The BCS. Do you like?

[Sene Unty]

Okay I wanted to write this to get evryones opinion of the College football ranking system, the BCS. Do you guys like it or do you think it should be changed to a playoff system similar to the NFL?

I would actually love to see it changed to a playoff system. Just imagine that! It would be called January Craziness (just kidding) and would feature the top 24 teams in a massive playoff to determine a clear winner. I can't stand the way the system is now! I hate how teams complain about how they should have been there and they could have been Champions. PROVE IT!!!!

[Sanis Prent]

Honestly, it would take too long. I'm not for that, and I think that the BCS, while imperfect, is the best shot we have.

[Sene Unty]

Why is length a bad thing?I wouldn't mind watching games until late into JAnuary and early February!

[Jedi Master Carr]

I think they need to go to some kind of playoff system. And that crap about it being too long is crap, it goes on forever in NCAA tournament and I don't see anybody complaining about that. All you would need is really need is like 4 or maybe 8 teams at the most, you could play it in the bowl games like they do now, start the week after Christmas and it would be over before the Super Bowl, or after New Years depending on how many teams you include. The BCS is BS, if Ohio State and Miami lost how could you determine who is the best team? Or you could have a scenerio of 3 unbeatens the BCS to me is crap and they need to go to some kind of playoff system.

[Jedieb]

I think the BCS should be used to produce a 4 or 8 team playoff field. THen you have your playoffs in a month. Everybody else would keep playing their AldephiaTostitoWendy'sSears.com Bowl. A lot of teams have conference championship games that amount to a mini playoff now anyway. Some of these players start working in the spring and don't let up until the end of Jan. A playoff system won't change that drastically. Plus, we'll avoid travesties where obviously better teams are left out of a title game because they lost their one game at the wrong time of the season. I'd much rather have a #5 or #9 team get screwed out of a playoff spot by a computer than a solid #3 or #4 team denied a shot at a national title.

[Sene Unty]

I agree completly Carr! I think it would weed out all that complaining you hear from the teams that are in 3rd place. Two years ago, when Miami was in 3rd and out of the BCS championship game, and Florida State layed that egg against Oklahoma, MIAMI SHOULD HAVE PLAYED THEM!!!! They would have at least given the Sooners a game! Sheesh. With a playoff system, the two best teams meet, no if's, and's or but's about it! And imagine the upsets!!!!!!!!! Oh it would be beautiful.

[Jedieb]

I never get credit for any of my ideas! :verymad

[Sene Unty]

Sorry Jedieb, I was writting my post before you posted yours......but I agree with you too! :D

[CMJ]

I'm NOT for a playoff.

The only way to do a proper playoff would be to have a 16 team field. That way you could include ALL conference winners of 1A confereces...

C-USA
SEC
ACC
Big 10
Big XII
PAC10
Mountain West
WAC
Big East
Sunbelt
MAC
(I think I included them all)

...Plus the next 5 highest "at large teams". Why do you have to include all conference champs? Because if not you'll run into the SAME problem of a winner of a conference being ranked lower than the school that would play in the tournament that we have in the last sevral years off and on.

And if you're gonna let in say a #11 school like LSU that wins the SEC(like they were last year) and Florida is ranked higher...include them too. And yes having a 7-5 Univeristy of North Texas...or a 9-3 Northern Illinois might make people go WTF?! - BUT nobody complains when the "little guy" gets a chance in March Madness.

:p

[jjwr]

The BCS is retarded. Didn't they start this season the earliest its ever been started? Take that extra time off the end and just do a frickn playoff. Take the top x teams and play over the span of 4 weeks to get a real National Champion and not a paper one or a split co-national champion.

[Figrin D'an]

An 8 team playoff bracket would be the most feasible, IMO. The champions of the 6 major conferences, plus two "wild card" entries. The only problem is that, yet again, an undefeated mid-major team, like a Marshall of a Tulane, would be left out by the ranking system used to choose the 8 teams.

Dragging out a playoff system for a month and a half is completely ridiculous. University administrators, coaches, the networks and the NCAA wouldn't let it fly. Some teams are playing as many as 15 games this season. Imagine tacking on another 4-5 playoff games. That's longer than an NFL season. It would also directly conflict with the NFL playoffs, and would kill the TV ratings.

Even then... such a system wouldn't be perfect. Depending upon strength of schedule, number of quality wins, and the subjectivity of the polls, a legit contender could still get screwed out of shot at the title. If teams ranked #3-#10 all only have one loss, it could still come down to who loses earlier rather then later in the season.


People have rather short term memories on this issue. No, the BCS isn't perfect... no system would be. But, it's by far better than the old Bowl Alliance system, in which there were split national titles all the time and undefeated teams got screwed out of title shot because of conference bowl associations.

A few tweaks to the current system could improve things quite a bit.

1) Eliminate preseason polls. All they do is establish a bias in the minds of the pollsters and the media, and make it more difficult for non-ranked teams that perform well to crack into the upper echelons to get a BCS bowl bid. No polls at all until the middle of October would be even better. Wait until teams get into conference play to judge their merits.

2) Balance out the numbers of teams in each conference so that each has a conference title game to decide the automatic BCS bids.

3) Eliminate the computer poll component of the BCS formula. Every statistician with a favorite team finds a way to create a system that will put their team at #1. This needs to be thrown away completely. Make the BCS formula simple: overall record, poll average (AP and coaches polls), strength of schedule, quality win component.

[Sanis Prent]

I don't like the prospect of conference champions going to tourneys...simply because it discounts their performance outside conference play. Its a crutch on conference teams that maybe play their conference well, but have a bad record out of conference, when they can be paired against a much better non-conference team (ie, a Notre Dame)

[Mu Satach]

Here's another thought,

you'd never get the bowl games to be used for playoffs in a system because the bowl games are all about attendance and crowds. Why do I say that? Univ. of Wyo. has several years been one of the best teams in the Mountain West, but they have never been invited to a bowl game because they don't draw the large crowd wanted for the big games.

[CMJ]

Wyoming WAS pretty good a few years ago..they've hit some rough times in Cowboy land though.

[Sanis Prent]

Eh, Mountain West is all relative though. Some flashes in the pan every few years, but thats it.

That creates a disproportionate situation. I hate to discuss conferences in stark terms such as good and bad, but frankly, some conferences suck when you compare them on the national division 1A microscope. WAC, Sun Belt, Mountain West, MAC, and Conference USA are frankly just plain bad, if you compare to the Big 10, SEC, etc.

You can't tell me that Wyoming, on their best year, could face off against even the most mediocre SEC championship team. Its alarmingly disproportionate where the talent lies, as far as conferences. The seats left open for WAC, Sun Belt C-USA, and the others would rob more capable, more competitive teams that are in conferences where talent is thicker. This is probably the worst year in SEC football in recent memory, but even the middle of the pack are still more than capable of annihilating lower conference champions. Tennessee, Auburn, etc...they don't have impressive records, but they're in a completely different strength of schedule.

You think the Vols or the Tigers would bat an eye at Bowling Green? North Texas? Good teams in their own ponds, mind you, but we're talking the whole ocean now.

Conference winners should NOT get a seat in any kind of postseason tourney.

[CMJ]

Typical response from a guy in a BCS conference. :p

Just because the little guy might not win very often in some sort of tourney doesn't mean it can't happen(see the NCAA field if you want an example). People from these big conferences are all "The worst school from our league could dominate yours" and nonsense like that.

I'm not saying that the upper level BCS schools aren't lightyears ahead of the "smaller schools"(small schools, what a load of crap, UNT has a larger enrollment than half the schools in the mighty SEC) in terms of facilities and such, but for a true 1A playoff you have to invite everyone(look basketball). Upsets can and would happen. Maybe only once every 10 years...but they would.

[Sanis Prent]

Basketball can frankly afford for such outliers, because they play a proportionally higher number of games in a season. Same for baseball. Football doesn't do this. One game a week...sometimes every 2 weeks. You really can't afford to be so generous. North Texas is having a monumentally good year, I know. Alabama, a probation no-count team, annihilated them by a margin indicative of an ACC team versus a squad of Deaf/Blind Catholic Schoolgirls with Parkinsons. Thats not to brag...because we should have done so. What is North Texas's out of conference record?

Also, whats enrollment over there? Just curious.

[CMJ]

North Texas has an enrollment over over 30 thousand undergrads...not sure about the grad school count, but it's several thousand as well.

Too go to your Alabama example..yes you did beat us soundly(33-7). Of course you also destroyed LSU, a conference mate who will most likely win the SEC West with Bama being ineligible by a greater margin...IN their HOUSE.

One of the ways that non-BCS schools get screwed is that we rarely get to play the "big boys" in our stadiums. It's kinda hard to consistently play and win when you have the UT's and the Bama's of the world on the ROAD every freaking year. For crying out loud, we open next season at Oklahoma!

I will say that we SHOULD have beaten Arizona(lost 14-9). We HAVE shown we can compete with these "bigger" schools on the road(we've beaten Texas Tech a few times recently) it's just hard as hell.

SORRY...out of conference record. It's a paltry 1 and 5. Our losses

27-0 Texas
33-7 Alabama
16-10 TCU (who is ranked in the top 25 BTW)
14-9 Arizona(a game I'm still not over...we gave away their 2 scores)
24-17 South Florida (9-2..getting votes in both poles, though not yet ranked...their losses to Oklahoma and Arkansas)

[Sanis Prent]

Our second game of the season was in Norman...and we should have won that one. I dunno what this road jinx is...but for some reason, we have an excellent road record.

[CMJ]

We played at OU last year, I believe the final was 34-10. Like I said, it's tough to go into those kind of places and win consistently.