The game itself I get somewhat , I’m not really all that much into sports ,so I never really did get how the college system worked.
But I was reading that thread about Boise and Virginia tech and got somewhat confuzzled.
Whats the college equivalent of the superbowl
Why no playoffs ,from what I have read in that thread.
How many teams are there in College football, I am assuming 50 states = at least two teams, and possibly upwards of that.
Declan
BCS National Championship game will match up the teams assumed to be #1 and #2 at the end of the year - no playoffs to get there.
Tradition of the bowls, which all are money makers for someone. Logistics might be a tad easier, and arguing over who is really best is fun.
I think the number is 119, but it may have hit 120 recently. California has 7 schools in FBS, Ohio has 8, Florida has 7, Texas has 10. And that’s just in the top level. The lower levels of college sports, which do have playoffs, have many more lesser known teams.
Also, several states do not have any top level teams (FBS for Football Bowl Sub-Division) such as Alaska, Montana, North & South Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Delaware, and Rhode Island.
There is a strong push amongst some in the business for playoffs, but most of the pressure is external to the college football system. The presidents and athletic directors for the universities continue to see revenue increase each year. Football is the biggest revenue maker for a college athletic program to the extent that it pays for all other sports except basketball (which generally only pays for itself). As long as the money keeps coming in, there is a disincentive for the people in charge to change the bowl system to a playoff.
Wikipedia is a good source for information.
Here are some other threads that may provide some help for you:
Division I Football Teams By State
04-04-2010, 02:20 PM
College Football All-Time Team Rankings
03-21-2010, 09:03 AM
The College Football Belt
03-19-2010, 11:11 AM
American College Football: Pre-season vs. Post-season Rankings
05-22-2010, 09:49 AM
There are 630 four-year colleges and universities which operate football programs and are affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
The 630 programs are grouped by the NCAA into four categories, based on budget, attendance, number of scholarships offered, and other criteria. From least lavish to most lavish, they are Division III (235 teams), Division II (148 teams), the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS: 118 teams), and the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; 120 teams). During 2009, 9 teams were “unclassified” because they were in the process of moving from one class to another.
Unless you’re an alumnus of, or live in a small town with, a lower-division school, you probably hear little about lower-division football. For most people, “college football” and the “national championship” mean the FBS.
For the FCS, Division II, and Division III, the NCAA operates post-season playoffs, with either 16 or 32 teams invited, to determine divisional champions. For the FBS, only two teams get invited to a national championship game, and others play in lesser “bowl games”. As you can imagine, this is very controversial, but the lesser bowl games make huge amounts of money so there is little incentive to change.
Beyond the NCAA, there are 92 small colleges playing football in the NAIA and 69 more in the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA). Beyond that, who knows. There may be other lesser associations of which I’m not aware.