01Bear said:
calumnus said:
01Bear said:
golden sloth said:
Bear19 said:
The Big-10 and Pac-12 should be pushing for playoff expansion instead of the beauty pageant we have now. All 11 conference champions and five at large teams,16 total, mean that if a school wins their conference, they will get to compete for the national title.
All the other NCAA college football divisions and the NAIA have 16 team playoffs. It works for them, will work for D1.
Never! There should be absolutely NO AT LARGE SCHOOLS. If you want to win the National Title start by winning your damn conference! You can't be the best team in the nation if you aren't the best team in your conference.
Also, while the rest of us are no longer in college, the players are. As such, they should not have to olay more games, instead of studying, just to gratify our desires. The whole point of going to college is supposed to be to get a formal education, not to play sports. Sure, there are some schools and even some athletes for whom this is not the case, but that doesn't mean the rest of us should be encouraging that or otherwise pushing that narrative.
If there must be a playoff system, expand it to 8 teams and remove the conference championship games. Instead, make each regular season champ the representative of its conference. Then go to a 4-2-1 elimination tournament. I understand there are ten conferences (Power 5 and Group of 5) and only eight slots. The two teams (conference champions) with the lowest ranks will get left out.
As for the arguments that some conferences are tougher than others. So what? In the NBA, the Weatern Conference had better teams (1-15) than the Eastern Conference. Yet, no one claimed that the Western Conference Championship series crowned the champ. Rather, the WC champ still had to olay the Eastern Conference Champion. Similarly, in the MLB, the AL had better playoff teams than the NL this year. Yet, the AL champ still had to play the NL champ. The second best teams in each conference/league didn't get a spot in the finals because they failed to win their respective conference/league. The same rule should apply to the college football championship tournament. Win your conference or go home.
10 champs from 10 conferences works just fine. 4 teams have a play-in game for 2 of the 8 slots. The P5 champs plus the highest rated team of the other 5 get the 6 slots.
The current BCS bowls are the first round of the 8 team tournament. The PAC-12 champ always hosts the Rose Bowl against the Big10 champ.
All the minor bowls can continue with all the other teams with winning records available.
1 or 2 of tge 4 teams in the two play-in games only potentially play an extra game if they make it to the National Championship game.
That's an interesting idea, but I still can't get on board with it. As you pointed out, it would still require an extra game for the first two or four teams in. Regardless of whether any if these teams make it into the final game, it would at least require one more week(end) of games. Again, this takes up more study time for the student-athletes.
That said, I can definitely get on board with the idea of the Pac-12 and Big-10 conference champions playing one another every year in the Rose Bowl.
Why are we so concerned about football players being away from academics when we apparently care nothing about basketball players'?
Football season is played in the Fall. "Fall Camp" is held during the summer. It is one quarter in the quarter system, most of a semester in the semester system. It is one game a week, always on the weekend. Teams travel on Friday and Sunday. Currently 14 weeks of play including conference championship games and a bowl.
Basketball season starts in the Fall and ends in the Spring. It spans the whole school year. Midnight Madness in October to the National Championship in April. Teams play twice a week, including Thursday and Saturday away games that require travel on Wednesday, with the student athletes away from campus for 4-5 days, every other week. During the NCAA tournament some teams do not even return to campus. Last year National Champ Michigan (and several others) played 40 games. That is at least 21 weeks of games.
A 12 game regular season for football, games on weekends, plus a conference championship game, tradional bowl plus 2 is 12 games or 12 weeks for half of schools, 13 weeks for most of the rest. For two teams who go all the way it is 16 games. For two more it is 15 games. For 9 more it is 14 games (including losers of the conference championship game).
The academic burden for the few schools that make the BCS would still be far less than the average basketball player, much less those that got deep in the NCAA tournament.