Quote:
Originally Posted by dudeosu
You didn't answer my question. You claimed that the NCAA basketball tourney hurts regular season interest. But there's no hard evidence of that, only some hypothesis including the one you give here. Good job theorycrafting, but I'm not buying it.
And who says you have to do away with the other bowl games? With an 8 team playoff go ahead and keep all the other bowls, you're really not changing the landscape that much other than that 2 teams will play an extra bowl game and 2 teams will play 2 extra bowl games. So 4 spots are taken away from other teams, who cares? They're going to be 6-6 teams anyway. Don't tell me that then the bowl games don't matter, because they already don't matter. They're exhibition games anyway, at least with a playoff a few more games matter a bit more. Plenty of teams are still playing for something, so, according to you, they're still generating interest.
As for reducing teams, how do you reconcile the fact that college football already has more than 100 teams yet has tons of interest? College fanbases are built differently than professional sports teams. By removing 70% of the teams from the viewing base, you're leaving tons of money on the table. College sports are popular but really only super popular at the top level. How many people watch the lower divisions in any sport?
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I am not buying the idea of playoff being able to generate more interest/money either. The point wasn't to say my theory is better. The point is to say the other theory is as baseless as mine. It's fine you are not buying mine.
And I think it's pretty obvious if you have a new playoff system there would be negative impacts to the other bowls. Playing for something means you have to create a good back story that people would buy in. New system upsets the old story. What's the story you are gonna sell for the old bowl games in the new playoff system? "They are exhibition games anyway" surely is true, but there are exhibition games people care more than others. Just look at how All Star games are marketed differently by different leagues and the fan interest varies a lot because of that.
You are simply wrong about the 100 teams with tons of interest thing. Look at the TV contract of each conferences, and they are no where equal. TV is now the most important revenue generation vehicle, and it's no where even among all 100 teams. More importantly, when we talk about TV revenue, it's no longer a simple issue of which team has the bigger fan base. Most of the TV viewers aren't fans of the two teams playing. In the mean time, college sports fans quite often don't have any real links to the college they support, for those people making them support the closest super division team like they support the closest professional team isn't a problem.
Teams currently in the FBS subdivision but not in the super league would just become more like the current FCS subdivision teams. That's actually not that huge a drop off for most of them.