Hypothetical 2005 NCAA D1 football playoffs

[boilermaker]

I'd rather keep the status quo since the regular season is "playoff" enough....but if we must have a playoff system, I say 6 teams, top 2 get byes, kind of like a conference-only NFL playoff. Maybe use some of the current "Bowls" as playoff sites and rotate their role or round in the playoff yearly.

But football is a sport where cindarellas don't really make it. I think Akron fans would rather have their year finish with a win in some Generic Bowl rather than get smashed by 60 points filled with semi-professionals.

[rangers85]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

Why should people care the reason for what team to be in which conference?

I do agree that it would be great if there could be separate levels for uber awesome BCS teams and non BCS teams though.

Maybe a relegation system would satisfy your complaint about how the world is not fair, but honestly why should people really bother? There are lots of schools in even lower divisions, and not like that's bad for them. They probably lose less money.

But all those lesser divisions they all at least have a shot at the national championship if they put together a good season through the playoffs. As it stands now, TCU has a 10-1 season and gets stuck playing in the Houston Bowl vs an also-ran 7-4 Iowa State team and the only reason they even get that chance is that the SEC didn't have 8 bowl eligible teams. If not for that, they'd be stuck in an even worse bowl. Some type of relegation system in which teams could either earn their way into a BCS conferences or conferences themselves were promoted or relegated would be great as well, just as long as there's hope for the teams of these other 5 conferences.

Also, with TCU, at least you're talking about a school that possesses 2 national championships in D1-A history, something only about 20 football programs can claim. It's not like you're talking Florida International who just moved up from D1-AA. Because honestly, how can you defend Baylor, Duke, Wake Forest, Illinois, Indiana, Syracuse, and Washington and the others are anymore deserving of all that BCS money than TCU, Boise State, Fresno State, etc. I don't think you can make a strong case that those schools deserve to rake in something like 3+ mil for their football performances from bowl payouts to their conference mates, meanwhile TCU et al have to survive on the scraps and yet remarkably are still able to compete even with the serious disadvantages. Imagine if they were given the opportunity to recruit as a BCS team and have that extra BCS money.

[Skipaway]

Why should people care about TCU's history? Princeton? Harvard? Yale? All great football teams in history? Why should people bother giving TCU better bowl games?

[rangers85]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

Why should people care about TCU's history? Princeton? Harvard? Yale? All great football teams in history? Why should people bother giving TCU better bowl games?

I could shoot that argument right back. Why should people bother to give say Louisville a better bowl game? What has Louisville done other than happen to be in a better geographic area to be absorbed by the Big East to deserve the Gator Bowl? Heck, they were 9-2 this year beating nobody of significance in a horrible Big East and yet are going to a bowl with more than double the payout (3 mil to 1.4 mil) of TCU's bowl destination. Louisville beat a total of 1 bowl eligible team this year (A 6-5 Rutgers), meanwhile TCU beat 5 bowl eligible teams.

Personally, I'd be more than happy even if we went back to the old bowl system where bowls had 1 tie-in and the other was an at large. Allowed for providing interesting matchups while still giving a certain tradition to bowls as well.

[Skipaway]

Still no reasons about why non-TCU fans should care.

[Raderick]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

Why should people care the reason for what team to be in which conference?

I do agree that it would be great if there could be separate levels for uber awesome BCS teams and non BCS teams though.

Maybe a relegation system would satisfy your complaint about how the world is not fair, but honestly why should people really bother? There are lots of schools in even lower divisions, and not like that's bad for them. They probably lose less money.

Lets instead use a similar system to what the High Schools use? Seperate all college football teams into divisions, regardless of the amount of revenue they get and location. You'd have, for example, USC playing in Division II, Florida in Division IV and Oklahoma in D-I.

Just a thought.

[rangers85]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

Still no reasons about why non-TCU fans should care.

I just use TCU as an example since obviously I know their program the best considering I haven't missed watching, listening, or attending a game in the 3 years I've been a student here so examples are easy to conjure here, but the same could be said for any non-BCS team that performs well. Whose to say a 7-4 BCS team is more deserving of a good bowl slot than a 9-2 non-BCS team.

The big problem with college football and the bowls currently are the question of access and especially access to the money bowl games. The BCS conferences gobble up the top bowls to send their 3rd and 4th seeds to while the non-BCS champs are relegated to bowls that barely payout 1 mil if that.

Heck, TCU is expecting to take 20,000 (Which is huge to any bowl) at least to Houston for the bowl of little real significance other than to attempt to beat another BCS team. Imagine how many would travel for a bowl of significance against an opponent of more significance than Iowa State. So even th

[rangers85]

Originally Posted by Raderick

Lets instead use a similar system to what the High Schools use? Seperate all college football teams into divisions, regardless of the amount of revenue they get and location. You'd have, for example, USC playing in Division II, Florida in Division IV and Oklahoma in D-I.

Just a thought.

Well, I know the way high schools in Texas do it, schools are divided into divisions based upon school enrollment. College school enrollments aren't quite as great of a measure as high schools for divisional assignments since colleges actually get to recruit athletes while high schools aren't supposed to. So the population is a good indication of satisfying that the highly populated schools would have the highest chance to get a greater number of skilled players compared to a small school.

Now if you mean divisions in the sense of conferences where they are divided regionally so that say SDSU, USC, UCLA, Stanford, Fresno State, etc were all in the same conference, then have the conference winners all meet, I've seen that proposed in the past as well, but not sure I like that either.

[Jestor]

Originally Posted by Raderick

Lets instead use a similar system to what the High Schools use? Seperate all college football teams into divisions, regardless of the amount of revenue they get and location. You'd have, for example, USC playing in Division II, Florida in Division IV and Oklahoma in D-I.

Just a thought.

High schools are set up into division according to enrollment, something college sports already has.

[rangers85]

Originally Posted by Jestor

High schools are set up into division according to enrollment, something college sports already has.

Actually, college sports isn't set up by enrollment. D1-A has anywhere from about 2000 (Rice) undergrads to the 55,000 and 65,000 regions including schools like Texas.

Meanwhile there's schools with over 10,000 that are in D1-AA and D2 and down.

College sports is seperated more in which schools wish to make a commitment to spending enough money to compete.

EDIT: Oh darn, I just wasted post #700 on that post

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by rangers85

The big problem with college football and the bowls currently are the question of access and especially access to the money bowl games. The BCS conferences gobble up the top bowls to send their 3rd and 4th seeds to while the non-BCS champs are relegated to bowls that barely payout 1 mil if that.

I never heard people claiming that to be college football's big problem. Can you be more specific about why that's even an issue?

Currently the big problem is actually the way Bowl games are paying out to conferences rather than teams made teams losing money by going to Bowl games.

[Raderick]

Originally Posted by Jestor

High schools are set up into division according to enrollment, something college sports already has.

Then that would explain why my high school, even though we won 2 straight D-II San Diego Championships never got the chance to play in D-I.

[Jestor]

Originally Posted by rangers85

Actually, college sports isn't set up by enrollment. D1-A has anywhere from about 2000 (Rice) undergrads to the 55,000 and 65,000 regions including schools like Texas.

Meanwhile there's schools with over 10,000 that are in D1-AA and D2 and down.

College sports is seperated more in which schools wish to make a commitment to spending enough money to compete.

EDIT: Oh darn, I just wasted post #700 on that post

Well, there's a lot of factors that goes into determining Division level, all of which I don't know, admittedly, but I'm pretty sure enrollment is one of the factors that's looked at.

And yeah there's schools that are 10k+ enrollment that are lower than Div. I, UC-Santa Cruz being one that comes to mind, but they're also the smallest school in the UC system, which probably has something to do with it as well.

[rangers85]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

I never heard people claiming that to be college football's big problem. Can you be more specific about why that's even an issue?

Currently the big problem is actually the way Bowl games are paying out to conferences rather than teams made teams losing money by going to Bowl games.

I'm not sure how other conferences do it, but I know the MWC you don't lose money going to a bowl game because if you go to a bowl game the school gets $450,000 + Travel Expenses out of the bowl payment. Then any leftover is then distributed amongst the conference equally.

On the access problem. I wish I could find updated payouts for this year, but the latest I can find is 2000 through a quick google search. But part of the problem of equity is that you've got so much of the payout already guaranteed to the BCS conferences which helps keep the disparity between the BCS and non-BCS. When you have say the Big 12 with affiliations of the BCS (Payout around 14.5 mil), Cotton (Payout around 3 mil), Holiday (Payout around 2.5 mil) those 3 bowls alone total 20 mil and the Big 12 has 5 more bowls below that. In all let's say that the total payout is say 30 mil. That's a payout of 2.5 mil per team if everyone in the conference gets an equal split.

Meanwhile, the MWC has ties to the Las Vegas Bowl (Payout about 1 mil), Poinsettia Bowl (Payout 750k), and Emerald Bowl (Payout around 800k I think). Those 3 combine to a total guaranteed of 2.55 mil. Spread over 9 teams, that's 283,333 per team if spread evenly. Once you take travel expenses and such out, you're barely having anything split between the teams. Thus, there in lies part of the disparity battle.

[rangers85]

Originally Posted by Jestor

Well, there's a lot of factors that goes into determining Division level, all of which I don't know, admittedly, but I'm pretty sure enrollment is one of the factors that's looked at.

And yeah there's schools that are 10k+ enrollment that are lower than Div. I, UC-Santa Cruz being one that comes to mind, but they're also the smallest school in the UC system, which probably has something to do with it as well.

Possibly, I just know enrollment isn't the sole determining factor, and that I know the financial and facilities commitment a university is willing to put up is more heavily factored. I just know that because where I am is one of the 10 smallest schools in D1-A if I remember right with an undergrad population somewhere around 7000-7500.

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by rangers85

Thus, there in lies part of the disparity battle.

And that's the thing. I like disparity, and I think most fans too without realizing it. Also disparity itself would not be enough to be considered a problem.

[rangers85]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

And that's the thing. I like disparity, and I think most fans too without realizing it. Also disparity itself would not be enough to be considered a problem.

Disparity over spans is good yes, but when it's a forced disparity, one in which even the best can't rise up to overcome, then that's where I don't see it as simple disparity but a division.

I don't like the NFL because it seems the parity is so close. Let's use the MLB as an example. Right now everyone would agree there's a large disparity between the Yankees and Red Sox and the Devil Rays. But the Devil Rays do have that shot to eventually rise up to overcome that disparity while the Yankees and Red Sox have that chance to fall from grace and fall into the trenches.

College football doesn't offer that in it's present state. If applied to baseball, the Devil Rays would never have a shot at a world series championship without a change of system. Same coudl be said for the Tigers and Royals.

[Skipaway]

I think it's a pretty minor problem in college football though, since you have soooooo many teams you can root for. Not exactly like pro-leagues.

And honestly, the easiest and most reasonable way to fix this issue is to complete shut out the non-BCS conferences. Don't even let them be on the same polls. Let them have their own polls, and their own playoff systems.

That way, you can easily see how every team would get their chance for championships!

Otherwise, it's actually impossible to design a system where everyone got a shot with so many teams, and so short a schedule.

[rangers85]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

I think it's a pretty minor problem in college football though, since you have soooooo many teams you can root for. Not exactly like pro-leagues.

And honestly, the easiest and most reasonable way to fix this issue is to complete shut out the non-BCS conferences. Don't even let them be on the same polls. Let them have their own polls, and their own playoff systems.

That way, you can easily see how every team would get their chance for championships!

Otherwise, it's actually impossible to design a system where everyone got a shot with so many teams, and so short a schedule.

The fact though is, that supposedly all 119 of these teams are supposed to be at the same level, but in reality aren't and you want to root for your alma mater. So us non-BCS supporters tend to see things differently. Just a difference of opinion. Of course no hard feelings your way of anything, just hard to see it from our point of view unless you're forced to.

For example, TCU, we're in the Top 15 of the rankings, yet still barely even get a mention of our score on sportscenter except in the "Oh by the way" section. Heck, even due to the BCS our local newspapers here in Dallas pay more attention to the Big 12 than they do their local schools (TCU for the Fort Worth Star Telegram, SMU for the Dallas Morning News). Same with the local sports segments on the news. It's just kind of like you're living in a different world at times.


Heck, this year we beat Oklahoma, and everyone initially calls it that htey're in a down year. Then they start doing good and the excuse shifts to "Oh they started slow" and it just changes to suit the needs. It's never that TCU was better than Oklahoma that day. It's always the same whenever a non-BCS team beats a BCS team. It's an "Oh they had a bad day, they're not really better than that BCS team."

[gmo]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

And honestly, the easiest and most reasonable way to fix this issue is to complete shut out the non-BCS conferences. Don't even let them be on the same polls. Let them have their own polls, and their own playoff systems.

Division 1, one-and-a-half A?