College football fans, since the BCS came on the scene in 1998, has your interest in the college football bowl games and the national championship increased or decreased?
I marked increased, but that’s only due to moving from next to no interest in 1998 to extreme interest in 2004, when Auburn got screwed, to moderate interest until 2010 when Auburn had such a miraculous year, and a somewhat “meh” interest this past year.
The Pick’em group I participated in made the bowl season of 2011-12 more entertaining than most years (I played last year, too) but all in all I’m more excited than in 1998.
Other than Auburn’s BCSCG win in 2010, I guess my maximum interest in the whole thing was the year Vince Young and Texas beat USCw.
Decreased. I used to spend the entire bowl week wearing an ass shaped pattern into my couch. I’d watch anything that was on TV whether I knew the teams or not.
Now I really can’t be arsed to. Bowl games should be for teams that had good to great seasons. None of this 6-6, 7-5 crap. I made it a point to watch my PAC-12 teams, but that’s about it. I used to plan a small party for the big games. Last night I didn’t even bother tuning in.
Stayed the same. CFB has always been very high for me.
It increased from 1998-2007 or so, and has decreased steadily since then. This recent one was very low interest, but my overall interest level is still probably higher than in 1998.
Decreased. Dragging out bowl season until the middle of January sucks. I also have NHL Gamecenter so I can start following hockey all season long.
It has nothing to do with the BCS. The endless arguments about the BCS and the whining about a playoff bores me to tears.
Decreased, but I was in college at Michigan at the time, and 98 was the year after they won part of the national championship. It’d be more or less impossible to maintain that level of interest over a decade & a half.
I have no interest. Zero. The AP/UPI/Coaches/USA Today polls, popularity contests that they were, were still better than what we have now, esoteric formulas that are custom-made to shut out upstarts like Boise State and TCU while preserving the “big” games for the “major” schools.
They had the opportunity to finally implement a long-needed playoff system and instead not only kept it arbitrary but rigged it further. The system as it is now is so unjust that the only legitimate thing about it are the games themselves. Everything leading up to it is rigged, from the NCAA’s total ineffectiveness at policing violations until they have no choice after some news organization does the dirty work to the BCS system itself.
There’s a reason I prefer pro football. Not only is it a better game but there’s no question who the winner is. If a team loses late in the season they still have a chance to play for the title. They don’t schedule creampuffs. Every game matters, unlike semi-pro college football.
Remained the same. I love my Big Ten, and hope that we stop the expansion right where it is. The BCS has had no effect on me. I preferred the days when the big games were on Jan 1, hated the years when the title game rotated around the major bowls. I like the Rose Bowl to be the Big Ten vs Pacific 12, any future changes to the football championship has to keep that intact. To see Texas and TCU in the Rose Bowl was an abomination unto The Lord, I hope and pray we never see such riffraff in that bowl again.
I voted decreased, but this pretty much sums it up. I loathe the BCS and when the Rose Bowl was spoiled by those other schools it made me miserable and hate everyone. College football was at it’s finest when a slate of Bowl games where every team’s individual game was the highlight of it’s season crescendoed on New Years Day. Every team in a Bowl game really played their guts out, and there was no such thing as a meaningless game. This recent obsession with a national champion has rendered everything else meaningless. A playoff would take this even further. If not for the Bowls college football is as much fun as a hernia exam.