ATTENTION FOLKS!! There never will be a D-I football playoff

[mduffy31]

The University Presidents don't want it, and there is too much money tied up in the bowl system so it is time to move on. It is never going to happen.

[Jack from Charlotte]

1. Want to bet on that?

Actually, there already IS a playoff. There are just not enough teams selected to suit most people.

The current playoff only includes two teams. You, presumably, want more teams and more rounds. Me, too. But not too many. I want four teams, max.

Re the presidents........ Pres. Machen at Florida along with some others are currently working on a set up that's both suitible to the presidents and includes the bowl.......powers.... and provides enough $$$ to make everyone happy.

Changes come very slowly in NCAA football. Want me to give some here a history lesson about how the bowls have changed since I've been following college football? Remember when the Big Ten champ couldn't go to The Rose Bowl 2 years in a row? Also, only one Big Ten team could go to ANY bowl.

Change comes........... slowly.

[BOSSHOG]

2. I don't understand

why there has not been a hybridization yet. Combine the bowls with a playoff and the money will continue to roll in. Make the bowls part of a 4 or 8 team playoff on a rotating schedule like the BCS does with the big bowls now.

1-4 in the Rose
2-3 in the Fiesta
Winners in the Sugar, then rotate every year.

I can't understand any objection. And it certainly wouldn't lengthen the season.

An NCAA Division One football playoff would make March Madness seem like a Tea Party.

[nickgutierrez]

5. You don't even have to do that

Drop the semifinals in the middle of December, when nobody's playing anyway. Have the winners of those games play in the newly created "Championship game", then the losers play each other in one of the big bowls.

[northzax]

7. can't do the middle of december

that's finals time.

And heck, if there's going to a playoff, PAY THE PLAYERS, since you are no longer even pretending it is a school thing.

[Bill McBlueState]

12. finals...

Divisions I-AA, II, and III have playoffs in mid-December. So the vast majority of college football teams are eligible for a December playoff appearance. They don't seem to complain much, even though most D III institutions take academics pretty seriously.

What makes it easier for them, though, is that only the championship game is at a neutral site. Very few of those teams have to travel for more than two consecutive December weekends. Proposals that fold the bowls into a I-A playoff bracket would require a lot of travel.

I do agree that it's fair to pay the players. Or at least allow them to take campus jobs in the offseason.

[northzax]

14. and only until the very end

do more than a very few have to travel more than a thousand miles. Still, there is something to be said for leveling the playing field of home field advantage a bit. could you imagine the Capital One Bowl this year? bring Arkansas to Camp Randall for New Year's? How about Florida in a Columbus winter? the Trojans in a snow bowl at the Big House? the bowl system is skewed towards teams that play in warm climates, since all the games are in warm climates, which makes speed even more important. Michigan and Ohio State will always continue to lose the big games because they are built to play eachother, in late November, not a southern team in perfect conditions. Florida wouldn't have made it out of the Big Ten this year, not because other teams are faster or better, but because in a cold driving rain in Ann Arbor, they'd be finished. Simply the way it is. Look what happened to USC in the cold rain of Corvallis, they fell apart. you telling me that on a neutral field in perfect conditions USC doesn't kill the Beavers? of course they do.

Let's play them in Manhattan, or Boise, as well as Tempe and Miami.

[Bill McBlueState]

3. sure is fun to talk about, though

I do think it will happen, but it might take a few more decades.

[underpants]

4. In'91 or '92 the NCAA had player reps from a lot of big schools meet

they got up in front of players from OSU UM ND USC the Florida schools Texas etc. and said hello and started the meetings. As the story goes one of the players raised his hand and said, "We are all for it (big smiles all around) IF you give us health insurance"

Meeting adjourned.

[Counciltucky]

6. It's possible for both a full bowl system and a playoff...

Say a 16-team playoff occurs (the winners of all 11 conferences, plus 5 at-large participants). This could be a four-round playoff, culminating in early January.

There will still be other teams with bowl eligibility to fill in all the bowls. If anything, it will also give some of the programs from lesser known conferences (Mid-America, Sun Belt, Mountain West) more exposure and subsequently more revenue.

There are undoubtedly imperfections in this system, as there will be in any, but it seems like a fair compromise.

[northzax]

8. yes, a major flaw

you can't play games in mid-december. They can't play on Sundays, cause of the NFL, or Mondays, or even most saturdays after december 15th. So we start at the begininning of January, play for four weeks, and it gets lost in the NFL playoffs (and they are all night games)

[Counciltucky]

9. Is there any way for Saturday arrangements to be made? n/t

[northzax]

10. sure, convince the NFL not to show games

somehow, I think they will not like that. And the networks get equivalent ratings for a regular NFL game and a BCS bowl.

[Counciltucky]

11. Well there's always Sundays for the NFL.

Really, I don't think that college football should be out to appease the NFL.

[northzax]

13. true, but it can't go head to head with the NFL either

The reason the NFL doesn't play Saturday games during the College season is because of a long standing gentleman's agreement between the two, but if the NFL started to, which do you think the Networks would rather show? a dog of an NFL game, which still gets a 10 share, or a great college game which would be lucky to pull a 9?