applause signs and all. He said they didn't know which bowl game they were going to play in at the beginning of the taping and even when it did go live, Thompson only told the fans gathered there that they were going to the Fiesta Bowl and not who they would play.
Coach Patterson was finally told it would be against Boise State right before Thompson stuck a mic in his face.
Ah, they really didn't have any idea what was going on. Incomplete information -- the very reason college football needs a playoff more than any other sport -- rears its head again, this time in service of parable. The article suggests that fans were walking away "disappointed" that they only got measly Boise State, which is both obvious and the reason that TCU is at the kiddie table. At least Charissa Thompson was in the house.
Please don't stalk her now, internet. I didn't mean it.
(HT: Doctor Saturday.)
*(Iowa or Penn State was the only question remaining, with the BCS choosing between justice and money. Shockingly, they chose justice, which probably means the money didn't actually differ.)This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
There have been many, many different models for a college football post-season and, frankly, all of them seem better than the current BCS model. Sure, there are some people who still like the BCS model -- or at least rely on it as 'the best we've got' model of a championship structure -- like Dallas News columnist Tim Cowlishaw, who wrote a piece this week trying to dismantle the playoff concept. Cowlishaw posits, in part:
A 16-team tournament means the equivalent of four "bowl" games for the title contenders, extra games for others, too. What it means, among other things, is lots of injuries during a very busy December and January.
At a time when the NFL is wrestling with what to do about concussions, a playoff this large is inviting some college teams to play 15, 16, maybe even 17 games in a season.
The injury angle has some merit, but there is an equally meritorious counterpoint: with a month off between the regular season and bowl games, that's a lot of practice, likely half of which are in pads. Now, the hitting may not be 'game speed,' but many injuries come from little-to-no contact. And, when there is hitting, you're talking about an entire roster -- sometimes more than 100 student-athletes -- getting in on the action. In a regular game, no more than 35 or 40 players see time. So (again, just for the sake of counterpoint) fewer games in that timeframe means more practice, which actually could lead to a greater risk of injury for more participating players. Just sayin'.
But to the greater point of a playoff: it has to happen at some point, so let's look at the ways it could. There's the plus-one, which looks to be the most likely concession by the BCS to placate a playoff-mad society. Then there's the four-team playoff, which will never work with the current six BCS conference tie-ins, leaving in extra space for at-large or teams, like Florida, teams that did not win their conference. Cowlishaw punches holes in the eight-team playoff by pointing out that the system only allows two at-large teams in, and in a year like this with two at-large teams undefeated, how do you have a playoff without Florida, who lost in a conference championship game that teams like Cincinnati, Ohio State and Oregon didn't have to play?
Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! had the most detailed and plausible scenario for a playoff, which included a 16-team tournament including all 11 conferences, not just the six BCS teams, with five additional at-large teams. This model is fantastic, and makes fans of the playoff system salivate. But -- you knew there was a but -- if this year's BCS Championship teams made it to the final of this theoretical tournament, they'd each have to play 17 games, which not only is more than a non-playoff team in the NFL, but nearly half a season more than a team in their own conference that doesn't qualify for the postseason.
So what about this ...
Rather than conduct a National Championship tournament, why not have a Tournament of Champions. It's more than just semantics, actually. Invite the conference champion from all 11 FBS leagues into a tournament, adding in the FCS National Champion to make a 12-team playoff. Sorry Notre Dame, if you ever want to get into the Tournament of Champions, you'll have to suck it up and join a conference.
With 12 teams, four would get byes, and those four teams could be determined by a modification of the BCS rankings. Personally, I'd put more weight on overall strength of the conferences; because each team is representing their conference as its champion, the rankings would be weighted toward conference RPI. For example, this playoff system would not include Florida -- they'd play in one of the remaining bowl games (just like they are doing this year, by the way) -- but due to the overall strength of the SEC, thanks in part to the Gators' fantastic season, Alabama would easily earn the top seed, and a first-round bye.
In theory, this system protects four of the six BCS conferences from playing a first-round game, with the fifth seed playing the FCS Champion. If it were weighted on team success, TCU would have a bye this season, but based on the overall strength of the Big Ten or Pac-10, Ohio State or Oregon would be awarded the bye over the Mountain West Champion.
As Wetzel's model suggests, this tournament structure would also involve playing games at the home field of the higher-ranked seed. For this system, I'd suggest that the semifinals and finals be played at predetermined neutral sites, like, say, Pasadena, New Orleans, Tempe and Miami, with the Tournament Championship contested a week later at a different neutral site.
In this model, especially with the early games being played in hostile territory for the higher seeds, the likelihood of a team playing four games is rather slim. Sure a higher seed could make a run, but in most years, the Tournament of Champions will come down to two of the top seeds who received byes, ostensibly capping the number of games any team would play to three.
And for those complaining that teams like Florida or Iowa wouldn't be in this tournament when the likes of East Carolina and Troy get in, I'll counter with this: it's is a Tournament of Champions. Win your conference and you get in. Besides, since its inception in 1992, the BCS, Bowl Coalition and Bowl Alliance has never produced a National Champion that didn't win it's conference. So they've gotten something right.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Today the prevailing thought when it comes to the national-championship-type game arranged by the BCS this year is "boy, isn't the BCS lucky Texas kicked that field goal."Without said field goal, Texas descends from its lofty peak and the second bid in the national title game falls to Cincinnati or TCU, and one team spends the offseason as the new Utah. Another senator takes time off from whatever it is that senators do to stump for his local college football team, etc. The Texas win apparently destroys all complaints,since it's just obvious Texas should go.
A simple question: why? BCS computers have been notoriously erratic ever since they removed the margin of victory component, but if it was up to them Cincinnati would be Alabama's opponent. Four of the six computer polls rank the Bearcats above the Longhorns, and one of the dissenters is Richard Billingsley's notoriously stupid, consistently outlying poll that places extreme weight on Billingsley's arbitrary preseason rankings.
And it's not like the computers are obviously wrong. Texas's nonconference schedule was UL-Monroe, Wyoming, UTEP and UCF. Cincinnati had I-AA SEMO and a game against MAC tomato can Miami, but then took on Fresno State and Illinois at home and Pac-10 contender Oregon State on the road.Meanwhile, the Big 12 was terrible this year. Sagarin actually rates the Big East above the Big 12. There is a credible case that Cincinnati has more meat on its resume.
Sagarin also rates Texas's schedule more difficult and puts the Longhorns well above Cincinnati in his "predictor" rankings that take scoring margin into account, so it's not like the Bearcats area slam dunk when it comes to the numbers. That's not the point, though:the point is that an undefeated BCS conference team from a league better than the Big 12 this year is getting passed over in favor of a better name. There's absolutely nothing that definitively stakes Texas to a better resume than Cincinnati. This is unlike LSU's two-loss national title season, when LSU's blowout of top-10 Virginia Tech gave them a trump card and uncontroversial passage into the crystal football game.These are two nearly identical undefeated teams. By rights, there should be rioting and blood in the streets, and there would be if you gave Penn State or Ohio State or Miami or virtually any other team with cachet the exact same resume Cincinnati has.
Don't be fooled by the helmets: for the ninth time in 12 years,the BCS system has failed to construct an uncontroversial championship game, and this time it's leaving out three undefeated teams with at least somewhat credible claims for a shot. Burn it down.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
In a way, you almost have to begrudgingly respect what the PR flacks and Bill Hancock are doing at the BCS. In the face of facts, common sense and justifiability, they keep on keepin' on in the fight to try and convince people their insane system is actually the correct way to figure out a champion. It can't be easy being the guy who has to come in every morning and sift through the direct messages that @InsideTheBCS receives each day from detractors (including myself). Just like it can't be easy to be the call-screener on the BCS teleconference, which was hijacked Sunday by pranksters from a Portland radio station.
I suppose the BCS folks should be used to it by now. I can't imagine the last time they did anything publicly and weren't openly mocked for it.
The BCS safely insulates itself from any possible embarrassments by putting TCU and Boise State at the Fiesta Bowl against each other. I mean, “The Fiesta Bowl chooses both teams because they believe they will be the best draw for attendance and ratings.” Yes, that’s it!
On the heels of joining Twitter and hiring Ari Fleischer, the BCS continues its counterattack by launching PlayoffProblem.com, where many of your stupid arguments in favor of a traditional postseason bracket are swiftly shot down. Observe:
Just try to create an eight-team playoff based on latest rankings (November 23rd). Should a one-loss Georgia Tech (10-1, #7) get in but not a one-loss Pittsburgh (9-1 #9)? Should a two-loss Oregon (9-2, #8) get in but not one-loss Pittsburgh or any of the SEVEN teams with two losses: Ohio State (10-2, #10), Iowa (10-2, #11), Oklahoma State (9-2, #12), Penn State (10-2, #13), BYU (9-2, #19), Utah, (9-2, #19), or Houston (9-2, #23)? If you think the BCS is controversial, try sorting that out. A playoff would guarantee bigger problems, more controversy, more disappointed teams and more frustrated fans.
Oh, the frustration of enjoying an actual playoff format play itself out on the field! That sounds awful!
Sure, there will be snubs regardless of the format — as there currently is with the BCS and would be with a playoff. But to argue that fans, in general, would be more frustrated by a playoff is insanity. That’s like saying fans would rather the NCAA skip that whole, boring March Madness thing and just let the two hoops teams ranked 1 and 2 at the end of the season play in the championship game.
New BCS director Bill Hancock is making big moves since taking over last week. First, he gave fans an easily accessible way to tell the BCS how much it sucks by starting a Twitter account. Now, he’s hired Ari Fleischer’s PR company to help improve the BCS’s public image.
SI’s Stewart Mandel tweets what we’re all thinking:
I love that the BCS, the most unpopular entity in sports, hired a guy who worked under the most unpopular president in history.
Although to be fair, Fleischer is also a consultant for the NFL, which is the most popular and successful organization in America not named Chick-Fil-A.*
*Source: Consumption rates of Chris Mottram from independent 2008 study.
A couple days ago Spencer noted that the BCS now has it's own Twitterfeed and things had gotten off to a...rocky start. I thought it might be a good time to check in, see if cooler heads have prevailed and whether or not gentlemanly discussion now rules the day.
dceiver Hi, @INSIDEtheBCS! Welcome to twitter. You are like a black, ichorous boil on the sporting world that should be lanced with rusty nails.
TRAD7819 @INSIDEtheBCS do u repeatedly punch yourself in the groin as well? The BcS needs to die!
matthewsbunch Why did @insidetheBCS join Twitter? All they do is try to explain why their stupid system is good and the good system would be stupid!
jibowie @insidethebcs Inside the BCS follows Big 10, Pac 10, etc. on twitter, but doesn't follow @macsports. Why am I not surprised?
@Novascr: @insidetheBCS Is the IRS planning on joining Twitter too? Or maybe Hitler has a facebook account.
As long as the comparisons of the BCS to the Third Reich keep flowing, I'm gonna call this a work-in-progress.
If there's one thing people in college football love to gripe about, it's the lack of a playoff system and the current way we award a title: the BCS. But don't worry, the Bowl Championship Series isn't just some big, faceless entity. They want to be your friend on Facebook and Twitter. Well, so far, the Twitter page is off to a dubious start, with just three tweets, two of which were supposed to be propaganda for why you should love the BCS!
Needless to say, they are not winning over the masses. Yahoo's Dan Wetzel is leading the angry mob with pitchforks and torches to the BCS gates.
Wetzel is not alone.
Spencer Hall had his own good zinger: "I'd follow you, @InsidetheBCS, but allowing a small Tweeter like you into my circle would compromise the integrity of the whole system."
Really, none of this is turning out well. Just check out how the fans are reacting. I'm not sure what the people behind the BCS Twitter page really expected out of this. Social media is valuable when it gives other users access to the process or when it gives helpful information. Instead, after just a couple of tweets, we've basically gotten PR spin and zero responses to fan criticism. The people running this account, as well as the Facebook account, need to get with it quickly, or blow this thing up, because it's only making them look worse.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
The BCS now has an official Twitter feed, and oh boy howdy is it enjoying a swell debut in its first day in Twitteronia:
errxn I’ve found the Seventh Circle of Hell. It is located @InsidetheBCS.
Sjcrookston everyone follow @insidetheBCS and tell them what a joke you think they are. Go to hell BCS
@HolterMedia Hmm @InsideTheBCS joins Twitter. Next up is SEC Refs and Swedish Soccer Refs? Come on in here and take your beating.
DannyAdelante @INSIDEtheBCS Welcome to Twitter, the sporting world’s Joseph Goebbels. Why do FCS schools have a playoff and FBS schools don’t?
@slmandel If the balloonboydad set up a Twitter account, he would not draw the level of venom @InsidetheBCS is now
So yes, gents, seems to be going well. Keep up the good work, and try to use some filthy words to get some of the pornbots to follow you on Twitter. If you don’t want to type your own, just cut and paste some of the things people are sending to you today.
The Bowl Championship Series is dealing with enough animus as it is, so its officials must have been relieved when the American Football Coaches Association announced that it had flipped and will now make public the final ballots of the USA Today Coaches Top 25. Prior to the reversal, the AFCA had been poised to adopt the recommendation of Gallup -- its consultant on this and other matters -- to seal the individual ballots, a move the BCS strongly opposed.
For those wanting to blow up the current college football postseason, the change of heart was something of a disappointment. BCS Evolution:
The BCS opposed this because they want transparency in the voting process... Personally, I was hoping this was the beginning of a rift between the coaches and the BCS that would lead the BCS dropping the coaches poll as a component of its formula and the AFCA taking its trophy and credibility from the BCS championship game.
Alas, no help here, forcing BCS haters to root for complete and utter chaos. Translation: TCU-Cincinnati for all the marbles.
Sleep on this interview with Big East Commissioner John Marinatto at your own risk, because buried between the AOL sidebars here is a chilling scenario for college football fans.
“It [the BCS] is such an entity where there’s so many diverse things that come together that make it work,” Marinatto said. "I don’t know if all that will continue to go on the way it is. If they’re pressured to create a playoff, they would simply go back to what the system used to be like and have it as an at-large free-for-all where people can go [to whichever bowl] they want.
“I don’t think the pressure would cause people to create a playoff. I think it would cause them to go back to where we used to be [before the BCS].”
It’s a scary thought, but also an unlikely one. It could also be the very partisan thoughts of a commissioner whose league benefits greatly from the current set up. The BCS contract with ESPN expires in 2013, and could be up for a huge contract renewal if all parties stay on board. Turning down the kind of cash the BCS generates makes the notion of returning to the old bowl system an absurd one, financially speaking (especially in a recession.)
As unequal as the current way of doing things is, it is at least bears some resemblance to a playoff. Threatening a return to the old is merely a way of making the present half-measure look far better than it actually is; additionally, it ain’t happening, and Marinatto knows it full and well. Please be terrified, however, of the idea of a world without the BCS if you’d like to fall right into his clutches.
In all the hubbub surrounding the coaches’ poll and its insane voting this week, Dan Shanoff asks: Why not just let Tim Tebow vote for everyone? I’m sorry, that is not what he asked. (But he thought it.)
What he asks instead is “Why not include the Blogpoll?”
The BlogPoll has been around for a few years now; its legitimacy is unquestioned — it is in the second year of affiliation with CBSSports.com as its partner. This week’s results merely highlighted the most striking differentials yet between the BlogPoll and its “mainstream” cohorts. Alternate, knowledgeable, credentialed perspectives — like the BlogPoll — will only help the BCS system.
My only critique of the suggestion of including the Blogpoll (full disclosure: I am a voter) is the potential for the exact same partisanship you would see in a regional writers’ poll. If only there were some way to just get the teams in a bracket of some sort, and then play it out and the end of the season…but now that’s just paint chip-eating crazy talk, something never seen in sport before.
Voting in the USA Today Coaches' Poll is supposed to be done impartially and holistically, which, of course, explains why Steve Spurrier voted for Duke all those years. At a press conference on Monday, LSU head coach Les Miles let slip one of the worst-kept secrets in college sports: That's not how it's done.
"I can't tell you who the best teams in the country are, because frankly I don't get to see them every week," he said. "I don't know who's hot and who's not. I could no more rank ..."At that point, Miles realized he was about to say he was not qualified in any way to rank the top 25 teams in the nation, even though he supposedly does that every week. Quickly, he tried to reverse his field.
"I vote. I know that. I know I vote. I know I vote. And I'm excited to vote. I do a great job," he said with his voice rising and his audience laughing.
"But I have to be very honest, I vote based on record and things that are not significant," he said. "I vote on what appears to be the best and most logical choice. That's all. But when you get to the back end of the season, you will be more pointed, and your rankings will certainly make a difference. And so I have no idea what the seventh ranked team in the country's supposed to play like."
As the article goes on to point out, it's only very rarely that coaches themselves fill out their ballots. Usually, the task falls to a sports information director, or other member of the football support staff.
But how is anyone involved in plotting meticulously for one opponent a week, head coach or assistant, supposed to find the time to keep up on the rest of the college football scene?
It's hard enough for media members to do that, and some of them know how to work this magical thing called the Internet. (Miles does have a presence on Twitter, to his credit.) Almost universally, votes cast by or for coaches will be on "record and things that are not significant," because they simply don't have the time to go deeper.
This is no big deal, because the Coaches' Poll is only one third of the formula that determines whether teams (or, more accurately, their conferences) will rake in the riches of the BCS bowls or schlep it to a bowl named after a pizza company. Why not leave decisions that could shift the distribution of millions of dollars up to an uneducated base of voters for whom objective, fully-informed reasoning seems like a pipe dream?
After all, it's about as unfair as ranking teams in a preseason poll on last year's results and this year's question marks, then using that as the basis for the next four months of rankings. And if the current FBS system does anything well, it's iniquity.
(HT to FanIQ.)
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
It's no secret that college football voting is shadier than, well, actual political voting. Some coaches vote up their own teams and vote down rival teams. Some coaches vote up schools in their own conference and down those in another conference that could take away potential BCS at-large slot, and henceforth, millions of dollars.
Hanging chads have nothing on the USA Today Coaches' Poll.
The process by which two teams are chosen to compete for the BCS National Championship is both convoluted and secretive by design. There's one part computer score, which is based on six different ranking systems involving various algorithms that combine RPI, strength of schedule, wins or losses, home or away, boxers or briefs and, for teams on both coasts, high or low tide at the time of kickoff.
Then there's the Harris Poll, a random collection of media, dignitaries and former players that was hastily put together a few years ago when the AP voters decided they wanted no part of this BCS mess anymore.
Last comes the USA Today Coaches poll, which year after year is where most of the shadiness lies. In the past few seasons, coaches only had to make their final vote public, enabling coaches to finagle with the rankings throughout the season. Starting in 2010, the rule to provide the final ballot from each coach will be repealed by the AFCA, allowing for even more cloak and/or dagger with the poll.
Sports Illustrated's Andy Staples has seen enough. Well, I guess in this case, he hasn't seen enough. Staples wrote a column yesterday indicating SI will be sending Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to every public university with a football coach who is a voter -- 59 in all. And what looked like a ‘hey guess what we're going to do' threat and nothing more in his column, Staples was true to his word, sending out 51 of the 59 requests yesterday, with the rest coming today.
Why are we doing this? Because, as South Carolina coach -- and public school poll voter -- Steve Spurrier so eloquently put it to CBSSports.com after learning the 2010 results would remain cloaked, the looming secrecy allows "a chance for some real hanky-panky." If the AFCA learns through this exercise it can't keep the ballots secret, it might choose instead to embrace transparency rather than risk damaging the integrity of the poll.
Without a doubt, it's a virtuous undertaking by Staples, and whatever gaggle of SI interns he wrangled into compiling all the information and standing next to a fax machine for eight-straight hours.
But the more interesting question, perhaps, is why SI would announce this so publicly. Most FOIA and Open Public Records Acts (OPRA) are done with little fanfare, lest another news organization beat them to the punch. So I asked Staples why he went public with this idea when other news organizations can -- and undoubtedly will -- pilfer it.
"Why announce it publicly? I went back and forth on this. But in the final analysis, I thought that the public should know what we're doing and why we're doing it. We're not trying to pick on any school's coach.
"This isn't a "Gotcha!" project. These well-paid employees of public universities are casting votes that determine how millions of dollars will flow. It's in the public's interest to know who is voting for whom. These schools have no obligation to SI.com or to any media organization, but they do have an obligation to the taxpayers in their states to operate in the open."
As fans of college football, we all want to see the national championship game decided fairly, and since we're not getting a playoff anytime soon, transparency in the process by which the teams are selected is the next best thing. But is the red tape worth it every week? Will teams just give in and supply SI, or whichever local news organization that takes up SI's charge each week, the coaches voting record? Or will some schools make each news outlet jump through hoops, which in some states could take up to 30 days to comply with such requests?
"Am I concerned about the turnaround time? No. The AFCA still plans to make this season's final poll public. This won't really be critical until next season, when the AFCA plans to hide every ballot. I just felt like we might be able to head them off at the pass. The state laws differ quite a bit on how much time these schools have to respond, but all the timetables are really reasonable. When I collect those responses, I'll take them to our in-house attorneys, and they'll decide on the best course of action."
It likely won't get that far, and Staples' plan to head them off at the pass will probably work. In fact, some coaches have already made their votes public. Others have swiftly complied with SI's requests, including USF's Jim Leavitt, who was the only coach to vote for Oklahoma as the nation's top team. Leavitt and Stoops previously coached together, and there was no way the USF coach was putting Florida at the top of the list, right?
See, this kind of gamesmanship happens at every school, every week. Now that news outlets are monitoring it via open, public channels that everyone (not just media) can use, it will be interesting to see if some of the shenanigans cease, or at the very least, some coaches stop letting their graduate assistants handle the balloting.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Harvey Perlman, chairman of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee, must be a masterful bureaucrat. Not only does he have a baffling title, he also has a straw man in his pocket, and isn't afraid to pull it out and shake it at you until you get frightened enough to agree with his unsubstantiated and overly dramatic point. Question: Say, Harvey, what is the alternative to the much maligned BCS? Answer: BOOGITY BOOGITY!!! (shakes straw man argument 'til its arms fall off.)
What I think most people don’t understand is that the alternative to the current system is not a playoff. The alternative to the BCS is going back to our traditional relationship with our bowl partners.
Translation: If you're not with the BCS, you're against the BCS. Sadly, there is little evidence that arguing for a playoff is a weapon of mass destruction pointed directly at the BCS, which in itself is a kind of fetal playoff early in its gestation. The possibility of bringing '88 back and going pure bowl system does not exist because people don't tend to like to turn off faucets that spout cash, and that is precisely what the BCS has been and could continue to be for quite a while. Money in hand tends to stay money in hand, and therefore the BCS ain't going anywhere as long as people like watching football on television.
As problematic as this is for someone who sees the flaws in the system, I can't help but stick up for the system in one respect: the BCS, while not a championship system (i.e. a playoff,) does attempt to create a compelling matchup to end the season that more often than not crowns something like a winner. (Watch your step or you'll trip over all those qualifiers.) The old bowl system makes no such effort, and is pure exhibition from which sportswriters and other assorted poll voters extracted their pick for the finest team in the land that year. This sometimes went very, very poorly, and if you care to talk about how poorly it could go, you can ask 1994 Penn State about the virtues of the old bowl-only system.
Then again, Auburn 2004 would care to have a word with you about the evils of the current system, too. Neither is perfect. A playoff has its own evils, too, and a fair-minded supporter of a college football playoff has to acknowledge that fact, too. To say it's not a possibility, though, is to use the kind of absolutist language used by faceless totalitarian regimes everywhere. And coming on the heels of this comment by Air Force coach Troy Calhoun:
"We basically have a system for college football that too closely resembles the old Soviet Presidium," Calhoun said, referring to the policymaking and governing body of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. "You have a seven-member politburo that's decided if you aren't one of those party members, then you're unable to participate."
... well, it's hard to dodge the charge when you're walking face-first into the label opponents are hanging on you as Perlman did in that interview. Not the most auspicious beginnings for Perlman, or for those of us who might want to try on a playoff once just to see how sexy it looks off the rack. Until then, we'll just keep wearing these rags that other sports point at while laughing uncontrollably. (Stan Van Gundy, stop. I've seen what you wear. Like a strip club manager fresh off gastric bypass, I tell you. Everyone else gets to point first, then you.)
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Politicians are getting involved? Buckle up.
The Department of Justice, as you might imagine, has a lot on its plate these days. There's not much need to go into that here; in case you hadn't noticed, this is The Sporting Blog, not C-SPAN. Those who were led to believe otherwise, our apologies; you may visit C-SPAN's homepage here instead.
Anyway, give Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff some credit: He's got stones. He plans to ask the DOJ (we can't restate this enough, the Department of Justice, people) to join his investigation against the BCS. Wow.
In an interview with KSL NewsRadio, Shurtleff said he plans to make a pitch to the Justice Department to bring the weight of its antitrust division into the probe. "Because they have the resources that Utah does not have," Shurtleff said. "Taking on the BCS is a huge undertaking financially."
Angered by the University of Utah being denied a national championship despite going undefeated and winning the Sugar Bowl, Shurtleff first raised the specter of an antitrust probe earlier this year. Since then, others have dog piled on the BCS system, calling it an "unfair monopoly."
Technically, we'd be more open to calling it an unfair oligarchy, but it's probably that "unfair" part that matters a little bit more.
At the heart of the matter, when it comes down to it all, is the fact that the bowl system operates largely outside the jurisdiction of the NCAA. Oh, there are still rules by which the sponsors and athletes have to abide and everything, but the deals aren't set up through the ruling body.
That's important, because it means the "BCS conferences" were allowed to confederate, in essence, to crowd out the "mid-majors." We're using quotes here because they're becoming poorer distinctions by the season; the Mountain West, for example, can make the argument that they're more deserving of an automatic bid than the Big East or ACC. Not that it'd be right or wrong, mind you, just that the argument can be made.
In an exclusive article for Sporting News, Boise State president Bob Kustra laid the BCS exclusion issue out thusly:
How can this happen when the NCAA sponsors 88 championships in almost every sport from bowling to water polo? The glaring exception is football. The NCAA does not sponsor a championship for the Football Bowl Subdivision-- formerly Division I-A. This so-called championship has fallen into the hands of the commissioners of the six BCS automatic qualifying conferences. They wrote the exclusionary BCS rule that created six automatic qualifying conferences--Atlantic Coast, Southeastern, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-10--and gives to the six conference commissioners the authority to send their respective champions to a BCS bowl regardless of how their won/loss records stack up against the champions of the nonautomatic qualifying conferences--Conference USA, Mid-American, Western Athletic, Sun Belt and Mountain West.
While the issue has gained plenty of steam in the wake of Utah's ahem, questionable claim to a national title, the legal arguments may center more around the massive sums of BCS money. Those six conferences are guaranteed at least one eight-figure payout from a BCS bowl, often two, while the "mid-majors" usually end up with one or two total. The MAC, for example, has never (and might not ever) collected BCS bowl money. The DOJ probably, hopefully, doesn't care who wins a football game or an AP poll. They probably do care about whether there's an unfair system of monetary distribution when about $100 million is at stake.
There is a moderately sensible solution, one the BCS conferences would never agree to for obvious monetary reasons. Rather than select the six BCS conference champions for BCS bowl money and then award four at-large bids irrespective of conference, a much fairer idea would be to select the best six conference champions (as long as we're fantasizing, this culminates in a four-team playoff), then the same next four at-large teams. At the very least, it removes the obviously undeserving BCS teams, the ones that usually come from the Big East (no offense, Pitt), and essentially sets a big-money payout line at the Top 10. If any team in any conference can get into the Top 10, then, it stands to reason that they've earned BCS money, right?
But again, this can't and won't happen. That would be so actively against the BCS conferences' best self-interests that a compliant commissioner would have probably earned immediate dismissal. That or the Big Ten's bulldog of a commissioner, Jim Delany, would saw the commissioner's head off.
Plus, look, we're not sure the Department of Justice needs to get involved; again, it has bigger fish to fry and much bigger sums of money to investigate. If it feels like getting involved and can get around the fact that at the end of the day, we're talking about sports, it'll probably find plenty of interesting material for at least an investigation.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
No, Utah, you can't have a playoff (not yours). But it appears the Utes' perfect season, culminating in a Sugar Bowl beatdown over Alabama, has caught the BCS' attention in a positive way.
To that end, there was an interesting nugget in Tony Barnhardt's AJC column on Friday. It looks like, per the new ESPN-BCS contract, the days of USC beating up on a 3-loss BXI team might be coming to an end:
But in the new contract, I’m told, there is an interesting clause: The first time in the deal that the Rose loses one of its champions to the BCS title game, that opening will be automatically filled by a Coalition (non-BCS conference) team if one has qualified.
For example: Let’s say Southern Cal wins the Pac-10 and qualifies for the BCS championship game in 2010. And let’s say Utah or Boise State goes undefeated again the wins the Mountain West or WAC. That team, if it doesn’t get into the big game, would automatically go to the Rose, where no Coalition team has played before.
It's not clear whether the "first time" part means that this is a one-time allowance or a new policy going forward; either way, it's a radical departure from the culture of "tradition" that the Rose Bowl had been so steeped in. Something's terribly wrong with having Texas in Pasadena, so drasticlly wrong that it better serves the Rose Bowl to have a Big Ten also-ran instead... but what the hell, let's get Boise State in there and see what happens.
(H/T: The Hlog.)
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Just when the BCS managed to find itself picking the approximately correct teams for its restricted playoff field, and just when the thing had managed to not radically change its formula for the first time like ever, the coaches poll had to go and screw it up:
The final regular-season ballots in the USA TODAY Coaches' Poll will no longer be made public beginning with the 2010 football season, the American Football Coaches Association announced Wednesday, a decision that surprised some coaches.
So you've got a completely anonymous poll that decides who plays for a crystal football and who's eligible for the other big-money games at the end of the year. This poll is compiled by the people who will be participating in the games. This conflict of interest makes Wall Street's relationship with the Fed look sane.
While AFCA public relations droid Grant Teaff says this will make the poll "the best in can possibly be," citing secret ballots in presidential elections as a precedent, we should listen to the OBC:
"I thought we would stay public on that last vote, I sort of think we ought to stay public, you know. It keeps everybody pretty honest so I don't know, that was surprising," said South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier.
Even with the publicity, "pretty honest" is still not very honest. The Blue-Gray Sky did a study and found that coaches consistently favored 1) themselves, 2) their opponents, and 3) their conference, even with the threat of public disapproval of their vote.
Though this is not surprising, it does indicate something bleeding obvious: these people need the threat of a stern column in the local paper, or something. At the very least the public scrutiny required coaches to be somewhat plausible in their votes, lest the BCS lose what little credibility it retains.
Now Mack Brown is free to submit a ballot that says "1. Texas, 120. Oklahoma, 2-119. Clowns." Everyone else is free to let the gamesmanship seen in the Blue-Gray Sky study run wild, without a check from the public. I guess if everyone cheats in their own favor just as much as everyone else it'll even out in the long run, unless you're a team from an underrepresented mid-major conference vying for that automatic spot. Then you're out of luck, as per usual.
At least football can take solace in not having the most screwed up postseason*: baseball just chucked nine teams from the ten-team Big 12 (Colorado and Iowa State don't participate) into their post-season tournament.
*(I know what you're thinking, but, yes, this turns out to be possible.)
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
The best website name ever? Besides "http://doihaveswineflu.org/"? Bitterlawyer.com, a website with more reason to complain than ever thanks to the success of law school graduate and Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, who unlike most of the readers of bitterlawyer.com has no hearings to attend, no depositions to take, and no judges to kiss up to in his extremely high-paying job as a successful football coach. (Bitter lawyers, cry into your large paychecks for consolation.)
The bitterlawyer.com interview has Leach insisting on that wackiest of wacky ideas: not just a college playoff, but a 64 team college playoff.
This business of a four-team playoff or an eight-team playoff is just stupid. I think you have to cut the regular season to 10 games. Then I think you need to invite a lot of teams (maybe 64) into a playoff, but you’d let the rest of the teams continue in an NIT-type deal so that they could play another six games or so, which they need to fund their programs.
This is large-scale thinking, a kind of Mortal Kombat death tournament for college football teams. It will also never happen, both because of the six additional games taking the schedule to 16 games, and because of the convoluted revenue streams keeping the Rose Bowl, Big Ten(leven), and Pac-10 walled off from the rest of the college football fiscal universe. It's as practical as suggesting you saw off your arm and replace it with a chainsaw to fight an army of the undead. And just like that idea, when you see a picture of what that actually looks like ... well, as unreal as it seems, it does have a certain grandeur to it.
It won't happen, but you have to like the thinking, since if you're Mike Leach two feet out on the edge won't do -- you have to get all the way out there to make it count.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
You may read a column or two over the next few weeks about how March Madness for football would be CASH FOR GOLD awesome, if only we could get the evil robber barons who rule college football to stop torturing puppies and kittens for just one second and listen to the common man who cries out for a playoff. If you really believe a setup like basketball's NCAA Tournament would work, even in a 16 team bracket, you can go ahead and drop the family heirlooms into an envelope for a 70% loss. No amount of reason could stop you from thinking either is a good idea, because you're not that bright to begin with, and should be kept from all electrical sockets and sharp objects for your own safety.
The empty seats at first-round games should be your first clue that something would be amiss: getting people to clear schedules, purchase tickets, and fly to distant playoff locales is difficult to do in the best of times, and near impossible in a time of economic downturn. The first round of the NCAA tournament, thrilling as it can be, is usually played in front of mausoleum-quiet crowds with few actual school-loyal interested fans in attendance. If the ACC tournament couldn't sell more than 18,000 tickets three hours from Tobacco Road this weekend, the results could be worse for first-round games.
Now take the logistics into account, and the idea of "December Madness" gets even less tenable. Three games to play to get to the national title means college football fans would have to travel to three games on short notice to watch their teams, a series of expenses that would equal thousands for just one fan, much less an entire family. (In December, no less, when many families are blowing up credit cards for holiday expenses.) If the regionals are played on neutral sites, this means the onus for ticket purchases falls on the cities hosting those games, a dodgy bet at best thanks to college football loyalties and interest varying wildly from region to region. Those expenses are essential because putting on a football game requires far more in terms of logistical support than a basketball game: bigger anticipated crowds mean more security, and that means more costs for the sponsoring cities.
We're not even taking the costs to the programs into account here. Moving a basketball team from place to place is expensive, but moving a football team is less a matter of logistics than one of a small military maneuver: the equipment trucks, the team and coaches and staff needing flights and hotel and food, the total effort expended in making sure everything gets to one place once a week ... it's an immense amount of money, time and effort. Most schools lose money sending their teams to bowl games as is; now take the 16 best teams and tell them a playoff will work like that, but with a possible three additional travel dates on their schedule, and you'll have teams putting already swollen athletics budgets deep into the red.
As mundane as the details are, they're the dull truth of what kills the notion of instituting anything besides a plus one in college football. The existing product -- the Bowl System -- is subsidized by networks, is highly profitable for them, and can be tweaked without the creation of a sports endeavor whose logistics would be somewhere between the World Cup and Operation Desert Freedom. Given the choice, the market will do exactly what you would do: stay on the comfy couch of the BCS rather than get up for what remains a messy and difficult hypothetical vacation into playoffland; until further notice, the staycation remains the option of choice for NCAA football.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
On the occasion of Utah's stellar Sugar Bowl win over Alabama and the start of the NFL playoffs today, ye old B.C.S. debate has smoldered anew. Matt Hinton (no bludgeoner of the standard "give me playoffs or give me death!" talking points) notes the irony in the "success" of this particular bowl: it will get the BCS and its masters good ratings, but it really exposes the core problem with the so-called two-team playoff.
ESPN loves a good segue, and SportsCenter anchor Dari Nowkhah used the unfortunate circumstance of the 12-4 Colts opening the postseason at 8-8 San Diego to somehow argue playoffs are not inherently fair, and therefore no solution for college football. Of course, Nowkhah asserted all this in 10 seconds and followed the talking point with, "Hey, I'm just sayin'," which is a phrase that legally absolves you of using logic or sense in an argument. No foul, man. No foul.
Just in case someone offers this argument again today and doesn't excuse himself* from adult conversation with an "I'm just sayin'" cop-out, please note that this is the worst kind** of false equivalence possible. Utah, USC and potentially Texas will be disappointed to not be given opportunities to play for the title. In Utah's case, there is nothing more the team could have done -- the Utes won every single game it played. That is not in the same solar system as the venue of the Colts-Chargers game. The NFL equivalent would be for the Super Bowl to be set right now, between New York and Tennessee. If the NFL worked like the B.C.S., Indianapolis would currently have no shot at the Super Bowl. The Colts would be in Glendale playing the Cowboys and each team's season would be over Monday, win or lose. That's a bit different than the wild card weekend venue situation.
And while I apologize for the seemingly obvious rant, I note that it would not be necessary if folks in some of the most visible jobs in sports -- ESPN anchors -- would restrain from making completely illogical, borderline stupid arguments on my TV.
* Women are too smart to make such a ridiculous argument.
** By "worst kind" I mean "worst kind pertaining to something as wholly unimportant as sports."
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
We repeat: President-Elect Obama cannot fix your playoff system, college football fans. He can do many things, yes: hit a mid-range jumper, outfox political ninjas like Hillary Clinton, and name a specific Conan the Barbarian comic he found interesting. (All true, including the Conan factoid: he's a fan. Crom approves.)
He has no real power other than the august seal of the President of the United States to back his suggestion of a playoff. Representative Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii has even less power, but he thinks it's a splendid idea to get the government involved in forcing college football into some kind of playoff system. Abercrombie is joined in this by prior supporters of a non-binding piece of legislation suggesting Congress investigate the BCS, a group including Georgia's Lynn Westmoreland, a representative you may remember from this Colbert interview.
On principle, the government has zero power or responsibility to get involved in the BCS, and no powers should be invented or conjured from thin air to do so. There's much better things for politicians to be doing, like "nothing," for example. Anecdotally, if you think Lynn Westmoreland should be let near anything as precious as college football, much less any other sport, you're probably also in favor of letting people with seizure disorders land the space shuttle. As Molly Ivins once said of a Texas politician, "If he were any dumber, we'd have to water him." If this is the vanguard of the push for a playoff, I'm leaping off the wagon before it gets so much as an iota of momentum.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Regardless of what Spencer Hall would have you believe, the BCS is not alright. Sure, we’ll likely get an exciting National Championship game between Florida/Alabama and Oklahoma, but it won’t be without controversy. Texas is obviously getting the shaft, having beaten the Sooners face-to-face on a neutral field, yet being leapfrogged by Oklahoma, which will play in the Big XII title game for a shot at making it to the BCS Championship.
But forget all this nonsense about what’s “fair” or “just” because hot damn, the BCS has made this regular season exciting! This from one of the system’s creator’s Roy Kramer:
"I'm tremendously pleased with how it's working," said Kramer, the former SEC commissioner who put the controversial structure in place as the first BCS coordinator in 1998. "One of the purposes was to make the regular season more interesting and exciting, and I think it's accomplished that to an enormous degree. I'm watching an NFL game [Sunday] and in the middle of the game, they're talking about the BCS. You never heard that in the past."
In the same way that making the season “interesting” doesn’t make its outcome fair, nor does people “talking about the BCS” make the current system a positive for college football. More than likely, those NFL commentators were discussing some sort of BCS controversy. But I guess any publicity is good publicity, a theory that will continue to apply to NCAA football for some time to come, according to Kramer:
"The BCS is the system we have, and I don't see a playoff on the horizon," Kramer said. "I don't see the support. I think we are as far as you'll get."
Is there a sport fan in the athletic universe that gets more screwed over than college football enthusiasts? The fact that nine-out-of-10 fans want a playoff system just isn’t enough support to get it done. But hey, all this complaining sure does make it “exciting,” no?
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Ball State and Boise State, both undefeated at the end of the regular season, are angling to face each other in a bowl that for the purposes of this blog we will call the "Mid-Size Hybrid Affordable Family Sedan Bowl Championship Series," or MSHAFCBCS.
The MSHAFCBCS would likely feature the two teams playing on the Smurf Turf of the Humanitarian Bowl, something both the bowl itself and the Western Athletic Conference are angling for instead of the usual WAC versus ACC matchup.
The WAC and Humanitarian Bowl are trying to get Ball State interested in a game against the Broncos instead of Boise playing a non-descript team from the ACC.
Those "non-descript" teams from the ACC may be criminally undervalued, now that we've mentioned them here. The ACC went 3-1 against the SEC this weekend, including a 45-42 pasting of preseason number one Georgia at home.
As descript as a Ball State/Boise matchup would be, there's still dickering around on finding a truly neutral site, how much the payouts would be, whether Ball State would accept the bid over a MAC-affiliated bowl, etc. The MSHAFCBCS game would be the only national title game with two undefeated teams , though, and they can't take that away from either team.
This is quite unlike the BCS computers, who may take a national title away from Florida thanks to the wonders of the BCS's IT community and their formulas, who may have Texas and Oklahoma on a rematch path no matter what happens in Atlanta this weekend.
The common thread in this all is the weakness of the SEC as a conference overall this year; aside from Alabama and Florida, the conference has been a disappointing collection of failed preseason top ten teams (Auburn, Georgia,) rebuilding projects (LSU, Arkansas, Ole Miss,) and general muddle and collapse (South Carolina, Tennessee, and Miss State.) In short: if Florida wins and is snubbed, it's not you we mind. It's the crowd you run with, who looks objectively scruffy when compared to the peaking programs of the Big 12 right now.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Outrage is cheap and plentiful, and like most cheap and plentiful things it is useless when you need to get something done. Any and all outrage over the BCS is functionally useless, and like a customer stuck bellowing at the mute face of an off-bank ATM charging you for the money you must have at that moment, you will take the fee for being a fan because you need the money far more than you can tolerate the lack of it. Go ahead and yell at it all you like -- it changes nothing, and might get you a misdemeanor charge when a passing cop sees you kicking the daylights out of a poor defenseless machine.
Sputter on if you like, but despicable as the BCS may be, it is a vast improvement over the old systems of determining a national champion. Remember that in the past -- from 1965 to 1967 -- the AP's national championship could in fact be awarded before the bowl season, meaning double the outrage when your appointed champion went down in flames in a bowl game. Before the half-sanity of the BCS there was voting, and voting alone, to determine the national championship, a process that due to bowl contracts meant the best teams playing each other was never even a possibility.
Under the existing system, that is at least a possibility, and that is an improvement from the previous regimes of crowning national champions. Also, if this seems familiar, it should, since panicking over the BCS leading into this year has only had one undeniably busted year: 2003, when USC and LSU split the title after Oklahoma snuck into the picture through the magic of some funky BCS math. A decade of the system has been good in producing fair matchups, even if the results in the games themselves have been erratic. (OSU/Miami? Classic. USC/Oklahoma? Classically gory.)
For the moment, hold the outrage. After the conference championship games, you should have a one-loss Big 12 team versus either an undefeated or one loss SEC team. USC may have a small case for being in the BCS Championship game, but their strength of schedule serves as a convenient enough counter to any claims they may make. (It's not their fault the Pac-10 went to the dogs this year, but still.) The same holds true for Penn State, whose schedule also puts them a few crucial paces behind a claim at the title. Contrary to what fellow TSBer Dan Shanoff says, it is not a playoff, but it will produce a quality matchup that, in retrospect, will look like the right call once the games are actually played and trophies hoisted skyward.
(Unless Oklahoma State beats Oklahoma this week and/or Texas loses to Texas A&M, and then you can set the drapes on fire, grab a gun and a bottle of liquor, and head to the hills, because this house is burning to the ground.)
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
The BCS is confusing, filled with clauses, subclauses, and countless other frills and doodads built into it. Please consult our handy Sporting Blog chart of how the BCS will play out in 2008. Remember: this is an official Sporting Blog product, and therefore infallibly correct. Click the chart to see it full-size.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Ball State survived the wrath of Central Michigan and the Dark Lord Zombo last night to remain undefeated. When your friend who knows nothing about college football approaches you and says, "So is Ball State gonna play for the national championship YOUR SPORT IS SCREWED UP," you may confidently answer "no." Here's why.
Ball State now sits at No. 17 in the BCS standings. Only conference champions earn the automatic bids to the BCS bowls, meaning a few teams ahead of Ball State -- Georgia, for example -- can't win their conferences, and essentially move Ball State up a few spots and closer to the crucial 12-spot in the BCS rankings. If Ball State finishes in the top 12, they're in under BCS rules as an undefeated from the non-BCS ranks.
As with anything, though, there is a catch. Ahem:
No more than one such team from Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Sun Belt Conference, and the Western Athletic Conference shall earn an automatic [BCS] berth in any year. (Note: a second team may be eligible for at-large eligibility as noted below.)
Only one undefeated non-BCS conference team gets an automatic ticket to fat gift bags and BCS glory, and at the moment both Boise Sate and Utah are ranked higher than Ball State. Both would have to lose to get Ball State an automatic bid. Ball State would still be eligible for an at-large bid at what Emmitt Smith would call "the bowl's discrepancy", which will not happen with large, cash-tossing fanbases like Ohio State or Georgia possibly lurking out there.
But hey, Notre Dame may be the first five-loss team to ever get a Gator Bowl bid! Perhaps your friend who knows nothing about college football has a point.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Barack Obama, the United States' President-elect, favors a college football playoff. This means nothing, since ultimately the President has little to do with how the BCS works, and because he went to a combination of Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard University. Collectively, the three schools have as much to do with the BCS as Beano Cook has to do with renegotiating WTO trade agreements. This is to say that he has nothing to do with it, and nothing will change because of him. (Now, if we'd elected Beano president, now we're talking about change we could believe in here. He'd also appoint Ron Pawlus as Secretary of State. No one's perfect.)
Barack will ask, negotiate, and cajole. However, other world leaders have distinctly different tacks on this BCS matter.
Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France. "I weel prezehnt you with mah beautifool wife Car-lah Bru-knee, who weel have you eating ze foie gras from her hahnd before you announce ze first playoffs, commencing immediately. Seriously, zees whole thing iz an excuse to show you mah hot wahfe, who is compleetely smo-keeng in evree sense of ze word."
Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of Russia. "I will first place the heads of every major conference member into a crippling judo submission hold until they yielded. Then, my pet tiger would dispose ... er, I mean, cuddle with them.
Kim Jong-Il, ‘Dear Leader’ of North Korea. "The teams will parade for my pleasure in unison. Each team must bring 14,000 litres of high-grade cognac for admission. Please, I don't care what happens, someone please, please bring me some cognac. Also, please do not talk or look at anyone or you will be shot."
Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada. "I'd widen the field to a civilized 110 by 65 yards, of course. Canada: we're sitting right here politely just waiting to help."
Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany. "Germany is fine with whatever happens with the BCS as long as there is no inappropriate touching of any kind."
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Perhaps you took Barack Obama's pre-election statement that college football needs a playoff as a pander to passionate sports fans, or a non-confrontational cop-out. But, um, he's been elected and he seems really serious about this. The next president talked to 60 Minutes about the subject.
According to Obama's proposed system, eight teams would play over three rounds to settle the national champion.
"It would add three extra weeks to the season," he said at the conclusion of a wide-ranging interview. "You could trim back on the regular season. I don't know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. So, I'm going to throw my weight around a little bit. I think it's the right thing to do."
It is the right thing to do. It's change we can believe in. But ... can anyone really step into the ring with the NCAA and live to tell about it? And don't underestimate the power of the bowl sponsor industry. Tostitos, FedEx, Chick-fil-A, Outback Steakhouse -- these businesses will be lining up to help Obama's 2012 challenger. No one messes with crass capitalism which occurs at the expense of common sense!
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Back off, troglodytes: We come not to discuss politics, but sports, so check the pitchforks and torches at the door. It just so happens that the men and women who run for political office in this country also happen to be sports fans, and in many cases very knowledgeable ones. For example, Richard Nixon called Redskins head coach George Allen frequently during his Presidency, even legendarily suggesting the 'Skins run a reverse to catch the opposition off guard. The play failed, proving that Nixon's trick plays never, ever turned out well. (Note "legendarily"; George Allen's son, Senator George Allen, denies it happened.)
Our current pair of aspiring government servants, Senators McCain and Obama, both have their pet projects. We're guessing a McCain presidency would see the Navy football team adopted as the unofficial national college football squad since McCain, an Annapolis grad, has addressed the team prior to the Army-Navy game.
Obama, too, is a rabid sports fan, and has definite opinions ... like how to solve college football's postseason foibles once and for all.
He's a playoff guy. Chris Berman says, "You could probably make that happen," further proving Chris Berman has no idea what he's talking about at any point. The President is nothing compared to the Big Ten commissioner and the men in the Rose Bowl jackets, who don't answer to God, logic, or some guy with a measly Presidential Seal and a Secret Service detail.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
A casual visit to the BCS website--on the day of college football's latest playoff proposal getting the ixnay in spring meetings in Florida--reveals a sidebar full of propaganda so cherry-picked it would probably make Kim Jong-Il blush in comparison.
This is not an exaggeration: check after the jump for a screen shot of the KCNA website, the offical news outlet of North Korea, and see which one seems more fair and balanced.
Um...a tie? Can we call that a tie? With just a few tweaks of the verbiage, they're the same site in different colors. And like the reunification of South Korea and North Korea, it might take our whole lifetime before I get a proper ending to the college football season, too.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
Will College Football's Playoff Just Be A Plus-One After All?
by Jason Kirk
No.
But Larry Scott said ...
No.
May 24 1:45p