Some tweets back and forth with Stewart Mandel the other day, as well as the comment thread on my post about Dan Wetzel’s BCS article, has gotten me thinking, once again, about a college football playoff proposal.
Everyone talks about either a “plus-one” (basically a four-team playoff) or an eight-team playoff simply taking the Top 8 teams in the final standings. The problem with these proposals, even the more ambitious Top 8 idea, is that they don’t reward conference championships properly (IMHO), and more crucially, they don’t guarantee access to undefeated teams from non-BCS conferences.
Yeah, the Boise States and TCUs, who start the season ranked and live up to expectations, will usually finish in the Top 8 if they win ’em all. But what about unheralded unbeatens, who have to claw their way into the picture? They might not ever reach the promised land. And that’s just unacceptable. As John Feinstein points out in an admirably rantish post about the BCS:
It is NOT a real competition if you can go undefeated and not be allowed to play for the championship. The apologists of course point out “strength of schedule.” To start with this is a joke because the power schools won’t play the non-power schools. … Beyond that, what was George Mason’s “strength of schedule,” like three years ago? How about Gonzaga when it became Cinderella and made its run to the final eight in 1999? If someone goes undefeated you let them tee it up in postseason and see how they do. Maybe they turn out to be Hawaii. Maybe they turn out to be Utah. You can’t find out unless you let them compete.
Exactly. That’s why my preferred solution is a 16-team playoff, with automatic bids for the champions of all 11 conferences, plus 5 at-larges. This would guarantee that every undefeated team gets a shot, with the possible exception of the Big Ten, which can theoretically produce multiple unbeatens — but, undoubtedly, any “non-champion” unbeaten would be among the five at-large teams anyway.
I recognize, though, there are legitimate objections to this proposal, most notably that it would de-value the regular season too much. That is Mandel’s primary concern about any playoff beyond a “plus-one.” Personally, however, I think a happy medium can be reached, one that would preserve enough of the regular season’s significance while solving the problems that cannot be fixed by tweaking the BCS or even creating a plus-one (in particular, guaranteeing that overachieving off-the-radar teams have a legit shot to earn a championship).
On such possible happy medium, it seems to me, is a 12-team playoff.
The significance of the number 12 is that it would give first-round byes to the #1 through #4 seeds, thus giving the top teams “something to play for” in the season’s final weeks — something rather important, I might add, since a bye means you only have to win 3 games, instead of 4, to capture the national championship. For extra regular-season incentive, play the first-round and second-round games at the home stadiums of the higher-ranked teams, if you like, before moving to neutral (bowl) sites for the semifinal and championship games.
Here’s how I would structure it.
The champions of 5 conferences get automatic bids. Presumably this would be the SEC, Big 12, Pac-10, ACC and Big Ten, though there should some system whereby the AQ quintet is re-evaluated every offseason based on some objective criteria that would allow a different conference to take the place of one of the “big five” if justified by on-the-field results.
Champions of the other 6 conferences get 3 automatic bids between them. They have “play-in games” the weekend after Championship Saturday to determine who gets the bids. Matchups for these games are based on “seeding” of the conferences’ champions at season’s end.
Alternatively, you could simply divide each season’s 11 conference champions into two groups: the five highest ranked are in, regardless of what conference they’re from; the other six have to play their way in. This year, that would mean Boise State and TCU might get auto bids, while, three of the six “power conference” champs might end up in a play-in game. I’d have no problem with that alternative setup. But somehow, I think the Big Five conference would want to hold onto their “privileged” status — and, in truth, there’s something to be said for knowing, at the beginning of the season, whether you’re playing for an auto bid, or merely a shot at one. Also, if the auto/play-in distinction is fungible, this “12-team playoff” becomes more clearly a “15-team playoff.”
Regardless, if privileging the (objectively defined) top five conferences is what it takes to make a (relatively) fair playoff happen — and I think it would be, even in the fantasy world in which this proposal is realistic to begin with — I’d be OK with making the “little guys” play an extra game. Also keep in mind, this doesn’t necessarily mean the Boise States of the world have to play five games to win a championship, while the Floridas only need to play three. Looking at the current rankings, if Boise State were to win its play-in game, it would slip right into a Top 4 seed, and earn not just an automatic bid to the 12-team playoff, but a first-round bye.
In any case, right now, going by the Expanded BCS standings, the play-in matchups would be:
#50 Troy (Sun Belt) at #4 Boise State (WAC)
#29 Central Michigan (MAC) at #5 Cincinnati (Big East)
#17 Houston (C-USA) at #8 TCU (Mountain West)
Winners get auto bids. Losers get thrown into the at-large pool, along with everyone else.
Ah, yes, the at-large pool. The top 4 at-large teams get bids. They would be determined based on rankings after the play-in games are complete. These same rankings would be used to seed all 12 teams. So, based on the current rankings, and assuming the top-ranked team from each conference ends up as that conference’s champion, and assuming the favorites win the 3 play-in games, the playoff would be:
#1 Florida (SEC champ) — first-round bye
#2 Alabama (at-large) — first-round bye
#3 Texas (Big 12 champ) — first-round bye
#4 Boise State (play-in winner) — first-round bye
#5 Cincinnati (play-in winner) vs. #12 Georgia Tech (at-large)
#6 Iowa (Big Ten champ) vs. #11 Oregon (at-large)
#7 USC (Pac-10 champ) vs. #10 Miami (ACC champ)
#8 TCU (play-in winner) vs. #9 LSU (at-large)
Then Florida plays the TCU/LSU winner, Alabama plays the USC/Miami winner, Texas plays the Iowa/Oregon winner, and Boise State plays the Cincinnati/Georgia Tech winner.
If desired, there could be a provision that would allow adjusting the seedings up or down one spot (like the basketball selection committee is allowed to do) to avoid the possibility of regular-season rematches in the first or second rounds. For example, LSU and Miami could be switched to avoid the possibility of a second (third?) Florida-LSU game. The rules should be written in such a way as to make this happen automatically, not discretionarily, since the latter could create all sorts of unnecessary controversy. For instance:
If the seedings create a first-round game, or a possible second-round game, that is a rematch of a regular-season game between the same teams, the seeds shall be adjusted as follows:
• 1) The lower-seeded team in the potential rematch will switch spots with the team seed immediately below it, if this solves the rematch problem without creating additional rematches or potential rematches.
• 2) If application of Rule 1 does not solve the original rematch problem, or if it creates additional rematch problem(s), then the lower-seeded team in the potential rematch will switch spots with the team seeded immediately above it, if this solves the rematch problem without creating additional rematches or potential rematches.
• 3) If additional rematches or potential rematches are created by the application of both Rule 1 and Rule 2, or if the application of one rule does not solve the original problem and the application of the other creates new problems, then the original seedings shall remain intact, unless it is possible to prevent the additional rematches or potential rematches created by the application of one or the other rule (Rule 1 always having priority where possible) by seed adjustments of the lower-seeded team in the newly created rematches or potential rematches, following the same process outlined herein, and changing no team’s seed by more than one spot.
The top 4 teams would never have their seeds changed, and home-field advantage would never be altered — since switching #8 with #9 is never going to make a difference anyway, given that they play each other and have the same potential second-round opponent.
How would this work for a season that’s already completed? Let’s see… what would have happened last year? (Rankings based on final Expanded BCS standings.)
AUTO BIDS
Big 12: Oklahoma (#1)
SEC: Florida (#2)
Pac-10: USC (#5)
Big Ten: Penn State (#8)
ACC: Virginia Tech (#19)
PLAY-IN PARTICIPANTS
Mountain West: Utah (#6)
WAC: Boise State (#9)
Big East: Cincinnati (#12)
Conference USA: East Carolina (#32)
Mid-American: Buffalo (#38)
Sun Belt: Troy (unranked)
PLAY-IN GAMES
Troy at Utah
Buffalo at Boise State
East Carolina at Cincinnati
Let’s assume Utah and Cincy win as expected, but Buffalo stuns Boise State. (Heh.) Now it’s time to select the at-larges. Boise State is theoretically eligible, but the Broncos would tumble from #9 with the loss to Buffalo, and wouldn’t get a bid. Instead, we get:
AT-LARGE TEAMS
#3 Texas
#4 Alabama
#7 Texas Tech
#9 Ohio State (up from #10 due to Boise loss)
So our playoff participants are #1 Oklahoma, #2 Florida, #3 Texas, #4 Alabama (all of whom get first-round byes and second-round home games), #5 USC, #6 Utah, #7 Texas Tech, #8 Penn State, #9 Ohio State, #12 Cincinnati, #19 Virginia Tech, and #30 Buffalo (up from #38 due to win over Boise).
Now… we seed those teams from #1-12. The first-round matchups are:
#12 Buffalo at #5 USC (winner plays #4 Alabama)
#11 Virginia Tech at #6 Utah (winner plays #3 Texas)
#10 Cincinnati at #7 Texas Tech (winner plays #2 Florida)
#9 Ohio State at #8 Penn State (winner plays #1 Oklahoma)
Uh-oh! We have a rematch in the 8-9 game. No problem: Rule 1 applies, and Ohio State and Cincinnati are automatically switched:
#10 Ohio State at #7 Texas Tech (winner plays #2 Florida)
#9 Cincinnati at #8 Penn State (winner plays #1 Oklahoma)
Problem solved. Now, let’s say USC beats Buffalo, Utah beats Virginia Tech, Texas Tech beats Ohio State, and Cincy pulls the upset in Happy Valley. Our quarterfinals would then be:
#5 USC at #4 Alabama
#6 Utah at #3 Texas
#7 Texas Tech at #2 Florida
#9 Cincinnati at #1 Oklahoma
USC goes into SEC country and surprises the Tide; Utah stuns Texas; Florida and Oklahoma win as expected. Time for our neutral-site semifinals:
#5 USC vs. #1 Oklahoma
#6 Utah vs. #2 Florida
And of course it’s USC vs. Florida for the national championship, with the Trojans winning, natch. 🙂
What about 2007, that crazy cluster-you-know-what of a season? Let’s see…
AUTO BIDS
Big Ten: Ohio State (#1)
SEC: LSU (#2)
ACC: Virginia Tech (#3)
Big 12: Oklahoma (#4)
Pac-10: USC (#7)
PLAY-IN PARTICIPANTS
Big East: West Virginia (#9)
WAC: Hawaii (#10)
Mountain West: BYU (#17)
Conference USA: Central Florida (#30)
Sun Belt: Florida Atlantic (unranked; #78 per Sagarin)
MAC: Central Michigan (unranked; #82 per Sagarin)
PLAY-IN GAMES
Central Michigan at West Virginia
Florida Atlantic at Hawaii
Central Florida at BYU
WVU and BYU hold serve at home. Overrated Hawaii is shocked by Florida Atlantic. (Boy, I’m being brutal to the WAC champs in my play-in game predictions here.)
AT-LARGE TEAMS
#5 Georgia
#6 Missouri
#8 Kansas
#10 Arizona State (up from #11 due to Hawaii loss)
FIRST-ROUND MATCHUPS (teams reseeded)
#12 Florida Atlantic at #5 Georgia (winner plays #4 Oklahoma)
#11 BYU at #6 Missouri (winner plays #3 Virginia Tech)
#10 Arizona State at #7 USC (winner plays #2 LSU)
#9 West Virginia at #8 Kansas (winner plays #1 Ohio State)
D’oh! Another rematch. But again, we solve it by following Rule 1, switching ASU and BYU:
#11 Arizona State at #6 Missouri (winner plays #3 Virginia Tech)
#10 BYU at #7 USC (winner plays #2 LSU)
Georgia and USC hold serve at home. Arizona State surprises Mizzou. West Virginia recovers from its devastating loss to Pitt (which, in this alternate reality, didn’t eliminate WVU from championship contention, but did prevent the Mountaineers from getting a first-round bye and playing a home game) and beats Kansas (which suffered a similar fate by losing to Missouri). The quarterfinals?
#5 Georgia at #4 Oklahoma
#11 Arizona State at #3 Virginia Tech
#7 USC at #2 LSU
#9 West Virginia at #1 Ohio State
The result? CINDERELLA MADNESS, BABY!!! (Why not? This is the 2007 season we’re talking about.) The Mountaineers take out overrated Ohio State. USC wins in Death Valley, putting all those snotty Tigers fans in their place once and for all. 🙂 Arizona State proves that Pac-10 is a WAR!!! by stunning Virginia Tech. Oklahoma is only higher seed to survive. Semifinals:
#9 West Virginia vs. #4 Oklahoma
#7 USC vs. #11 Arizona State
The championship game is #7 USC vs. #4 Oklahoma, which, of course, USC wins. 🙂
Finally, let’s go back to 2004, the year when five teams — USC, Oklahoma, Auburn, Utah and Boise State — finished the regular season undefeated. How would that one have played out? (I don’t have expanded BCS standings for ’04, so I’m using Sagarin for any teams not in the BCS top 25.)
AUTO BIDS
Pac-10: USC (#1)
Big 12: Oklahoma (#2)
SEC: Auburn (#3)
ACC: Virginia Tech (#8)
Big Ten: Michigan (#13)
PLAY-IN PARTICIPANTS
Mountain West: Utah (#6)
WAC: Boise State (#9)
Conference USA: Louisville (#10)
Big East: Pittsburgh (#21)
MAC: Toledo (#83)
Sun Belt: North Texas (#102)
PLAY-IN GAMES
North Texas at Utah
Toledo at Boise State
Pittsburgh at Louisvile
This time, all the favorites win. Now… at-large selection time.
AT-LARGE TEAMS
#4 Texas
#5 Cal
#7 Georgia
#11 LSU
Lookie here… we’ve got the entire Top 12 except #12 Iowa, who loses out to #13 Michigan. The Wolverines get re-seeded as #12, and our matchups are…
FIRST-ROUND MATCHUPS
#12 Michigan at #5 Cal (winner gets #4 Texas)
#11 LSU at #6 Utah (winner gets #3 Auburn)
#10 Louisville at #7 Georgia (winner gets #2 Oklahoma)
#9 Boise State at #8 Virginia Tech (winner gets #1 USC)
VT and USC played that year in the regular season, as did LSU and Auburn, of course. So, to avoid potential rematches, we switch VT and Georgia, and we switch LSU and Michigan. Result:
#12 LSU at #5 Cal (winner gets #4 Texas)
#11 Michigan at #6 Utah (winner gets #3 Auburn)
#10 Louisville at #7 Virginia Tech (winner gets #2 Oklahoma)
#9 Boise State at #8 Georgia (winner gets #1 USC)
Cal and Utah win; Louisville and Boise pull the upsets.
#5 Cal at #4 Texas
#6 Utah at #3 Auburn
#10 Louisville at #2 Oklahoma
#9 Boise State at #1 USC
Cal beats Texas, but otherwise, the favorites roll.
#5 Cal at #1 USC
#3 Auburn at #2 Oklahoma
USC beats Cal — again — and Auburn exposes Oklahoma. USC beats Auburn for the national championship. (Notice a trend here?)
I’m mortally offended. Not by calling Tigers fans snotty, that I can live with. But calling Death Valley the Swamp is an insult to me and mine.
Oh, as for how I’d structure playoffs, I’d go with 8 teams. The winners of the Big 10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, and Pac10 get 5 seeds, the highest ranked conference champion from the Big East, MWC, WAC, MAC, Sun Belt, and C-USA gets a seed, and the other two go to the highest ranked teams outside of those 6, with a provision that those 2 seeds can’t go to the same conference, as no one wants a situation where LSU, Alabama, and Florida all make the playoffs. The first round would be held at the home stadiums of the 4 higher seeds, with the semi-finals and championship rotating between Miami, New Orleans, and Pasadena.
LOL… wow, that IS a big insult. My sincere apologies!
Fixed. 🙂
The problem with your proposal, Matt, is that it could still leave an undefeated team out in the cold. What if TCU and Boise both go undefeated, but two non-undefeated non-champions (say, one-loss Alabama and one-loss Miami) finish ahead of the second one of ’em? Granted, that doesn’t seem likely in this specific year’s standings, given how highly TCU and Boise are ranked, but it’s certainly very conceivable. In 2004, for instance, Utah would have gotten the auto bid, and Cal and Texas would have gobbled up the at-larges ahead of Boise State. Granted, Boise ended up losing to Louisville in its bowl game, but at the end of the regular season, the Broncos were undefeated. They deserved a shot at the title too.
Five games in a playoff is too many, particularly for a team that has already played 13 in a regular season + conference championship.
Been thinking about this one, and increasingly it seems like the BCS championship game is about the best you’re gonna get. Even an and-one may be asking too much. Why? The money’s not right with the playoff.
Not the tv ratings money of course. I’m referring to something much more important: enthusiastic fan base money.
Suppose you are a well-heeled and passionate supporter of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. (If you’re reading this, there’s a chance you might be). Suppose further that Charlie and the lads right the ship, win their remaining games, and per this blog’s prediction, find their way out to Glendale for the Fiesta Bowl.
You as a well-heeled supporter of Notre Dame would be very happy about this positive development for your team, and Notre Dame’s administration aren’t fools, so within two days a mailer arrives at your home saying “Did you hear? We’re going to the Fiesta Bowl! Notre Dame football is back!”. Read on in the mailer to discover that for the low low price of $3,995, you can join several thousand other rabid Notre Dame fans at the Notre Dame hotel complex in Glendale, where you will be treated to a whirlwind weekend of fun events, including serious inspirational talks from inspiring Irish like Lou Holtz as well as fun events for the family, including the opportunity to interact with mascots, such as “The Thunder” (get your picture taken shaking that guy down) and “The Echoes” (get your picture taken waking that guy up).
All in all, a fun, serious, wonderful way to celebrate all that is great about Notre Dame.
Oh, and, don’t forget your checkbook.
That’s the way it works in the current bowl system. By contrast, here’s how it would work in a proposal similar to the one in this thread. Notre Dame makes the tourney as an at-large, for sake of argument let’s call them a 9th seed.
But here’s what the fund-raising arm of the university doesn’t immediately know:
1) Who they play
2) Where they play
3) When they play
Making it somewhat difficult to get the Thunder character and the Echo character at the appropriate hotel complex to juice up the fans (to say nothing of Lou Holtz!)
Even once Notre Dame knows where, when, and who they are playing, would the well-heeled fan travel to the 8th vs. 9th seed game? Maybe…but most such fans probably wouldn’t. It would be obvious from the structure that Notre Dame wasn’t likely to win the tournament, as a result many fans would choose to stay home until the Irish had won a couple of games, perhaps waiting until the semifinals to go see them play. Or perhaps the finals.
Either way, bad for business. Very very bad for business. So the University Fathers (literally, in Notre Dame’s case, and figuratively, for the other universities), will fight against the playoff til the end. You hear the euphemisms already (“Its too many games for our student athletes” “Depletes the importance of the regular season” etc).
All of these euphemisms are hiding the real reason:
The playoff is a much more challenging fundraiser than the current system, and typically these schools make most of their athletic department’s profits off their football teams.
I think this makes things way too complicated.
The eleven-and-five is an elegantly simple setup. The argument that it “devalues the regular season” is bunk, because there’s only five at-large spots to fight for. Every team will still want to win its conference.
Besides, the NFL has a playoff, and I somehow don’t believe the regular season games are in any way devalued. Quite the contrary: it’s ruthless and cutthroat, because losing even one game you shouldn’t often means someone else wins your spot.
Jazz is right in that it makes travel a nightmare, but you know what? Division II and III schools can accomplish this on a far smaller budget. Besides, the best idea would be to incorporate a playoff into the bowl system we already have. If Florida knows going in that the #1 vs. #16 matchup is in Albuquerque or St. Petersburg (sites of the first two bowl games of the postseason), then if they win out that’s where they’re headed.
Mike, your solution would destroy the bowl system, not preserve it. Fewer teams would be involved in post season play, meaning less money for those schools. You really think they are going to sign off on a system that hurts them that much on the off off off chance that they will get to play in the playoffs? Plus there is no way you are going to convince alumni to travel to that many extra away games and spend the same amount of money that bowl teams get now. So Florida plays its first playoff game in New Mexico, the next one in New York a week later, and finally one in Georgia, then the national championship. Really? You think enough rich alumni will go to all those games? I don’t. Even more true for smaller schools.
The reason Div-1AA, II, III etc. can get away with these games is they travel more locally, they play in much smaller venues and don’t rely financially on those games to the extent that the big schools (and bowls) do.
For a 12 team playoff, here’s my suggestion.
First, 5 auto-bids for the 5 BCS conferences.
Second, 2 auto-bid for the highest ranked non BCS conference champs.
Third, any undefeated team not allready in.
Fourth, remaining teams filled from the rankings with the current limit of at most two teams from any conference.
Here’s a perfect solution, just occured to me, that solves every problem but the most important one:
Twelve team playoff, modelled similar to the NFL playoffs, featuring the 11 D-1 conference champions + one at-large team.
Huge advantages:
1. Conference play becomes meaningful. Back in the day, the NCAA basketball tournament was pretty much one team per conference, which set up great conference championships. Oldsters still love the ’74 NC State champs, not so much for knocking off 7-time champs UCLA in the National Semis, but for knocking off UNC (and knocking UNC out of the tourney) in the ACC championship.
2. You don’t have to worry about what to do with TCU.
3. The at-large gives an opportunity for Notre Dame, Army, Navy – or the hypothetical second undefeated Big Ten team to get a crack at the championship.
4. One at-large only should virtually eliminate the attraction of cupcakes. All at-large aspirants from major conferences will have at least one loss (otherwise they’d be champs), and they will be judged primarily on that loss. Much better in that scenario to take a chance on blowing out challenging non-conference opponents and boosting your beauty points that way.
5. Every D-1 team has a chance to control their own destiny.
Best of all:
6. The D-1 conferences are ideally situated to generate interest in such a playoff. There are only two legitimately crap D-1 conferences, the MAC and the Sun Belt. The other 9 are either BCS or have teams like Boise State, TCU or Houston that under the right circumstances could be giant-killers. Therefore, in this proposed tournament the MAC and Sun Belt champions will most years be the 11th and 12th seeds. Which is perfect for generating interest.
Suppose you’re a Notre Dame fan and the Irish win out, gaining the coveted at-large big and being seeded 6th. Now you take a look at the tournament and see USC sitting there at #3 seed in the second round, and you don’t like your odds at beating USC at a neutral site. Then the playoffs begin, and you find your team taking the field with #11 Troy.
And ND blows out Troy 38-10. Now all of a sudden things look a lot more promising, even though that was just Troy it was still the playoffs, and now there should be a surge of interest and hope in defeating USC the next weekend. The same would be true of the #5 seed (Cincinnati) blowing out Ohio (#12) in anticipation of being an underdog against Penn State (#4) the next weekend.
Your 8-9 and 7-10 games will be naturally interesting, pitting for example Boise State against TCU and perhaps Virginia Tech against Houston. Neither winner should fare well the next weekend against Alabama and Texas, but you’re not watching the 1 and 2 seeds in quarterfinal weekend to see them be defeated.
Its perfect. But its crappy for fundraising. So it won’t happen.
Mike, your solution would destroy the bowl system, not preserve it.
Good. It sucks. The only people who care about the early bowls are the teams in them and people in office pools or ESPN/Yahoo! Pick’ems. The Poinsettia Bowl is sponsored by the San Diego County Credit Union, for crying out loud.
Eight small bowls should band together, agree to pool their resources, and offer themselves as the first-round games for a 16-team playoff, distributing an equal take to every entrant. It would automatically generate more interest than some worthless game with two 7-5 teams.
Fewer teams would be involved in post season play, meaning less money for those schools.
Again, I see this as no big shakes. There is no reason why 68 teams should be in bowl games. But, even so, let’s pretend my framework is in operation: we replace 15 bowl games with a playoff. The number of teams in postseason play drops from 68 to 54 (34 bowl games – 15 removed for playoffs = 19 “new” bowl games = 38 teams plus 16 playoff teams = 54). If this sounds like too few, then keep in mind there were only 56 teams that played postseason games as recently as 2003-04, when there were 28 bowl games.
Besides, if there is a market for more two-bit bowl games sponsored by Cooter’s Bait & Tackle, they will spring to fill the void left by the departure of the current small bowl games to a playoff.
Plus there is no way you are going to convince alumni to travel to that many extra away games and spend the same amount of money that bowl teams get now. So Florida plays its first playoff game in New Mexico, the next one in New York a week later, and finally one in Georgia, then the national championship. Really? You think enough rich alumni will go to all those games? I don’t.
You’re right. After all, no fans show up for their team’s games in March Madness, where they may have to fly three time zones away and on less than a week’s notice. Oh, wait, they do. In fact, generally they buy the three-game bundle, meaning they’re guaranteed to purchase at least one game they have no real compelling rooting interest in, just to see their team play in the Big Dance.
The reason Div-1AA, II, III etc. can get away with these games is they travel more locally
No. Last year’s I-AA championship game was in Chattanooga. One participant was Richmond, which is not a terrible trip. The other was the University of Montana.
In Division II, Northwest Missouri and the University of Minnesota-Duluth had to go to Florence, Alabama. The last four DIII championships have been contested by Mount Union (located in Alliance, Ohio) and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in Salem, Virginia.
they play in much smaller venues and don’t rely financially on those games to the extent that the big schools (and bowls) do.
Then where the hell do they get the budget for these travels?
Mike,
Your equivalence of fans travelling for a spontaneous NCAA hoops tourney and a prestige football tournament is not convincing.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that an NCAA hoops weekend and a BCS bowl game share the following characteristics:
50% of the tickets are general interest in the MSA where the game is held, with the other half split between the teams involved.
So if Notre Dame plays Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl, there will be about 40,000 fans from the Phoenix MSA, about 20,000 Buckeye fans – and 20,000 Irish fans, a perfect captive audience for the fundraising interests of the school.
Contrast that with an NCAA weekend, where the stadium will have 10,000 tickets sold to the general public in the MSA, with the remaining 10,000 split among the 4 schools participating.
So your argument essentially reduces to: because Notre Dame is able to spontaneously get 2,500 fans to attend an NCAA weekend, they should not feel threatened by a substantial drop off from the 20,000 fans who would otherwise attend a pre-scheduled football bowl game.
I don’t want to speak for David, but if I had to guess, he’d probably agree that Notre Dame could get 2,500 fans to show up to the spontaneous playoff game, as well as agree that such an outcome would really suck for the administration compared to the current setup.
Unless, of course, Notre Dame wins. Then the next week they play another game, get maybe 5,000 fans. Then they win again and now they’re in what might still be called the “Fiesta Bowl,” but it’s a national semifinal. And now they can get ten or twenty thousand fans.
And considering that a playoff cannot possibly make the postseason LESS interesting, there will be more money available eventually from sponsorships and television contracts as competing interests fight over the biggest piece of those pies.
Just to follow the point, and for the sake of argument:
Suppose that those 20,000 fans at the Fiesta Bowl (current setup) can be squeezed for an average of $1,000 apiece, either through fun Notre Dame-y things at the actual weekend, or juiced up school pride later leading to greater contributions. Now suppose those 20,000 fans are replaced with 2,500 similarly generous fans at the playoff game.
Since the school can’t plan for repeat weekends (depends on the details of the tourney) Notre Dame is looking at a loss of $17.5 million for switching from the BCS to the tourney.
The numbers are hypothetical – but the $17.5 million is interesting, since its in the ballpark of what a Fiesta Bowl participant gets paid through “official” channels.
Where’s the money gonna come from to double Notre Dame’s “official” take, sweetening the pot to $35 Million, for participating in the hypothetical tournament, assuming something like doubling their take is necessary to keep them whole?
Mike, I didn’t see your post at 13 before I sent 14, but the notion of increased interest leading to increased revenue calls to mind the tricky world of market research. One of the hard things about market research is that people in a lab always say “Yeah, sure, I’d pay $10 for your sparkly widget!” and then the researcher has to know – somehow – that they won’t.
To this discussion, would I sign the petition promising to make Notre Dame whole from the $17 million they stand to lose in the first round? Sure! And I’ll really mean it when I sign it, cause I really want the playoff. Course, when they come around later and ask me to make good on my pledge, I’ll suddenly have alligator arms.
Notre Dame, and everyone else, pretty much knows this about me. Which is why something big is going to have to change to get a playoff.
Mike, yeah because comparing basketball playoffs to football playoffs makes perfect sense. Except it doesn’t. Why?
Basketball games are in smaller arenas.
Basketball plays multiple games on the same day in the same location. Heck they play more on multiple days in the same location.
This makes it easier to travel and buy tickets because in ONE weekend you can see multiple games. In football? Not so much.
Also, I am not 100% sure, but i’m fairly certain that early rounds of the lower division football tourneys are regional, so travel is much less of an issue. Also the money usual comes from the university fund, they travel with less people/equipment, use cheaper accomodations, require less security, less support staff, cheaper venues.
The only way, the ONLY way a play-off is going to happen si if you can get all the conferences to buy in, in order to do that you have to make it advantageous for them. Taking away bowl games may not bother YOU, but it bothers the teams and conferences (and fans of schools that go to them aka the people who pay the bills). Plus you have to get the bigger conferences to buy in because of the money they already make.
Do you really think that the SEC is going to send their team to a system where they could lose in the second round at a small bowl and miss out on the bigger payout of a major bowl? I don’t.
We can all come up with 100% theoretical propositions of what we want, but if you really really want to push for an ACTUAL tournament you have to make it worthwile, otherwise it will never get going.