2013-2014 NCAA Football Bowl-A-Rama: The End of the BCS

How much can you avoid rematches when Alabama and Auburn clearly both deserve to be in the Top 4?

 

I think he was doing six automatic qualifiers. It's the same concept and I completely agree with how he has the games staggered. It also doesn't "lengthen the season" which is a popular complaint about the playoff model.

The model I hate is the one where every conference champion gets an invite and it goes to 16 teams, this would suck. I know a 16-team playoff is the model for the other lower division playoffs, but it would lose a bit of its luster if a team from the Sun Belt or a three-loss team makes the playoffs. I'm sure there's been a year where a 3-loss team is in the top 8, but I doubt it happens regularly.

 

I could live with either format. If you only take eight, then no more than two from any one conference. Make the conference championships and standings mean something. If you take 16, I could see allowing three per conference.

If you go 16, you're going to have to start the first week in December in order to finish the first week in January. Conflicts with final exams have always been cited, so you'd probably need to play the first round early, then let the remaining teams take off for finals and then come back with the rest of it.

 

It will go to eight teams almost immediately, and probably to 16 within a decade. The logic for the schools of doing so is just too powerful. There will be about as many upsets in the first rounds of a 16-team playoff as there are in the first round of the women's basketball tournament, but when's there's this big a pie, everybody wants a slice.

 

Is it that easy to get out of a 12-year deal, Mike?

 

Not to mention that it took them 16 years to agree on a 4-team playoff.

 

Exactly. Sorry, Mike. They are not going to an 8-team playoff "almost immediately." And certainly not to a 16-team model within a decade.

 

While we all understand the hollow nature of the phrase "student athlete", there truly are football players who are students. Even at the biggest of football factories. Thus, final exams can't be discounted when considering any future playoff schedule scenarios. Just don't see the Presidents going there.

With that in mind, going to an 8 team playoff almost certainly would involve the first weekend of December for a quarterfinal round. That's conference championship weekend, both a cash producer (TV wise, if nothing else) and with ever increasing conference size, the way of determining a league champion. Figuring a way around that, or even if it's worth figuring a way around it, is (IMHO) a significant hurdle to expansion.

 

All the other divisions have eight or more team playoffs, and presumably their schools have exams, too. That's a bullshit argument. College Presidents, from Harvard on down the food chain, are basically panhandlers in nice suits. The playoff money will work its will on them. If there's one thing the last few years of this sport have taught us, it's that all contracts are written on erase-a-sketch toys.

 

So you just think they'll rip up the 12-year, $10 gazillion deal for the 4-team playoff before it even starts? What exactly does "almost immediately" mean in this context?'

C'mon Mike.

 

As Michael said, it's got nothing to do with academics, but everything to do with how they divide the money. The reason Division I-A football has never had a true NCAA playoff is because they school presidents and bowls don't want the NCAA to control the payouts.

 

They could start by eliminating any bye weeks.
This year's season started the last week of August. Using that scenario, the 12th regular-season game (without a bye week) would have occurred the weekend of Nov. 16 with conference championships played the weekend of Nov. 23.
Playoffs would have started the weekend of Nov. 30. Yes, I know that was Thanksgiving weekend this year, but still very doable. As alluded to earlier, if the Division I/FBS schools need help figuring out how to work a playoff with more than four teams — even one involving a holiday weekend — they need only ask leaders in the other divisions how it's done.