Is this not your posting? I did NOT put words into your mouth. You are the one who is partially quoting me. I'm not going to squabble about this with you. I'll ask you, what is the main reason a school has home games? To generate revenue, maybe? So don't tell me that it doesn't matter how much money. There IS an amount of money that WILL compensate for giving up a regular season home game against the likes of UL Monroe or Western Illinois. Would more people pay to see those two opponents at Tiger Stadium, or would more be inclined to spend their hard-earned money to see a Florida State or a Michigan on the field against our much beloved Tigers in a game that starts the road to the National Championship?
We'll never know whether the 2001 LSU team deserved to be the NC because they weren't allowed to play for it on the field. IF they had won their way up to a title game with Miami and beaten them they would have deserved to be Champs. If they had lost they wouldn't deserve to be Champs. Its as simple as that. Tampa Bay lost 4 games last year including twice to the Saints but they won the Superbowl. Any team whether college or pro that might have lost a few games for whatever reasons early in the season but who has gotten their act together good enough to be playing well enough to win their way through the playoffs and win the title deserves to be champs. In 2001 Nebraska was awarded the title game against Miami even though they didn't even play for their conference title by the BS. Lets say that before the game that half of Miami's players had come down with the flu, were in jail, suspended or otherwise unable to play and Nebraska had won. Would that mean that Nebraska deserved to be National Champs any more than LSU or Oregon who won their comference and won their BS bowl games? Only the teams that make it all the way to the title game would play as many as 15 or 16 games in a season. Last year McNeese played 12 regular season games and 4 playoff games to reach the D1AA finals. Are D1A players somehow too delicate to do the same thing that lower division players can do?
Would I give up a home game against USL or ULM and pop for the $100 to $200 that a ticket for a first round playoff game in Tiger Stadium would likely cost to see them play Michigan or Florida State? Damn right I would.
Here is some innovation and thinking "outside the BCS box": The current 8 team set up is the best. It cannot be argued that the best team is one outside of the 8 invited to the BCS. This year TCU would make it, so the little weiners can't cry. But, in addition to the 4 BCS Bowl Games have 3 weeks of playoffs in a row, even though it won't be very good for academics/exams. Injuries and depth really count here, as a playoff starts looking like a slaughterhouse in the trainer's room. Take this year for example and assume the season ended today: 1. Oklahoma 2. Southern Cal 3. Ohio State 4. LSU 5. Texas 6. Texas Christian 7. Tennessee 8. Michigan December 15 games at 4 locations (normal BCS bowl locations) Okla vs. Michigan in New Orleans (#1 Bowl)--------OKLA wins So Cal vs Tennessee in Rose Bowl (#2 Bowl)--------USC wins OSU vs TCU in Orange Bowl (#3 Bowl)----------------OSU wins LSU vs Texas in Fiesta Bowl (#4 Bowl)----------------LSU wins Remember the BCS Bowl order location, this is most important. Sugar, Rose, Orange & Fiesta (changes yearly upon agreement) December 22/23 games at one playoff location (this year the #1 bowl is in New Orleans) USC vs OSU on Dec 22---------------------------USC wins OKLA vs. LSU on Dec 23--------------------------LSU wins (who else) A National Championship game has been decided by Christmas. USC #2 seed will play LSU #4 seed for the National Championship in New Orleans, January 3 in the Sugar Bowl OTHER BCS games OKLA will play OSU in the Rose Bowl Michigan plays Texas in Orange Bowl Tennessee plays TCU in the Fiesta Bowl Could this work? Easily. Would it be embraced? Probably not, because the little guys will always whine they cannot get ranked in the TOP 8, even though TCU made it this year (theoretically). Problems: Exam conflicts, teams beaten to a pulp with injuries and one other-----------------> Conference Championships where peons like Ole Miss could back into a championship game, win and still not be ranked in the TOP 8. Ole Miss could be #9 and left out. That's tough cheese for them. The little guys would really get a thrill out of this one and they'd go for it ... because a BIG TIME Conference Champ "little guy" could easily get screwed out of a BCS/playoff bid.
Supposed "problems" with new tournament format: #1 Exam conflicts, #2 teams beaten to a pulp with injuries and #3 Conference Championships where peons like Ole Miss could back into a championship game, win and still not be ranked in the TOP 8. Ole Miss could be #9 and left out. That's tough cheese for them. The little guys would really get a thrill out of this one and they'd go for it ... because a BIG TIME Conference Champ "little guy" could easily get screwed out of a BCS/playoff bid. Solutions: #1, To say that just because a person attends a Div 1A school that his exam schedule is harder, requires more preparation time, or would conflict more than someone who attends a Div 1AA, Div II, or Div III school is ludicrous. Learn to use your time wisely. That's what college is for. #2, Injuries? Are 1A athletes more fragile than the other divisions that play football? That's not true. Furthermore, there isn't any difference in the size, strength, speed, or durability of a 1A player versus a 1AA player in the same position. The difference is in the NUMBER of quality players. 1A schools have more scholarship athletes on their teams than 1AA schools do, however, 1A schools don't have as many scholarships to offer as they once did, therefore there are more quality athletes going to smaller 1A and 1AA schools than in the past. and last but not least #3, This is why the tournament should include 16 teams. Nobody, but NOBODY would have a gripe...except for #17 and 18, and after the butt kicking #1 would give #16, you wouldn't hear a peep out of 17 or 18. For this reason, I'd prefer a 16-team tourney to an 8-team tourney, but even an 8-team field would be better than what is currently in place. I do agree with the conference champions of the now BCS conferences getting automatic bids to this tourney, but I also feel that there is room to have some at-large bids for the schools whose teams could get "screwed". Keep the BCS system for seeding the teams, then, any team with a gripe about where it's positioned can do something about it on the field and not have their destiny dictated to them by polls or a computer.
And regular season wouldn't mean a lot to determine the to 16 in a football playoff? What idiot would let just the top 2 teams as picked by a bunch of computer ratings that nobody understands play at the end of the season..... i mean why even play football if they did that? Oh, that is the way the do it in D1A football. Since you seem to be so concerned with traditions until the 70's only the top two teams in Major League Baseball played in the World Series. The American League winner played the National League winner. No division champs, no wild cards. This year the Yankees would have played the Atlanta Braves under the old system. The Florida Marlins would have sat at home as well as the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox. There was a hell of a lot of excitement in Chicago and Boston as well as in South Florida. Or would you say that no team that lost over 70 games deserves to be the World Series Champion? Sports are all about overcoming bad starts and adversity and putting it all together to overcome overwhelming odds. Who was a bigger underdog than the Marlins? What about basketball? In 1986 LSU lost 12 games but as a huge underdog beat the odds to reach the Final Four. Oh, right, no team that loses 12 games deserves the right to play for a championship. Lets just do away with March Madness and let the polls and some computers pick the top two basketball teams and let them play each other for the NC. Then they can create a couple of hundred Basketball Bowl games so that every team that finishes the regular season with a .500 record can play in basketball versions of the Humanitarian, GalleryFurniture.com, and Weedeater Independence Bowls. Lets just say that there was a 16 team playoff this season for the D1A NC. At this stage of the season there are a lot of teams like Ole Miss, Purdue, Bowling Green, Northern Illinois, Texas, Nebraska, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee, Georgia and Washington State that would still have a hope of making the playoffs. How would a playoff lessen the importance and excitement for fans of these teams for every game left on their schedules? Right now all of these teams either have two losses or in the case of Bowling Green and Northern Illiniois one loss but the fans of those teams under the present system have no hope that their team can get hot and end up playing for the NC. The best they can hope for is that their team ends up playing in a better bowl game than the Music City Bowl, Seattle Bowl, Independence Bowl, Fort Worth Bowl or even the Cotton or Outback or Citrus Bowls in the case of SEC, Big 12, Big 10, PAC 10 or ACC teams that have already been eliminated from NC posibility under the present BS system. Nobody cares about a Tennessee-Purdue Citrus Bowl or a Georgia-Texas Outback Bowl except for the fans of those teams but if the matchups were part of a playoff with the winner moving on to the next round every football fan in the country would be watching with interest. The TV ratings would be much higher than they are now for the Also Ran Bowls and the money generated would benefit not only the teams but their conferences since all of the big conferences have a revenue sharing system for bowl money. If LSU dosen't make the Sugar Bowl this year the only games that will mean anything to me will be whatever bowl LSU ends up in and the Sugar Bowl because it will be for the NC. If there was a playoff I would be glued to my Lay-Z-Boy for all of the games. Lets face it. The BCS has already nearly destroyed interest in even the big New Years Day bowl games except for the NC game. Who really gives a damn about an Orange Bowl Matchup of a 10-2 Florida State against a 10-2 Michigan? Two real good teams and it might or might not end up being a great game but it means nothing to anybody who is not a fan of one of the teams. But what if the winner would be LSU's semifinal opponent with the winner of that game going on to play the Oklahoma-USC winner for the NC? Suddenly you're interested in how LSU matches up with each team and have a rooting interest in the team you would rather see LSU play. All of a sudden you go from saying to yourself "Its a beautiful day and pretty warm for January, maybe I'll play some golf intstead of watching the Criminoles and the Wolverines" to saying "I gotta watch this. I hope it goes 10 overtimes so that the winner is burned out physically and emotionally before LSU has to play them."
