Re: Thanks for the info Here we are talking about half points and tenths of a point determining who gets to play for the National Championship The BCS is bullshit and the whole system should be thrown out the nearest window. If the BCS ran the NFL New England would have never been allowed to play in the Super Bowl because they lost a regular season game to the Rams. The BCS argument against a playoff is that the "student athletes" would miss too much class time, yada yada yada. Since there is a 16 team playoff for Division 1AA, Division ll and Division lll I suppose that the NCAA dosen't consider the academic needs of the "student athletes" of those divisions to be as important as the Division 1A players. How about basketball where March Madness is huge or baseball where the College World Series is getting bigger and bigger? A 16 team playoff for Division 1A of college football would be as big as the NFL playoffs and it would have every team that could reasonably considered to have a chance to play for it on the field instead of having a bunch of computers relegate everybody except 2 teams to lesser status. There are a lot of reasons why a team can stumble out of the blocks at the beginning of the season (injuries, young players not playing up to their potential at first, ect.) Just look at LSU last season. We were 4-3 after the mid season loss to Ole Miss but by the end of the year the Tigers were playing as well as anybody. As the SEC champs LSU would have been one of the teams in a playoff, as well as teams like Florida, Tennessee, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and Oregon as wild cards. Even teams from mid major conferences like Bowling Green or Marshall would have a shot at being included if they win all their games. This year the Championship game is in the Fiesta Bowl. Who will really give a damn about the Sugar, Rose and Orange Bowls except for the fans of the teams playing in them and the people who bet on the games? In a playoff system the Fiesta Bowl this year would still have the title game and lets say the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowls would host semi-final round games while the Orange Bowl would host a quarterfinal game. Next year the Fiesta as host of the 2002 title game would drop to a quarterfinal host and the Sugar Bowl would have the title game and the Rose and Orange Bowls would host semi final games. Do this on a rotating basis for the 4 big bowls and bowls like the Citrus, Gator and Outback would host lower round games. Teams that didn't make the playoffs could still play in one of the 50 or so other bowls. Sure there would still be some bitching from fans of teams who got left out who think their team is better than the 14th, 15th or 16th seeded playoff team and while nothing is ever going to be perfect at least it would be a hell of a lot more fair than it is now. Look at this years World Series. For the first time 2 wild card teams are in it after having eliminated all the division winners. Sure the big bowls generate millions of dollars for the NCAA but playoffs would generate even more. Sponsors would be lining up to have their commercials aired for playoff games. By the way I am not just saying all this because LSU has gotten good enough to be considered among the elite of college football. I have advocated a true playoff system for the top division of the NCAA even during the down yeares of Curley and Di Nardo
