just watched Herbstreit on sportscenter and he made two points that [to me] seemed to conflict.
1) An undefeated South Florida does not deserve to play for the MNC over a 1 loss OU or LSU
2) College football doesn't need a playoff because the whole regular season is a playoff.
Really? The whole regular season is a playoff? You mean, except for games played at Boulder or Lexington?
I could buy the regular season as a playoff argument if only undefeated teams were eligible for the BCS championship game. However, at least half the time we are forced to arbitrarily decide which losses matter and which losses do not.
The BEast gets zero cred from media pundits. Even tho they have had teams on the verge of playing in the le game for a few years (L'ville, WVa, Rutgers, USF) people continue to look over them for the big name programs.
I don't know about LSU, but uo lost to a CU team that will be lucky to get a bowl bid. No way they should get the nod over USF, if they go all the way.
These guys in media just want big names in because its more exciting for them. A USF/BC mnc game is a ratings nightmare.
I saw that interview (ESPN, Good Call), too, and thought the same thing - he's joking. If anything, his contradiction adds more fodder to those wanting a playoff system. People like him continuously believe that there are only a handful of the same schools each year that are "eligible" for the NC, but almost every year we witness one or more "upsets" during the RS that, at the end of the year, don't seem as surprising. Additionally, OU lost to an unranked team and USF has not lost a single game (either to a ranked or unranked team), therefore, OU is more deserving?
I don't want a playoff. My reason is basically that no matter what teams are going to feel like they got ripped off. If you take 8 teams, there will be that 9th team that has a strong case to get into the playoff crying, and ESPN will devote hours to talking about it; and if people say "well they were the 9th best team so it's not like they had a chance" then they are actually going against the whole reasoning for a playoff in that statement. The playoff would only serve justice for mid majors, because most losses at major schools come in conference games, which if you think about it, would make it impossible to grant invites to the tourny. See look: in the SEC, Florida, LSU, and Auburn could all beat eachother and finish with one loss, so who gets the invite? You might say "well the winner of the SEC championship game" then I will say what if a team goes undefeated the whole season and loses in thier championship game to a team with a loss(or several), who is more deserving of a invite? Should Kansas St. of got an invite in 2003 over Oklahoma? A true tourny would have the winners of each conference, but there is still the grey area to argue about.
I say if you want to play in the BCS Championship game, just win all your games...it's that simple
The 9th (or 13th or 17th depending on the preferred format) has a much much weaker case though than the 3rd. At least at that point, every team could be looking at something different that they could have done to have had a chance for the le. Right now, a team can do literally EVERYTHING right, and still be on the outside looking in. It happened to Auburn in '04, it happened to Boise last year, and there's a decent chance that it could happen to South Florida this year.
"Should Kansas St. get an invite in 2003 over OU?"
Well, of the two, KSU is the only team that won its conference.
Should Indianapolis have played in the 2006 Super Bowl instead of Pittsburgh because they had a better regular season???
"I say if you want to play in the BCS Championship game, just win all your games...it's that simple"
Tell that to Auburn & Boise State.
The fact that nobody, and I mean nobody, advocates for the NFL to come up with a mathematically formula based on human opinions and computer rankings to match 2 regular seasons in the Super Bowl should be evidence enough which system is vastly superior.
I know about Auburn, but the playoff doesn't solve anything. I think the BCS will get it right more often than it gets it wrong. I mean Boise St. won all of it's games, and it did beat Oklahoma, but it's not like Oklahoma was even considered for the championship game. In terms of Oklahoma's standards, last year was a down year anyway. So yes I see your point, but the playoff is every Saturday for 3 months in the fall.
A more logical cry for a change would be to change the rankings. There is no reason that there should even be rankings untill October. I mean this is the real reason Auburn was snubbed, because if they were ranked higher in the preseaon, they play in the Sugar Bowl that year. This is a logical change because it actually could happen. A playoff isn't going to happen anytime soon, but this could change everything for the better.
also another thing I thought could be done is that top 25 teams would have to leave an open date in September to play another top 25 team. Let me explain:
Say the final standings for 2007 look like this (I'm just making this up)
1. LSU
2. Ohio St.
3. South Florida
4. Texas
5. Oklahoma
Now here is South Florida's schedule next year (made up)
8/31 FIU
9/6 Ball State
9/13 open date in which a team within proximity of where SF finished would play. In this case either LSU, Ohio St., Texas..... you get the point
a couple things
-the games could be scheduled as early as January when the final standings come out from the year before, so it's not last minute.
-teams normally have bye weeks anyway around this time so it's not really throwing anything off
-most teams in the top 25 the year before, end up there the next year.
-It will leave a chance to get screwed up if you have a team like Kentucky or South Florida this year. Teams out of nowhere....but nothing is perfect.
-this would force teams to play quality oppenents and since it would be set up by the NCAA, there would be no crying about teams scheduling cupcakes (like tOSU this year)
So, you're saying that we should have participants in NCAA football (i.e. Boise State) that are simply ineligible for the national le game?
And even if Auburn had gotten in, there still would have been an undefeated team - from a BCS conference no less - that wouldn't have had the opportunity for a le.
I don't know that the system gets it right more often than it gets it wrong. Yes, it was easy in 2005 to see that Texas & USC were 1/2. But in 2 out of 3 or 3 out of 4 years, there are very very LEGITIMATE arguments that can be made for somebody else than the two teams given the shot.
Yes, you can say the #9 or #17 would argue if they were left out of a playoff. But it is significantly better that a second or third tier team get left out of the system vs. a team that may have already proven itself to be #1, but was kept out because of a math formula.
In my second post I gave somewhat of a solution. Boise St. finished in the top 25 in 2005 (i think) so last year they would have had to play a quality oppenent during their schedule to prove they are worthy of a ranking. The problem with college football is that the schools don't play the same teams like they do in the pros. We had no idead Boise St. was worthy until they beat Oklahoma, which was too late beacuse it was in a bowl game. If they played Oklahoma in September, then it's a whole different story. I mean we have to see these mid majors win against quality teams to believe they are good
Why not have every conference do a conference Championship and let the conference champs duke it out for the Nat'l Championship?
Theoretically, Boise could have beaten TWO powers to their non-conference slate and they still wouldn't have made the le game. (As it was, they did beat [DESTROY] an Oregon State team that beat USC and won 10 games last year).
And why should previous year ranking have any bearing on national champion THIS year?
Yet, Div 1-AA, II, and III have playoffs and I hear no one complaining (too loudly) about it.I don't want a playoff. My reason is basically that no matter what teams are going to feel like they got ripped off. If you take 8 teams, there will be that 9th team that has a strong case to get into the playoff crying
The AP voters vote completely on HISTORY. USF could be pound for pound the best team in the country, but since OU and LSU have won national championships before they get bonus points.
At one point, IIRC, the NCAA tournament only invited the teams designated champions by their conferences, whether after the regular season or via a conference tournament. In 1974, Maryland was #4 in the country in basketball, but lost the ACC conference tournament final (to #1 NC State) and didn't make the NCAA tournament because only conference champions were permitted.
It's not like South Florida isn't in the Big East and hasn't beaten #5 (at the time) WVU and beat SEC powerhouse and defensive stalwart Auburn on the road so far this season. Granted, the Big East perhaps is not what it once was but it's not exactly the WAC and we saw what happened last January when a WAC team made it to a BCS bowl.
Herbstreit is just yanking your chain so you'll post about him on the internets.
Because your idea makes sense and is too simple for the NCAA to understand!
Why should there be a system in place that's only going to get it right sometimes or most of the times? Even 4 out of 5 years would be wrong. A playoff would decide the NC on the field. If a playoff would produce Boston College v. South Florida, so be it. The Ohio St.'s and USC's of the world should've won their games plain and simple.
I think that idea will never work because the big conferences would want the opportunity to have more than 1 team in such a tourament (at the expense of teams from smaller conferences). The smaller conferences would accept the playoff format only if they were assured of having a representative in such a tournament.Because your idea makes sense and is too simple for the NCAA to understand!
Unfortunately, football isn't like basketball -- I'm not sure that a 6 round, 64 team tournament would ever be feasible; not unless every team agreed to scale back its schedule to 10 or 11 games (and I'm sure that schools that wouldn't make the playoff would have very little interest in giving up the revenue created by an extra home game or two). Even a 24 team playoff would require an additional 5 weeks of play.
Many conferences don't deserve a spot in a playoff.
I think a top 6 would work best. Give the top 2 seeds a bye week, and play the winners of the 3-6 matchups. Only one extra game for the top 2 teams in the country, and a couple extra for the 3-6, but I don't think they'd complain about a chance to win a championship.
I can't see a playoff coming anytime soon. As of now, the power conferences and teams have to much control, and money dependent on that control.
And that's why you'll never have a playoff. As long as there are those in the NCAA who believe that the WAC, the Mountain West, and other smaller conferences don't deserve a shot at the championship, those conferences will continue to fight against the playoff idea -- there's too much money at stake for those schools to be left out and there are years in which those conferences produce teams that can beat the champions of some of the bigger conferences (Boise last year, for instance).
Saying categorically that the smaller conferences never deserve a spot in a playoff is the surest way to ensure IMO that there won't be a playoff.
Why don't smaller conferences deserve to be in a playoff? They're D1-A participants, aren't they? Why should 25% of the teams in that division be automatically ineligible for the national le before the season even starts. It's the only sport in the world where that's the case.
One of the biggest reasons against the PO system is that it would costs schools too much money to participate. As it is, many schools actually LOSE money by going to bowl games as the payout doesn't even begin to cover their expense (e.g., lodging and meals for the players, staff, band) - not to mention a lot of the fan base would also be required to s out a lot of money, especially if their team advanced to the NC.
One way to relieve this financial impact would be to have tiered regional PO's. Teams eligible for the PO's would match-up not by rank, but by proximity. True, it could very well mean the #1 and #2 teams play each other in the first round, but they would eventually have to play anyway. The only downside would be if somehow one of the lower-ranked teams made it to the NC while a true #1/#2 also did and we ended up with a lopsided NC, but even then I think the chances of that happening would be rare. Incidentally, though, it would STILL be a plausible system as the more powerful team would have earned their stripes by beating tough foes along the way.
As the rounds progress, the "regions" would become larger, of course, but the financial impact would be reduced a lot, by both schools and their fans. Here is an example using the current BCS Top-16 (hopefully, my geography is correct):
Round #1
#7 Kentucky vs. #1 Ohio State
#15 Florida vs. #2 South Florida
#9 West Virginia vs. #3 Boston College
#5 Oklahoma vs. #4 LSU
#11 Virginia Tech vs. #6 South Carolina
#12 California vs. #8 Arizona State
#14 USC vs. #10 Oregon
#16 Missouri vs. #13 Kansas
Perhaps even have the two teams meet geographically midway???
Perhaps have the schools not send a lot of personnel/staff/band in the early rounds????
I totally agree with K-State Spur
I have NOT heard one good argument as to why there should not be a NCAA D1 college football tourney.........Not a single one.
The is a no brainer period.........you CANNOT decide a national champion on votes in any single sport period. You have to be a complete dumbass to think otherwise.
Also, You could still use the bowls for each round of the playoffs, and still keep the bowls for the teams that didnt qualify. Afterall, any bowl besides the NC bowl (NOW) doesnt mean anyhow.
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