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1. BrickHorn said:

   November 25th, 2009 at 11:46 am

   I prefer to just use this blog to tell you how much a playoff would suck.

2. Huckleberry said:

   November 25th, 2009 at 11:58 am

   Not this again.

   It’s better to have the teams decide it on the field and run a higher risk of the best team not winning the championship than it is to have talking heads and computer formulas decide it with a better chance of the best team winning the championship.

3. HenryJames said:

   November 25th, 2009 at 12:11 pm

   In every sport, brackets began with a few teams. Then schools felt slighted, and so the brackets grew to accomodate more teams. And grew and grew and grew. It is known as “bracket creep.”

   I do not think that word means what you think it means.

   But replace ‘brackets’ with ‘bowls’ and you get the current system.

4. BrickHorn said:

   November 25th, 2009 at 12:16 pm

   Not this again.

   I know, I know. What sadistic fuck started this beaten dead horse of a thread anyway?

   It’s better to have the teams decide it on the field

   “Let them decide it on the field.” That’s just politician nonsense talk. Like naming a fascist agenda the “Patriot Act” or referring to an oppressively regressive tax scheme as a “Fair Tax.” How can you oppose the Fair Tax? It’s fair. It says so right in the title.

   No one is advocating that the champion be chosen in the preseason. And no one is suggesting that bowls be irrelevant. The debate between the BCS and a playoff is a matter of degree, not kind. There’s always going to be some form of selection, based on the candidates’ resumes of on-field performance. At what point do you vote for participants in the championship-deciding post-season? Finals? Semifinals? Quarterfinals?

5. Huckleberry said:

   November 25th, 2009 at 12:32 pm

   At the point where your confidence that the best team in the country is in the post-season championship tournament is greater than or equal to 99% for greater than or equal to 99% of historical seasons. For example; specific percentages can be discussed.

   That number is greater than two and less than 64, though, with any reasonable percentages.

   That’s one way to do it. The other way it’s historically been done is a combination of that method and “earn your way in” via conference championships.

6. Eskimohorn said:

   November 25th, 2009 at 12:37 pm

   They’ve convinced me. Now, they need to convince the 30 other varsity sports to adopt their system, since it’s so much better than a playoff. Perhaps the NFL should take a look – wouldn’t you like to see a Colts/Saints Supervowl as voted in by coaches, ex-players and computers?

7. magnusbleuveigner said:

   November 25th, 2009 at 1:26 pm

   Brick, you missed one. What about calling something ‘reform’ when it’s actually a usurpation of the entire system? Afterall who wants to be against ‘reform?’ It’s just simple harmless reform?

8. magnusbleuveigner said:

   November 25th, 2009 at 1:27 pm

   Brick, your post also helps me understand why you don’t like a playoff. YOU WANT EVERYONE TO BE WINNERS!!!! Why can’t everybody get a blue ribbon? I know you’re in D.C. and all, but are you some sort of fairness liason to the faggoutous UIL?

9. HenryJames said:

   November 25th, 2009 at 1:30 pm

   No fucking politics on this site. No political asides. Nothing.

   Go somewhere else for that shit.

   Back to discussing the BCS.

10. magnusbleuveigner said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 1:32 pm

    “No one is advocating that the champion be chosen in the preseason. And no one is suggesting that bowls be irrelevant. The debate between the BCS and a playoff is a matter of degree, not kind. There’s always going to be some form of selection, based on the candidates’ resumes of on-field performance. At what point do you vote for participants in the championship-deciding post-season? Finals? Semifinals? Quarterfinals?”

    I’d feel a whole lot better about the #9 team in the nation getting screwed than the #3 or #5. It’s just one of those things where special interests are running things D.C. style.

11. BrickHorn said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 1:32 pm

    Brick, your post also helps me understand why you don’t like a playoff. YOU WANT EVERYONE TO BE WINNERS!!!!

    To the contrary, I oppose overbloated tournaments that include everyone at the end of the year. I don’t believe every team should have a shot at the championship. You lost in the regular season but “just want a shot?” Too fucking bad, crybabies. You should have handled your business in the regular season, or you wouldn’ t need to beg for reform.

12. magnusbleuveigner said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 1:33 pm

    Not a fan of March Madness? Don’t lie to me Brick.

13. BrickHorn said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 1:33 pm

    No fucking politics on this site. No political asides. Nothing.

    My bad. Forgot the rules.

14. BrickHorn said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 1:36 pm

    Not a fan of March Madness? Don’t lie to me Brick.

    It’s okay. But regular season college basketball is a bore because of its existence. And, in any case, football and basketball are different sports with completely different scheduling requirements.

15. Huckleberry said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 1:39 pm

    The basketball equivalent based on number of teams would be the committee choosing 6 teams to be in the basketball tournament.

16. magnusbleuveigner said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    You used the term overbloated, implying too many teams are involved. That’s why the regular season is meaningless in college basketball. I would hardly equate having 4-8 teams to having 64, or 65 if you count the needless play-in game. A four team playoff is the way to go in my opinion. Like I said, who cares if the #5 team gets burned.

17. magnusbleuveigner said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 1:46 pm

    I didn’t forget the rules, but I will apologize. Besides, getting into it with a DC attorney would be the equivalent of getting into a land war in China.

    Tell Vasherized to not talk shit about Ari Fleischer too.

18. Shirtonbackwards said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Had a fun time responding back to that blog…

19. CBT said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 1:54 pm

    BrickHorn said:

    But regular season college basketball is a bore because of its existence.

    You’re not doing it right.

20. The Bobs said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 3:48 pm

    It’s okay. But regular season college basketball is a bore because of its existence.

    Remind me of that when this year’s Texas team plays, for instance, North Carolina, and Connecticut, and Michigan State…

    With the BCS (and, to be fair, the vastly different schedule length), you just don’t see those kinds of non-conference matchups in the hallowed ‘great regular season’. There are too many disincentives to scheduling that way. So I suppose this great BCS and bowl system keeps the regular season vastly more important, but at the cost of filling it with crappy games…

    Myself, I’d love to see incentives to actually schedule great games all year long, PLUS actually get a championship decided on the field.

21. BrickHorn said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 4:01 pm

    Remind me of that when this year’s Texas team plays, for instance, North Carolina, and Connecticut, and Michigan State…

    I would love to do that for you, but I wasn’t even aware that we scheduled those teams. I just don’t fucking care about the regular season. When teams with 67% winning percentages will get into the tournament, wins and losses have no real meaning.

    Myself, I’d love to see incentives to actually schedule great games all year long, PLUS actually get a championship decided on the field.

    I can agree with that. But you can do that by reweighting SOS versus W/L record in the BCS calculation.

22. Eskimohorn said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 4:11 pm

    Magnus,

    The regular season is meaningless in basketball because there are thousands of games. Each team plays more than 30 games a season. That also enables that over the course of the season, you can tell who’s deserving. And, remember, teams are able to play both home and away games intraconference giving the selection committee more data to consider.

    Basketball also provides for automatic berths (albeit with bogus conference tournaments) for conference championships, therefore enabling every single team the chance to control their own destiny.

    Not so in college football. Not only do you need a fortuitous schedule, you also need the prestige to get elected into the 2-game playoff. Since college football includes unbalanced schedules, the computer models’ effectiveness greatly diminishes – giving power to each AD’s PR people.

    I’d submit that not only would the regular season in college football not be watered down with a 16-team playoff, it would be greatly enhanced. You’d see more compelling early season matchups and you’d see more teams play with more urgency.

23. The Bobs said:

    November 25th, 2009 at 5:17 pm

    I would love to do that for you, but I wasn’t even aware that we scheduled those teams. I just don’t fucking care about the regular season. When teams with 67% winning percentages will get into the tournament, wins and losses have no real meaning.

    honestly, that doesn’t sound like a problem with the method of determining a champion so much as just not liking basketball.

    But you can do that by reweighting SOS versus W/L record in the BCS calculation.

    no, you really can’t. At best you can jigger the results around a little.

    Just how much weight would you have to give SOS to have it overcome an undefeated season by someone like, say, Texas or Florida or USC? Those teams will, in any normal year, play several good to very-good teams in conference – just how many top-10 teams would someone like TCU need to beat to overcome that? And just how many top-10 teams would they be able to get on their schedule? Just off the top of my head, I’m guessing that the answer to the first is substantially greater than the answer to the second.

    And all that’s even assuming you could come up with a “correct” weight for SOS vs. W/L… which I’m highly dubious you could do… there are just too many teams and too few games to provide enough data to make a formula truly valid.

24. Sugarpants said:

    November 26th, 2009 at 12:29 am

    I agree with BrickHorn. Just my opinion.

    Every week college football is exciting. You can name maybe 1/3 of the Texas games this season that actually mean something to the seeding process. Other than that, just win what you can on talent.

    Every week I bite my nails during football season. Even in an off week.

    I might change a lot of stuff about the BCS, including having some sort o capped margin of victory allowance in the power (i.e., computer) polls – let’s say at 27 points or so… when most teams start putting in their subs. But over all I think it has worked well.

25. Sugarpants said:

    November 26th, 2009 at 12:30 am

    1/3 of Texas basketball games, that is.

26. texasfan said:

    November 26th, 2009 at 6:55 am

    Sugarpants -

    Did you really bite your nails over ULa-La, UTEP, Wyoming, Baylor, etc.? And that’s not just a Texas scheduling issue. This “the regular season is the most exciting in sports” is the biggest red herring of this debate. First, under the current system, each season has at least one week when the “marquee” game of the week is Florida-South Carolina. And those weeks are getting more frequent with each season as teams mitigate their risks with buy games. Second, for the life of me, I haven’t ever heard a single person give a mildly coherent explanation for why a limited playoff (4-8 teams) would do anything but make MORE games meaningful and exciting in the regular season. That historical margin of error is still essentially 1 loss to get in, and would facilitate meaningful cross-conference games at the end of the season. No more Lou Holtz declaring for incomprehensible reasons that a Big 10 team is better than a Pac-10 team, etc.

    This isn’t even a debate — the BCS system is just plainly an inferior system to a playoff. Not even close, not an argument, BCS sucks. Period.

27. Bob in Houston said:

    November 26th, 2009 at 9:45 am

    Every week college football is exciting. You can name maybe 1/3 of the Texas games this season that actually mean something to the seeding process. Other than that, just win what you can on talent.

    That’s a similar ratio of games that would matter in football as well. But football is exciting and basketball isn’t?

    Of course, great teams win on talent most of the time. That’s not news.

    Brick, why does your brain stop on regular-season college football and consider that a compartmentalized whole, when D-I college football is the only game I can think of beyond junior high in this country that doesn’t have some kind of playoff system to determine a winner?

28. gazmorida said:

    November 26th, 2009 at 2:43 pm

    I find the BCS supporters’ “Every week matters” argument to be the most maddening of all.

    Had Colt not tackled Brian Jackson on that INT in the Cotton Bowl, and had Texas lost that game 20-16 as a result, would the subsequent weeks’ games against Oklahoma State or Missouri been anywhere near as meaningful? We’ve known, essentially, since before the season that we wouldn’t be able to survive a loss and still make it to the championship game. I think a lot of Texas fans – myself included – would have found our chances ruined with a loss in Dallas.

    If there’s an eight- or 12-team playoff, though, those games with OSU and Mizzou would have still been incredibly meaningful even with a loss to OU. We would have still had a chance to work our way back up the rankings and earn a higher seed. Finish the season 11-1, on a six-game winning streak, and we’re probably #6 and feeling good about ourselves.

    I can buy some arguments in support of the BCS, but this one is just absurd.

29. The Bobs said:

    November 27th, 2009 at 11:11 am

    you know, it’s a funny thing, but when I’ve ever gone to a small-college game, or a high school game, it always seems to me that they all feel like ‘every game matters’ too.

    I know based on BCS apologists’ constant arguments that this can’t truly be the case, since they all determine their championships via a playoff system. But man, oh man, do they carry out their pretense to extremes! They pretend to really get up for their “meaningless” games, and pretend passion at least as fervent as D-1 colleges have. They even cry real tears at losses, and celebrate wins with complete abandon.

    It’s almost as though they really, truly care about the games, with an enjoyment undiluted by the fact that they will eventually have a championship determined on the field of play…

30. Moses NYC said:

    November 28th, 2009 at 7:13 am

    Playing h.s. football in Brooklyn-every game felt like we were playing the Superbowl. We played football as if our lives depended on it. Great blog. My buddy in Dallas told me about this blog and I am not disappointed.

31. bigdukesix said:

    November 28th, 2009 at 10:19 am

    It’s okay. But regular season college basketball is a bore because of its existence.

    Regular season college basketball is a bore because basketball is a fucking bore. Imagine how many fans college basketball would have if it had a BCS-like postseason. Three or four, tops.

32. bigdukesix said:

    November 28th, 2009 at 10:22 am

    honestly, that doesn’t sound like a problem with the method of determining a champion so much as just not liking basketball.

    Exactly.

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