Especially if there’s no rule blocking such an eventuality.
I can possibly support 2 same conference teams in the national title game if they had a situation where unbalanced round robin scheduling meant they never played in conference (Could have happened in theory to the Big 10) in the past.
But no rematches.
Well, I’ll tell you what - let’s just scrap the whole damn thing and start over with a playoff. That way, all this abstruse back-and-forth is put to bed.
FWIW, this is not first time a team has played for the Nat’l Championship w/o playing in their Conference Championship game.
In the 2001 BCS game, Nebraska lost to Miami. Colorado and Texas played in the Big XII championship game. Colorado qualified from the Big XII North after they beat Nebraska in Nebraska’s last game of the regular season., Colorado scored 62 points against Nebraska. 62 points!!!
So you’re in favor of #1 vs #2 - unless they’ve previously met, in which case it’s #1 vs #3 (or conceivably #1 vs #4)?
This is one of those years where there is a clear #1 (LSU is undeafeated against the #1 strength of schedule). This year the old system would have been just fine. There are very good reasons that every other team is unworthy of that obligatory #2 spot.
So, therefore, I will be rooting for Alabama, since the BCS needs to die a horrific, painful death.
No. I’m in favor of 1v8, 2v7, 3v6, 4v5.
If that can’t happen, no rematches in the MNC title game.
You mean the way that the BCS championship game didn’t include the team that was #1 in both the AP and coaches’ polls one year killed it? Or the year where three teams were pretty much equally deserving of being in the game (and the head coach of the team that got left out used a technicality in the NCAA bylaws to give his team “national champion” rings (which were really SEC championship rings with “National Champion” put on them - if I remember correctly, the justification was that they were ranked #1 in one of the BCS computer polls) anyway killed it?
As long as the BCS provides millions of dollars to the big conferences, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
I think people who are against rematches should have to watch an NCAA men’s basketball tournament limited to the conference champions - after all, you run the risk of a rematch if you allow “at-large” teams into the tournament.
So would a lot of people. It shouldn’t be that hard to do.
Never mind details like “how many teams are in it” or “where do you play the opening round games” (although they would probably use neutral sites, like they do in basketball, and use eight second-tier bowl games for this).
If you want a playoff, pretty much the first thing you have to ask is, how is the money distributed among the schools? The NCAA would never allow any conference to have any guaranteed preference the way the BCS does now. (Did you know that half of the basketball TV money is divided based on how many sports the school plays and how many scholarships in all sports it gives out?)
Besides - the NCAA bylaws currently say that there cannot be more than one non-conference postseason football game per team. (Not even an “and-one” game.) If you don’t treat enough of the smaller schools fairly, you won’t have enough votes to change it.
No, I won’t be “Satisfied” until there’s an actual playoff (which isn’t likely to happen in my lifetime).
As I’ve said in other threads, my personal Eyeball Test tells me that, this year at least, the BCS has PROBABLY picked the two best teams in the country. I don’t always (or even usually) believe that.
But I don’t have any additional respect for the current system just because, this time out, they happen to agree with me.
The simple reality is, we can’t and DON’T know that Auburn was better than TCU last year. We’d only know if they played each other. And even though I THINK Alabama is the 2nd bes team in the country, I don’t know that!
Sure. Which is why Alabama should be in the Sugar Bowl playing Stanford. If they do well there, they can be #2 in the final poll. But we already know they aren’t #1, why are we playing that game again?
Because it might possibly have a different outcome?
As a Husker fan, that was a strange year. We had been #1 for most of the season. And then bam, Colorado starts running all over us. It was one of those where you’re wondering if you’re on candid camera. Who put this prank video tape on my TV?
So, we drop down. Then a more bizarre series of events occur in the next 2-3 weeks.
- New #2 Florida loses to Tennessee
- New #2 Texas loses to Colorado
- New #2 Tennessee loses to LSU
And, just like that, we’re back up there. So, it was us, Oregon (who wasn’t a name quite yet), and 2-loss Colorado. The BCS math put us in the Rose Bowl vs #1 Miami. Probably not completely fair, but Husker fans didn’t mind the football god smiling on us. Besides, CU scoring 62 was just a freak of nature, right?
Miami, quiet during all this controversy, then took us to the woodshed. As the halftime score read 0-34, I’m sure Oregon and Colorado were glad they didn’t go to the Rose Bowl 
Not a Miami fan alive is too happy that the game finished 37-13. Maybe it was the revenge wins over Syracuse (59-7 a few years after a 66-13 loss) and Washington (65-7 after a loss in Seattle the previous, plus they ended the Orange Bowl winning streak for the Canes) that created a savage thirst for blood, I don’t know. But Coker called off the dogs way too early and this should have been at least 50+ points for Miami. He did the same thing against PSU early in the year. What coulda/shoulda been a huge win finished 33-7 after a 30-0 halftime lead. Funny quote from DE Jerome McDougall after the Rose Bowl, when asked about playing Oregon: “Oregon? We’ll whup the crap out of Oregon.”
Maybe it’s because I was born before television money ruined collegiate football.
Maybe it’s because the Rose Bowl pre-dates my father (who taught me to appreciate the game and not the business).
Regardless, I would like to see the BCS die, too. Not to bring in a playoff system, but to go back to the way it was. You want playoffs, watch the NBA. Heck, nobody cares about the NBA regular season, they just watch the playoffs. It’s getting the same with the NFL. You want playoffs, there are plenty to choose from.
But the old bowl system was perfect for college football. It guaranteed an orgy of good football entertainment. Sure, throughout the season, good games were (and still are) pretty much hit-and-miss, but New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day was a promise of two days of the best football all year.
From 10 am (CST) to nearly midnight (maybe even past on NY Day), non-stop entertainment; if one game turned out to be a yawner, all you had to do is change the channel. Occasionally, you’d get two dogs at the same time, but that often meant you’d be flipping channels later in the day to try to keep up with two games at once (or, have the small TV set-up for one with the other on the big one). And, because the games were designed to attract attention, not determine who is No. 1, all of the games tried to bring matches that would attract a big audience, nearly always teams that would not be matched-up during the regular season.
The BCS was supposed to put an end to the controversy. That didnt’ work; why do you think a playoff system will? Why do you even want to end the controversy? If there was no controversy, what would college football fans talk about other than how great the SEC is?
All a playoff system would do is make it “OK” for a team to lose a game or three in the regular season and still claim #1 if they got lucky in December/January. Yeah, that will end all arguments…
And, a playoff system can’t just be small. You start with a 2-team system (BCS) and people bitch and moan that that is not fair, you need a 6-team. Then, if you don’t make the playoffs, the coach gets fired, so you have to open that up to 12 teams, then 24. Next thing you know, between Thanksgiving and mid-January, you have CF-palyoffs and nobody cares about the regular season because even a 7-5 team has a shot at being #1. Yeah, that will make the whole thing more entertaining…
OK, I’ve said my piece. I’d much rather see a see a good game between Southern Upstate and Eastern Lowlands that was well-coached and well-played than see Ultra-Big U blow anybody out. The old system guaranteed that. A playoff system will pretty-much prevent that without doing anything to prevent controversy. I say, keep the controversy; it adds excitement!
excavating (for a mind)
I agree with your sentiment, excavating.
Boy howdy, that is one slippery slope you built.
Ditto, (well for most of them)
I do miss the great games on New Years Day, between the top teams.
BTW, I saw a Darren Rovell (CNBC) tweet saying tickets are going for $1300 min on Stubhub for the BCS game.
Party time in New Orleans!
Doggone it, you’re right, Excavating!
College football is the ONLY sport doing things right. It’s BETTER to have controversy than a clear winner! In fact, EVERY sport should do things college football’s way.
March Madness? Overrated. Why let teams settle things on the court when we could just have basketball bowls? At the end of the season, let North Carolina play UCLA in a bowl, let Kentucky play Syracuse in a bowl, and let Duke play Michigan State in a bowl… then let coaches and writers vote for the champion based on which team LOOKED the best.
I mean, who needs to see Duke PLAY against UCLA? We’d have coaches’ and sportswriters’ OPINIONS, and isn’t that really much better?
Boxing determines a champion by having guys fight each other. How quaint! Why should Joe Frazier ever square off against Muhammad Ali? Just have boxing bowls! Let Ali fight Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena, then let Frazier fight Jimmy Ellis and Ernie Terrell, then let the sportswriters vote for the champion. That’s MUCH better than letting guys fight each other.
In fact, the only problem with college football is that the conferences don’t follow that same formula. Why should LSU play against Alabama to determine the SEC champion? That’s silly. The SEC should just have its own sub-bowls. Let LSU play Tennessee and Vanderbilt, let Alabama play Georgia and Ole Miss, and then let the sportswriters vote for the SEC champion.
I mean, why not? You’ve already convinced me that controversy is BETTER than settling things on the field. Why not just let sportswriters vote for the SEC champ? And if Alabama fans are upset by the results, well, controversy is GREAT, isn’t it?
A playoff gives you a clear winner, but it doesn’t tell you who the best team is any more than the poll system. One game is not a representative sample size.
Take the 2001 Super Bowl as an example; nobody thought the 2001 Pats were better than the Rams. Hardly anyone did even after the game.
All that being said, I don’t have a problem with 1-loss Alabama beating out 1-loss OSU. OSU didn’t play anyone with a defense, and can’t do anything but pass; nobody can pass against LSU, so the game would have been a massacre.
I thought Houston should have been the other team, but not after they lost too.
I get this mindset, and I don’t get it. Throughout this thread, the argument has been “the reason Alabama is in the BCSBG is because their loss, a sample size of one game, was better than OK State’s loss, which is also a sample size of one game.” Because, clearly, when you look at the season as a whole, OK State had a better season overall than Alabama: they played a stronger schedule, they beat more ranked teams, they played in a stronger conference. Yet, when it comes to the idea of a playoff, suddenly one game is not enough to tell us who the best team in the country is.
But at the same time I do understand the mindset. We’ve been told in college football for so long that “we have to look at style points and margin of victory and strength of schedule and etc. etc. etc.” that we’ve almost forgotten that head-to-head wins ought to be more important than those things. Take your next comment:
You know what, though? First off, nobody went around feeling like the Rams got cheated out the Super Bowl trophy. Secondly, history vindicated that result with authority. The Patriots were a better team than the Rams, not only on that day, but for years to come. They’d been improving ever since Bledsoe got injured and gave way to some guy named Tom Brady. And what happened afterwards…well, you know.