[NU Sports] BCS

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

> I guess I'm in the minority on this, but I much prefer
> the current Bowl set-up to a 4 or 8 team playoff.  Why?
>  
>     1.  Length of the season aside, I enjoy the  debate of
> who's number one.  
> And the regular season games are more  meaningful.

I just don't get this argument when I hear it - adding an 8-team playoff would not diminish the regular season at all. Since it's only 8, it wouldn't be like the NHL where everyone's in, so winning regular season games and conference championships would still be just as huge - it would just allow for a slew of 1-loss teams to determine the title on the field instead of the perceived strength of the SEC allowing them to lose at home to Mississippi, while a loss on the road to Oregon State or Iowa dooms another team.

>     2.  I don't see the downside in the current  BCS
> system. Sure if there 

The last couple years have pretty much brought out the glaring holes. It works well when all falls into place and you get unbeaten USC vs. unbeaten Texas. But there have really only been 2 of those games (the OSU-Miami being the other). The rest of the time, it seems like an undeserving team got in the title game over a more deserving one -- which wasn't a huge problem until the last couple years when the controversial #2 pick won.

LSU last year was probably the worst yet, as it gave a 2-loss team a home game for a national title by leaping them over a couple other teams in the final week. Based on what? Beating a mediocre Tennessee in the SEC title game? Georgia was the best SEC team last year but lost out on some bizarre tiebreakers and never even got a chance to play LSU to prove it.

And while it seems to favor the SEC now, the year Auburn was unbeaten and left out was just as outrageous.

> loser of the championship game.   Plus.if they're
> really good, they get to 
> celebrate their season with a Big Bowl  win.  Just

Hmmm. Somehow I don't think Georgia felt good thrashing Hawaii last year instead of playing for the title the next week.

>     3. Some 20-30 other Bowl game winners will be able  to
> celebrate a 
> wonderful season ending with meaningful, season ending Bowl
>  Victories.

Which - thanks to a glut of bowls now - are played in half-empty stadiums and utterly meaningless because the tradition of the bowl system has been gradually sucked away by the BCS. Which is another argument against the system. You don't want a playoff? Fine - just give me my traditional bowl system with packed stadiums, meaningful games and sponsors who aren't all male enhancement companies! Bring back the Weedwacker Bowl!:)

>     4. The playoffs would diminish the existing  Bowls

Any more than the BCS already has? Just try and watch the Orange Bowl this year. Cincinnati vs. Maryland or something like that. Or the Louisville-Wake Forest game a few years back. That's not some mid-level bowl. That was the ORANGE Bowl. In prime time. With no competition from other games. But the seats were half empty and no one tuned in. It wasn't like the Orange Bowl years ago when even a non-title game drew a packed house, huge prime time audience (despite the Sugar Bowl being on opposite it) and MEANT something.
>  
>      5. In today's NCAA only a handful of schools 
> could possibly survive, 

This would be the one possible downside, which is why I could see keeping the other bowls and building a plus-one or 8-team playoff into the existing bowl system.

However, the current BCS does the same thing - look at the teams who have made it in recent years and aside from the Big Least/ACC messes, it's a pretty exclusive club.

Pac 10 - USC, USC, USC, USC, USC
Big XII - Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Texas, Oklahoma
Big Ten - OSU, OSU, OSU, PSU, OSU
SEC - Florida, LSU (when the title game is a home game), Florida, LSU (when the title game is a home game), Georgia

I just don't understand the argument you hear of a playoff ruining college football's regular season or bowl tradition - it would make the regular season even better (and you'd still have plenty of controversy over who gets in!) and the BCS has already destroyed the bowl system.

If it were the old bowl system, then I'd be more hesitant - but the BCS has eroded any last shred of tradition or meaning to that, even the Rose has suffered with non Big Ten/Pac 10 matchups or a matchup of a Pac 10 team that should have been in the title game against a second-place Big Ten team that winds up being ugly (see last year).

And if you look at the scores of the BCS games vs. those same bowls in previous years, you can also see the BCS has reduced bowl excitement there - sure, you have Boise State/Oklahoma or Texas/USC, but those are the exceptions in the BCS era. Most of these games have been ugly blowouts in front of a lot of empty seats (even in Pasadena some years!).

GO CATS!!!
-SjT