I accept your point as valid, although I’m not convinced intercollegiate football is a distraction to a University’s underlying mission. While I wholeheartily agree with this line of thought in regards to public high school athletics, it is certainly grist for another thread.
Ah, therein lies the rub. When designing such a system, it would not be appropriate to design constraints to simply address vagaries that happen to exist today. Lord knows, conference affiliations can change over time, impacting the “competitiveness” of any given conference. (wasn’t there a time in the Woody Hayes days that Ohio State dominated the Big 10? Four consecutive Rose Bowls, winning 17 straight conference games twice, from '67 to '79 winning or sharing the conference title every year but one, going undefeated in the conference in '68, '70, '73, '75, and '79 …). Was that any evidence that the rest of the conference was very competitive, generally? Or, like FSU, they could pretty much have dominated any conference in the same period of time. See my point?
Thanks for the reasoning on how you had the four major bowls as quarterfinals - that really helps me understand how you got there - the simple reason of tradition.
Perhaps I’m naive, but I suspect the Bowls are more interested in preserving their prestige and money than tradition. Granted, having the Rose Bowl on any day besides New Years would seem odd, but… Having the four major bowls accept a position where they are guaranteed NOT to get the national championship game, and where the interest and prestige in their game is likely to be diminished over the current situation, seems very unlikely to me. (of course, I’m not sure if we are actually trying to suggest practical solutions, or blank-slate solutions).
I also now understand your desire for the 16 team field, to accomodate the independents and smaller conference champions. The only way I would see that working is for the smaller bowls to fill up the round of 16 games, a week before my proposed near-Christmas quarterfinals.
Threadkiller, Why only eight? Because that is all that is necessary. Most years, you could easily get by with four. Eight actually has two advantages - it lets the smaller conference schools have a better chance to participate. Take Fresno State last year, had they gone on to win all their conference games, after beating their non-conference opponents Colorado, Colorado State, Oregon State, and Wisconsin, I’m sure they would have ranked in the top 8 in the BCS, and gotten an invite to the Tourney. They would have earned it. Unlike Tulane in '98, when they went undefeated, but played a non-conference schedule of SMU, Navy, Rutgers, SWLa, and La Tech.
And why not include the conference champions? Because there are only eight slots. Take the ACC this year. If FSU doesn’t lose a conference game (wins the conference), but has lost to Miami, Louisville and Notre Dame out of conference, why should any ACC school have the “right” to play for the national championship? Why shouldn’t both Texas and Oklahoma play in the final eight tournament, instead of FSU?
And quite clearly, the NCAA does not have a requirement for a championship, or football would already be in violation (and whatever changes would be made certainly wouldn’t be more of any such violation).
The comparison to other sports fall apart when you consider the few games football plays overall - and the physical nature of the game.
On preview: If you don’t like my eight game system, I think Beeblebrox’ four game system could work too.
And Threadkiller, while the BCS is imperfect, I think it is a dramatic improvement over the prior situation.
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