Booing the College Football Suits: Those Greedy Bastards Have Shelved the Playoff System
College Football January 15th. 2008, 12:10pm
They’ve been teasing us with a playoff for years now, and every year it’s the same song and dance: in the days leading up to and after the BCS title game, there is all this excited banter about the prospect of a playoff system. Everyone’s giddy. And then, after everyone has posted their 2008 preseason rankings and dissected another shitty championship game, the suits release the news to the wire – “we’re going to table that playoff idea for a little while.”
We all know that’s code for: Not happening. The suits are screwing the fans, the suits are screwing the athletes … can you see why we actively endorse the players taking money by any means necessary?
Decision on Football Playoff Is Delayed (NY Times)
28 Responses to “Booing the College Football Suits: Those Greedy Bastards Have Shelved the Playoff System”
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January 15th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Well, at least we can look forward to OSU getting reamed in another over-hyped BCS Bowl.
TBL, go take a smoke break or something. This is Morton’s, not McDonalds. Let’s savor and debate the posts over a nice cigar and some Absinthe instead of cranking them out like Shawn Kemp cranks out kids.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
stewart mandel of si.com wrote a detailed article last month as to why we won’t see a playoff. it’s a good read. frustrating, but a good read. people should dig that out of si.com’s archives.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Why take college football seriously when the schools won’t take it seriously? Sorry if that offends any Ohio State fans.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
TBL actually works at a big tobacco company – he takes blog breaks. He’s up to a 2-post an hour habit.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
lets at least match up Big 10 and Big 12 and maybe whatever small conference team sneaks in so we know what games to avoid
I guess this means more de facto home games for USC
January 15th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
The question now becomes – What is the Hiroshima/Nagasaki event that finally occurs where the suits say ok enough is enough and there has to be a playoff to decide an actual National Champ? I mean besides UF vs. OSU/LSU vs. OSU. Oh and Auburn 2004.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
im fine with the 1 game championship bowl system. playoffs are fun too but theyre not perfect. its not worth all the pissing and moaning. plus i like it when other teams get screwed. id rather have a bunch of pissed off georgia fans or whatever than a boring semi final game that i dont care about.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
isnt football the only sport in the NCAA that doesnt have a playoff system. They should format it like the march madness. But only the best 16 teams are in it.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
irish, I believe that’s correct, though I would favor only 8 teams.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Which article in the Constitution provides us with a college football playoff? Or maybe it was one of the Commandments?
Its entertainment, you aren’t forced to spend your time and money on it. Be thankful that its there, so you have an excuse to get drunk on Saturday afternoons (mornings if you tailgate), instead of harping on the negatives (you don’t like the current system).
I happen to like the bowls. I actually wish there were less of them, and they went back to the conference/bowl tie-ins. And I’m a Penn State fan that got screwed in 1994 (I could make and argument for 2005 too, that would have been PSU/USC Rose Bowl, which i think they could have won).
January 15th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Ditto on 8 teams. And do away with this BCS computer garbage. Let the NCAA have a selection committee just like they do in basketball. They do just fine in every other sport, so let them run this one too. The computer numbers can be a tool they use to determine who gets in, but don’t make it actually count for anything like it does now.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Put me with Dan-tastic on this one. I am maybe one of the few who likes it as is. I like the season mattering. I like teams like Michigan losing their title hopes in the first week. I like random matchups. Plus it makes the gambling that much more interesting.
I could get talked into a +1, but a full blown playoff, meh.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Screw 16 teams, go for 65 with the play-in. Kent St. and SDSU Should have a shot.
/Giddy over 64 games to gamble on
January 15th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Ahh yes, a selection committe would be awesome – that way Notre Dame could sneak in every year as an at-large bid even if they lose to multiple service acadamies. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a bigger push for that.
I’ve decided that when the South rises again (ha) instead of the whole State’s rights thing, this time we’re fighting for college football.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
The BCS lost what little credibility it had left when they allowed Illinois into the Rose Bowl to uphold that Pac 10 vs. Big 10 tradition. USC – Georgia would have been a great foootball game. And don’t even get me started on how Missou goes from #1 to being shutout of a BCS game after a tough loss to another BCS team.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
As long as the college presidents’ blood lust for greed continues and/or Miles Brand happens to die, there will never be a playoff system. Not even an “plus 1″ system that would essentially, in their convoluted minds no less, diminish the uniqueness of each bowl site down to just being a semi-final site for the main event coming later. What they don’t realize is that the one year your site has both a kickass semi-final match and also host the national championship would probably yield the highest profit margin for any game their bowl would ever see.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Cabbage,
I believe Stuart Mandel on si.com explained that USC-Georgia was impossible based upon the selection method the bowls use.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I think the argument that a playoff somehow makes what happens in the regular season is beyond ridiculous. The 8 or 16 or 24 playoff spots would’ve be decided at random. You would have to have one of the 8 or 16 or 24 best records or win your conference in order to get into the playoffs, so the season DOES matter because you don’t get into the playoffs otherwise. It’s such a novel concept that almost every major organized sport in this country–both professional and college–use it. Why is college football any different?
I would actually be in favor of some sort of hybrid system where there are bowl-conference tie ins again and then the winners of each bowl would play in a playoff. It’s not perfect and there would be lots of kinks to work out and details to figure and the amount of bowls would have to be reduced. But is that really a bad thing? Am I the only one who doesn’t give a damn about two 7-5 teams playing in a baseball stadium that has been converted for one football game per year with both teams on one sideline (that would be the Emerald Bowl in San Francisco’s AT&T Park I’m referencing if you were curious)? I’ll watch it almost every time because I love college football, but that doesn’t mean I’ll like it.
Long story short, something needs to change because this current state of affairs with the BCS is just a mess that isn’t getting any better.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
That first sentence should’ve read “I think the argument that a playoff somehow makes what happens in the regular season irrelevant is beyond ridiculous.”
I was thinking faster than I was typing again. I’m an idiot.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Dammit, and the second sentence should’ve said “Wouldn’t” instead of “Would’ve”.
Those errors aside though, I think everyone can see and understand my argument.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Dirty – Would you rather see fewer posts? I sometimes wonder if it’s better to try and up the total, or leave it around 8-10
January 15th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
keep up the good pace tbl
January 15th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
keep up the good work TBL. you’re doing great.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
One post a day would definitely be trendsetting from a major blog.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Thank god there will be no playoff. Look at it this way, every 2-3 years things work out just fine with 2 clearly superior teams and there are absolutely no arguments and everyone is pretty much happy.
Even if there was a “Plus One”, that just means that every single year, no matter what, we would be arguing about who is the 4 seed. Every year, never fails, who deserves it more usc/uga/osu/blah blah blah, every year. So basically every year would turn into this year, which sucked.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Oh well…at least I have the DIII playoffs to follow. You know you’re the low rung on the ladder when Pam Ward has been calling your division’s championship game for the past 5 years.
January 15th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
I dunno, it’s a tough call TBL. The thing that I enjoy most about this site is that there is some meaningful debate among the commenters and bloggers, as well as the usual dick jokes.
If you have 20 posts a day, everytime you check back in to see what people have said you find out that you’re about five posts behind and the world has moved on. Then again, you don’t want to leave a post up there for too long to get stale.
I say around 8 a day is good, but that’s just my opinion.
January 15th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Sanchez makes some good points, once you get to the 4th or 5th post down on the front page its pretty much dead.
Damn this interweb and it’s urgency.