BCS going away in favor of 4 team playoff

[tampajag]

wrong coach:

The one true Droopy Dog:



btw, who is that in your avatar? Looks a lot like one of my uncles.

Olaf the Russian metal singer, from the movie Clerks.

[BDKJMU]

Think about what would happen if they said that there would only be 40 spots in the NCAA tournament and the regular season champ of each conference would get an automatic bid. There would be only 7 at large bids because there are 33 basketball conferences.

All of a sudden the regular season would become EXTREMELY important. No longer would even a team from the ACC be able to assume that it didn't have to win its regular season conference championship to get in. So all of a sudden the teams in the power conferences would see the need to win the conference as paramount.

And the teams from the small conferences would know that they absolutely HAD to win their regular season conference championships in order to get in.

There's something to be said for this. But there are a few of issues. #1, it's hard to run a tournament, especially a BASKETBALL tournament, with a number of participants that is NOT a power of two. The brackets become goofy. #2, and the more practical one in the long run, is that such an idea would kill the conference tournaments. That strikes at the conference bottom line (read: $$), and for that reason alone, most conferences would put the kibosh on it REAL fast. Oh, I could see the Big Ten and the Pac-12 (long conference tournament holdouts) voting to reinstate the ban. But most see that as a cash cow that can't be sacrificed. Of course, for it to actually MAKE money, you have to do it right, and not every conference (read: the Big Sky) does. #3, you eliminate some of the drama factor by eliminating bogus teams from contention for the NCAAs. Yes, there's something to be said for that, but high drama in such a team getting hot at the right time (maybe they really ARE a decent team, but had a rash of injuries mid-season and are just now getting key players back off the shelf) leads to big ratings.

With a 68 team NCAA tourney you could make it so with the 33 conferences:
-each regular season conference champ got an auto bid
-each conference tourney champ got an auto bid
-remaining sports would be filled out by at large

I don't know what % of regular season conference champs go on to win their conference tourney, but say it was around 1/3, 11 teams and in the other 22 conferences a team that didn't win the regular season won the conference tourney. In that scenario you'd have
-33 regular season conference auto bids
-22 conference tourney auto bids
-13 at large

That would:
-increase the importance of the regular season
-keep the importance of the conference tourneys
-still allow for at large

That might not allow for enough at large, so instead of 68 could expand it to 80 teams. That would allow for 25 at large in the above scenario. 4 regions of 20 teams. Top 12 seeds in each region get a bye, bottom 8 in each region play each other in 1st round. 2nd round would be 64, 3rd round 32, etc, etc.

[BDKJMU]

I know month old news by now, but 4 team playoff would start 2014 season. Would be locked into 4 teams until at least 2026.

"................Sentiment is strong, too, to keep the playoff at four teams. With more comes a greater chance of overshadowing the regular season, diluting meaning and interest in much the same way the NCAA tournament has basketball's regular season.
A set of 12-year contracts will hold off any near-term push for expansion.
"I think there's going to be that (clamor for expansion)," Dooley said. "But I hope whoever's making those decisions will hold fast and not let that happen."
"It sounds like we're really locked into a structure for 12 years, and I think that's probably a pretty good thing," Duke's White said. "The clamor might be inevitable, but I'm not sure expansion is inevitable."
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/ ... 55847504/1

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/ ... 55845112/1

[BDKJMU]

I know some people think I-A should go to a 16 team playoff, but problem with a 16 team playoff field is

1. I-A has already gone to 12 regular season games. I don't think they'll go back to 11.

2. Now most conferences have conference championship game in early Dec, a 13th game for most of your top teams. I don't think conferences will give that up. If you went to 16 you would have most BCS teams that lost their conference champ games getting in. Then what's the point? Have the conference champ games in lieu of a round of 16.

3. 4 team, and maybe an 8 team playoff, still could tie in with the major bowls and keep the bowl system relatively intact. Don't see how you could do that with 16 teams.

You couldn't start a 16 team playoffs till 2nd Sat (mid Dec). Then they'll be a push to have a bye week for exams. So you could be looking at teams having up to 17 games, and it going till mid Jan. It wasn't that long ago that it topped out at 12 games: 11 games + a bowl game.

I can see it going to 8 teams when the 12 yr contract expires in 2026. Maybe they'll have a 12 yr contract at 8 teams. Who knows. I don't think it will go to 16 till the 2030s or 2040s, if it ever does.

[SuperHornet]

Who said they ahve to cut to 11 games? Just start a week early....

[Wedgebuster]

Get out the asterisks for past FBS "champs."

This the first step to big college football sanity. Still sucky, still pretty much canned, but the first big step all the same.

Predict the combination of excitement/disappointment of the four team field will quickly expand the field to 8 in the coming years. After that, look for it to get bigger, and bigger as the bucks roll in, and the fans fill the playoff site stands.

The days of putting up with political matchups in big time college football almost over folks, yeah!