Is the BCS legal?

Ok here is the deal. In the last 2 Congressional terms under the R's, they held hearings about roids in MLB (a private enterprise...less governtment in the lives of people and business); now under the D's they are investigating the BCS ( a private enterprise of the NCAA, a voluntary organization in which no due process is required).

Are these people not aware that we are WAR? If one American Soilder takes a bullet while these windbags of both party affiliations are arguing about roids or bowl bids, that kids blood is on that congressperson.

But worst of all, we the people let this happen. Each person who does not flood thier congress persons office with phone calls, emails and faxes, makes us just as complicit. In the real world, that could possibly get us an indictment for Felony Murder.

Hearts seldom change. But the law and those that enforce them often do.


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I would assume the major bowls would become part of the playoffs in one way or another. The smaller bowls, Holiday, Alamo etc will be "killed" like the Consolation game in the NCAA Tournament and or the NFL Championship days. The smaller bowls will die out.

It almost has happened to the Cotton Bowl. When it was not chosen for the BCS it was in the emergenncy room, if not for the Longhorns and Arkansas playing in a couple back to back, I think the Cotton would be a lot different then it is today. Texas Tech going to anymore will just destroy that bowl and that is who will be playing there year after year with a playoff in place.
 
what do you all think of my playoff idea. i know it's not going to happen but it would be cool i think.

even if the conferences didn't switch to 10 teams each, you could still get it done, it's just that there would be an unequal amount of non conference games on the schedule for each team. The key would be to have everyone play 11 games total which is how it's done in 1-AA.
 
Playoffs suck and I don't understand why everyone thinks it gives you a true national champion. It varies year to year, but for instance, look at our 05 team, and this years KU b-ball team. In 05, Texas v SC, no doubt they were the 2 best teams in the country...anyone want to play tOSU again? This years KU team, I thought they were the best team in the country, but who knows how it turns out if they end up in a different region, and play one team that just matches up with them very well that day and poof...season over. The BCS isn't perfect, but no system would be.
My final quasi-rational point, people who propose a playoff system say there should be 8-16 teams. Sounds good, but look at collge b-ball, started w/32 and now it's to 64 and now some people want it to go to 128. Really? Look at high school football, at one point you had better win district to go to the playoffs, then it was the top 2, then 3 and now I think it's the top 4 in district, could be wrong, but I think so. So at what point does this thing go from 8 teams to 16, or 16 to 20...24 and what about us at 32? It's pandora's box. Tweak the system we have, no playoffs.
 
There are two basic arguments for keeping the BCS as it is, or at least similar to the current arrangement. The first is that under the current system, half of the teams that had a good year end the season with a win. That is very important to the fans and for recruiting, and therefore, the schools like it. Under a 16 team playoff system, 15 of the top teams would end the season with a loss. The second argument is that a playoff system determines which team peaks at the end of the season, and allows 16 (or 32, or 64) teams to see which one has survived the season healthy enough to continue through a slugfest of a playoff and get the right breaks at the right time. The BCS pits the best 2 teams against each other in a 1 game, 2 team playoff with winner take all. It's not really about who is able to peak during the long playoff month or two, but who can gear up for a single game with several weeks off to heal and prepare. It's a different goal, and it's what has been going on for over 50 years at this level of college football, and creates a different result than a playoff system. Not necessarily a worse result, just different one.

The chaos of the bowl games prior to the BCS sucked. Right before they instituted the pre-BCS system, bowls were sending out invitations before the last games had been played and often ended up with real stinkers because the top 10 team they had invited lost their last big matchup against thier biggest rival. And it was often impossible to match up even top 5 teams for what would be the national championshi game. For instance, the 1983 season had 4 top teams in Nebraska, Texas, Auburn, and Georgia. They were the only teams in the nation with either 0 or 1 loss, Georgia had only lost to Auburn and Auburn had only lost to Texas, while Texas and Nebraska were the undefeated teams. But there was not mechanism for Texas and Nebraska to play due to the conference tie-ins. Texas got a great matchup with Georgia as a consolation and Nebraska was locked into the Orange Bowl and fell to playing a 2 loss independent Miami team. The rest is history and Miami won their first MNC over 4 teams with 1 loss. Auburn had a less starstruck matchup in their bowl and even though they won, they weren't considered for the MNC title over a two loss Miami team that got to play at home in against a huge Nebraska team that had racked up 60 points a game all season, but couldn't make the Option attack click after a month of rest.

If you ask me, I'll take the current system over that any day, but it would be nice to see maybe a 4 team playoff under the current system with the 4 BCS bowl determining which 2 teams met for one more game in the final. This would allow for the exact same schedule we are running now, lots of bowl game trips and TV coverage for all of the wannabes, and a little less controversy over which top 4 team got left out. But someone will always be on the bubble and not make it and you'll never get rid of the controversy.
 
I like many of the playoff scenarios that have been discussed. Many involve huge changes including adding teams to conferences, removing teams from Div IA (or whatever it is called now), deleting or adding championship games (depending on the playoff model), etc. However I would settle for a small playoff format that could keep the BCS ranking system (or similar system) but just had a few fundamental changes:

1. Get rid of old bowl alliances. Yes the BCS cannot dictate to the Rose Bowl who they should take in their game. However if the BCS told the Rose Bowl that it would just be another exhibition game while other bowls that jumped on board would be part of the new 3 or 4 week playoff schedule I think they would quickly change their ways.

2. Bowls games and playoff must be played closer to end of season. Can't stand these 40-50 day layoffs between end of regular season and bowl games. Can you imagine if in any other sport they did this? There are many ways to rearrange the football regular season schedule to accomodate a short playoff schedule that would still allow for the players to take their exams. We don't need 3-4 non conference games, we don't need the conference championship games (yes you can have co champs some years), etc.

3. Get rid of preseason polls.

Main thing is to get a system in place that has integrity. Too often already we have seen teams crown champions when other teams were as or more deserving. Too often we have seen teams from smaller conferences have great seasons but no chance to win a championship. They start out at the beginning of the year knowing they have zero chance of winning a title.
 
If conference champs get an automatic bid, does this incentivize schools to jump to weaker conferences? (Conference USA, WAC, Mountain West, MAC)
 
We need to oust every member of Congress which thinks they need to be involved in sports. It isn't like we have nothing else going on.
 
HP,
For me, your plan is acceptable except for one factor, conference championship games. Splitting the conferences and having CCGs forces scheduling that doesn't allow each team in a conference to play all the other teams. If the conference is split, the teams in a division should only play their division mates, essentially forming mini-conferences with the CCG as the 1st playoff step. In my opinion, members of a conference should play ALL the other members, not a rotating sampling of the teams from the other division like the Big 12 does.
If that forces conferences to 9 or 10 teams to allow 2 or 3 non-conference games, so be it. Playing non-conference teams is interesting for the fans and the players.
In order to nudge teams toward tougher non-conference games, include a strength of schedule factor in the seeding formula.

my 2 cents worth, anyway!

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Hornswoggler-

In principle I would agree that a team should play all of its conference teams, but the fact is that there isn't one conference that has 12 equally (or even comparably) strong teams so it's not that big of a deal, for example, if Texas doesn't play Iowa State 2 years at a time or LSU doesn't play Vanderbilt 2 years at a time or USC wouldn't be playing Idaho for 2 years at a time under my proposal. Given the reality of the situation, that reality being that some teams are just clearly superior to others within their own conferences, I just don't see this as big of a problem as you might. And I know I have a lot of nerve talking about what's "practical" given how extreme this solution is, but you're just not gonna convince the Big 12, SEC, ACC, and Big 10 to drop teams from their current conferences. That's why I went the 12-team route. Because it's much more reasonable to expect the Big 10 to land Notre Dame and the PAC 10 to add two weaklings than it is to expect the SEC to drop Vanderbilt and some other team or the Big 12 to drop Baylor and ISU. You'd have to do a lot more tweaking to make them all 10 team conferences than you would 12
 
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It would be nice if we could have a playoff based purely on record, but with so many teams playing so many other teams, that's nearly impossible to sort. I suppose you could have a 16-team playoff based on that criteria, but even then, you could have an array of teams on the bubble and the tiebreaker being margin of victory, you still do what the BCS does: award teams for playing weak schedules as long as they can take care of their business. Bottom line, a pure record based playoff is probably the most impractical way to go about it. Would you have seriously seeded Hawaii #1 in a playoff last year?
 
Dang HP, I didn't realize we were trying to be realistic!!!! lol

I figure the chance of anything happening regarding playoffs that is reasonable and satisfying is about nil - just like the chance that Congress might do something worthwhile (my opinion is they should stay the heck out of it).

So, I was looking for a solution that made the most sense.... to me, anyway.

I appreciate the thought you put into your analysis especially since we are essentially likeminded on this subject. I have spent many hours contemplating this issue and have come to the conclusion that the heads of the various universities & colleges that made the decision to utilize the BCS format did NOT have the interests of the fans or the players high on their priority lists. I have also concluded that the only way to get their attention is by impacting the tv revenues through NOT watching the games. I do not think that the fanbase has the conviction to do this. I know I would hate to miss televised games in a feeble attempt to sway them.

So until a playoff system offers better financial returns than the current BCS format and bowl system, I think we are stuck.

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HP - I wasn't suggesting a record-based system. I don't like subjective choosing either, but I think that's the best way to do in it college. It works for March Madness - it would have been kind of silly if the past decade Duke and UNC never could have both made the tournament in the same year since only one of them could win the conference.
 

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