Did you watch the Boise State-Oklahoma game from '07? How about the Utah-Alabama game from '08? Besides the pre-season polls, there is no reason to believe that Utah, Boise State and TCU are any worse than the best teams in the SEC, Big 10, Big 12 or PAC 10.
Absolutely, those were great games and statements…but their effect seems to have worn off, which is why we’re even having this discussion. I think it would take a NCG to make a lasting statement.
How about all the times Boise/Utah/BYU/TCU/whoever have gotten crushed by good-to-mediocre BCS schools they have played? And for the record, these teams frequently are highly rated in the preseason. Boise was definitely top five preseason this year. By your logic there is no reason to think that Appalachian State is any worse than Auburn or Oregon right now. South Alabama is also currently undefeated. To be the best, you gotta beat the best, and Va Tech and Oregon State do not count. (TCU actually has a decent win, thumping an okay Baylor team, but that is still nothing compared to what Auburn and Oregon have accomplished.)
The BCS sucks. It does not give TCU and Boise the opportunity to show on the field how good they are. We need a system that promotes competition instead of rewarding the the team who can manage the fewest losses. We need a system that allows more than two of the 120 teams to have a shot to earn a national championship. But I do not believe in rewarding teams for going undefeated against twelve chumps.
Let’s leave BYU out of this since they’ve fallen off recently. But the other 3? Very infrequently. And at home? Never. That’s proof that they’re just as good as the best BCS teams. The top teams don’t dare visit Boise, and the 2nd-tier BCS teams get stomped on when visiting Boise. Or Utah. Or TCU.
How many players from Oregon are returning from last year? When Boise State beat them? Or the year before, when Boise State beat them.
The Oregon schools will visit Boise, but they’ve only demonstrated what happens: they both lost there in the last two years. Any SEC team visiting Boise would probably lose also, so they refuse. I can’t blame them, though, as a non-conference game that could possibly be a loss carries no upside.
Boise , like it or not is in a league with
Utah State
Nevada
Fresno State
Idaho
Hawaii
Louisiana State
New Mexico state
San Jose State
That is why they are not fully respected. A bunch of crappy teams.
Ridiculous. The last time Boise played an SEC team, they lost by 35 at Georgia. But yeah, I’m sure that result would have been different on the blue turf. Also, the second sentence contradicts the first. SEC teams don’t refuse to play in Idaho because they think they’ll probably lose, they do it because A) there is no gain, when you already play a tougher than average schedule and B) they would lose millions of dollars by giving up a home game.
I feel bad for Boise, they have done amazing things to get to where they are right now. But, they could still do a lot to improve their schedule (ie, not demand ridiculous payouts for guarantee games at good teams.) We need to improve the system for sure, but if they aren’t playing a schedule anywhere near the difficulty of an average ACC team, it’s impossible to compare them to the teams who beat several top 25 teams over the course of the season.
Equally true statement: “Boise doesn’t dare visit the top teams (unless they get a big payday).”
While I will concede that the SEC teams play a tougher schedule, this doesn’t mean that the top SEC team is better than Boise St. And I agree that if I was a top BCS school, I wouldn’t want to go to Boise, Fort Worth or Salt Lake City either. There is very little upside and a huge potential downside. But there is absolutely no reason to think that Boise St. or TCU would not have been competitive with Texas or Alabama last year.
Well, you’re kind of missing my point. Yes, any team that’s not included in whatever number of playoff teams you choose is going to complain. My point is not, how do we keep all 100-whatever NCAA teams feeling good about their chances to go to a national title game by having a 16-month-long playoff system instead of a regular season.
My point is, you could have what amounts to a 4-team playoff RIGHT NOW without changing the bowl system or anything else, because there’s already a national title game scheduled one week after New Years.
Realistically, how many teams at the end of each year are generally recognized as being “in line” for a national championship? I’d say it’s usually five or less. Usually. Now, I’m NOT saying more teams than that couldn’t win in a playoff, but again, that’s not my point at the moment. Seems a +1 would be a great way to provide a mini, 4-team championship playoff without affecting the current setup (however you may feel about the current setup).
Just a personal note: I never had a beef with the old poll system. What’s wrong with having split national championships? Just causes more discussion, debate and passion about college football. I never got this driving desire to have the THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE champion kind of thing … eh, that’s just me.
The networks would hate that matchup since no one outside of sparsely populated Mormon country would watch that. It has very little appeal.
I think it’s crap that there are teams who are automatically qualified to go to a BCS bowl for being in the right conference while other teams do not get these chances. These non-BCS conferences like WAC, Sun Belt, C-USA. MAC are stuck in a kind of limbo land, they have little to no chance of winning the BCS even if they beat everyone by 50 points, nor can they look forward to a championship of their own. Thus, the better football players stay away from these programs. Program suffers.
I propose that the champions of eight major football conferences would play for the National Championship, split into two depending on the geographical regions.
Eastern USA
ACC (Basketball Conference)
Big East (pass the crab cakes, plus hillbillies)
Big 10 (Drunk and Desperate Midwesterners)
SEC (Inbred rednecks on meth and black players with guns conference)
Western USA
Big 12 (now down to 10, known as the Cowpoke Conference)
Pac-10 (now the Pac-12, the Surfer Dude conference)
WAC (Drunk cowboy conference)
Mountain West (Uptight Mormons and shotguns conference)
For a team to qualify for the BCS game, you must be a member of a conference. That means Notre Dame, Army and Navy will have to join someone. Also, a team will have a non conference game with another team from another BCS conference. No more booking dinky school teams to beat up on homecoming.
I have mentioned my ideas before and people have said that a flaw in my approach is that other teams who are better than other conference champions would be denied the opportunity to play. I agree somewhat with that assessment, but I do not like the idea of picking a team. There would be many teams who would endlessly lobby that they should get a break and why this 11-1 team is better than that 11-1 team or why does the Big East Champ who is 10-2 gets to go while we stay home? This causes headaches in March Madness in basketball. I don’t like the idea of these college kids to have to play 12 games, a conference championship, a bowl game and then the National Championship game. That’s upward of 16 games from early September to January. That’s a lot considering that the student is not paid for his services, and yes, I think three hots, a cot and boring classes of nothingness is not generous enough.
Play a 12 game season, 8 against conference teams, 4 against non conference yet BCS rivals. The winner of each conference gets the seeding. The other bowls can be played like usual. Like someone else stated, place the teams into the different BCS bowls and then have the final game after that.
The smaller conferences, C-USA, Sunbelt, MAC would be in a new division, maybe with another conference like the Ohio Valley Conference (for example). They would be more or less Division I (1/2). Have 40 of these schools playing for their own championship. If one of these schools wants to move up to the big show, they must be invited to a conference. In my scheme, joining a conference wouldn’t be like trying not to get blackballed by the Moose Club. A school needs to show attendence figures in the major sports, have decent facilities and a good sized student population.
The smaller schools are withering up because of the BCS. They cannot compete, and cannot draw the top athletes to play at a school with limited if any TV time, a crappy bowl game (the C-USA winner plays in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, yuck. The MAC champ plays in Detroit. Yuck.)
Yes but #17 would be a 1-loss mid-major, a 2-loss AQ, or a 3-loss SEC team, not an undefeated powerhouse. There will always be complaints at the margin… wherever the margin is set.
What we want to avoid is:
2000 - Where 1-loss Florida State was picked over 1-loss Miami and 1-loss Washington despite the fact that Florida State’s one loss came from Miami and Miami’s came from Washington.
2001 - Where Nebraska was sent to the championship without winning their own conference, while 1-loss Oregon was shut out.
2003 - Where USC with 1-loss was shut out by two other 1-loss teams despite being ranked #1 in both human polls.
2004 - Where three unbeaten teams were shut out of the championship… including the SEC champion.
2007 - Where LSU went to the game without qualifying for the SEC championship game, let alone being the SEC champion.
2008 - Where both 1-loss Texas and 1-loss Alabama had legitimate arguments of being the best in the nation, both were left out.
Not to mention the multiple years where undefeated mid-majors have been locked out.
All we ask for is that every team that has a legitimate claim to being the best have a chance to compete. Is Boise, TCU, or Utah number 1 this year? Possibly not. But we will never know because of how the post season is designed. Gonzaga has a chance every year to compete for a title in basketball, in spite of their division. In football, no matter how good they may be, Boise doesn’t and has no way of changing that. And that is wrong.
Right now I’d settle for Boise State getting in to the title game and then getting blown out! I think that’d do more good to end the BCS than two NON BCS Teams getting in and subsequently getting low ratings.
never mind, didn’t read three posts above.
If other teams aren’t willing to schedule home-and-homes with Boise or any other non-AQ school, why would they NOT demand a payday? No university is dumb enough to throw away a home game without financial compensation.
The cold hard fact is college football is a business. The bowl people want high ratings. If they see TCU as a bad draw, they will do everything they can to keep them out. If Boise goes undefeated for another 5 years, they still have to find a way to schedule better teams and become a better draw. Until then, they will be squeezed out for a team with a national draw.
I’m reading this entire thread and understanding that we’re talking about highly-regarded vs. less-regarded college football conferences, but what is this abbreviation “AQ” that everyone keeps using? I’ve never seen it before this thread (not that I’m a major college football fan).
If there is more than one national champion, then they aren’t really national champions. There is no shortage of accolades to shoot for, conference championships, big bowl game wins, top five finishes, total number of wins. But the national championship, the highest goal, should not just be handed out to any team who has a really good season. There can be only one.
Automatic qualifier. Refers to teams from the big six conferences whose champions automatically go to BCS bowls.