[College Football]Playoff Plunderer (Big 10's Jim Delany)

Yahoo Sports ^ | 01/05/2007 | Josh Peter

[iowamark]

Jim Delany

[PAR35]

The Big Ten is the nation's biggest conference, a collection of 11 universities

The SEC, ACC and Big 12 have 12, so they can't be talking about number of teams. If they are talking number of students, the Big 12 ought to be able to give them a run for their money.

[edcoil]

College is for education.

NFL stands for Not For Long.

While we appreciate the play, it is a game and our colleges need to focus on education.

A better ides would be to get rid of the BCS.

[Chi-townChief]

Agreed - the old way worked fine for me and, if you had co-champions occasionally, the more the merrier.

[Tallguy]

The so-called BCS conferences – which include the ACC, Big East, Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC – outnumber the less powerful conferences six to five. Thanks to that slim majority, the six conferences grant themselves automatic bids to the five BCS bowls and this year will take in more than three-quarters of the estimated $120 million the BCS will generate.

That's it in a nutshell. The Universities like their private alumni parties when they go to a Bowl. The conferences like their Win-Win money.

It's not clear that a playoff system would generate the level of fan attendance if you've already sucked their time & money in the first round. May as well play their next rounds in front of virtually empty seats.

That said, a sponsor would have to step-up with gobs of money to get the attention of the Big Conferences. Is there enough sports money left out there to make it happen? I'm sure it would be self-sustaining if they could get it done.

[dfwgator]

He doesn't even want a Big Ten Championship game. And as a result Ohio State didn't have to play Wisconsin.

[Merry]

The BCS is a joke. It's all about who has the biggest fan base. Notre Dame should have never been invited to the Sugar Bowl. They played weak teams during the season and lost to Michigan and USC. Wisconsin had the same 10-2 record, except they played better teams than Air Force, Navy and Army who have height requirements for admission. The academy games usually look like the big bullies picking on the high school kids. The academies play smarter but don't have the size. But Notre Dame has big time money and were able to get their QB front covers on magazines and build up the hype. They even demanded to be in the championship game. Anyone who has their own TV station can make lots of demands. Right now we are not necessarily seeing the "best" teams in the BCS bowl games but the ones with the most clout. I'm really not bashing Notre Dame, I'm just using them as an example of why the BCS system is flawed. I think what most fans would like to see is a playoff of teams that legitimately belong there. I don't see that ever happening because advertisers want the stadiums filled in bowl games. Could Boise ST fill a stadium with alums?

[dfwgator]

There seemed to be a lot of Boise State fans in Glendale.

[Onelifetogive]

We went 13-0 and beat everyone on our schedule

13-0 is easy. 13-0 against a schedule that includes a handful of top 20 (and at least a couple of top 10) teams is the trick.

[NittanyLion]

Make no mistake about it - Jim Delany is scum.

[BigBobber]

Agreed. Anyone who thinks a D1 playoff will not generate more income is out of their minds.

What do the pro sports do? The playoffs are the biggest money maker of all. Wouldn't the NFL have a BCS style end of season if it was the way to make money?

Aside from the money, a playoff is the only fair way to end the season. Let teams make their reputation on the field. ND bowl appearances are a joke. Lost nine bowl games in a row by an average of more than two TDs. Thats affirmative action for football - putting an unqualified team in a situation where they are bound to fail. It also means nine times a more deserving team was denied the money and prestige that goes with a major bowl.

[Paco]

Let me see if I understand correctly, in 4 of the 9 BCS Championship games, there wasn't much to argue with who played. In the other 5, there is subjective arguments to be made. So what? In the old system, you'd still have the same arguments. Right now we have major conferences with a championship game and other majors that don't. None of that is fair either. If you set up a playoff, how long will it be before teams begin to "engineer" their schedules to be EXTREMELY weak before their conference games to minimize the chance of a loss? And you know that will happen. How fair will that be?

My advice to the "Boise's" out there, start scheduling tougher non-conference games if you want respect. Week in and week out, the tougher conference teams are better than the "weaker" conferences. They get the benefit of the doubt because they deserve it.

About a playoff...be careful what you wish for...

[BigBobber]

Sorry, these arguments about scheduling weak opponents hold no water.

What do D1 basketball teams do? If you play a powderpuff schedule you will not get to the big dance unless you are conference champion. D1 football is the ONLY college sport at any level with no playoff. You're saying all the other sports and all other college football divisions don't know what they are doing?

The BCS is designed to protect the income for traditional programs, even if their current teams don't deserve it.

[Saltmeat]

College sports are all about who can kiss eighteen year old butts the best. It isn't about who can draw the best X's and O's. The Boise State coach just proved that. He won with two plays that kids have run on the schoolyards at recess for years. Nothing complicated or new about the two most exciting plays of the 2006 bowl games thus far. The schools with the big budgets, the nicer facilities, the high paid staffs, and the big arenas can awe an eighteen year old high school senior better than the smaller schools.

We know this beyond any doubt. College sports is not about student-athletics and education regardless of how they try to camouflage it. The NCAA can run all the commercials about "turning pro in something other than sports" all the want to. It is a charade for most of the athletes.

How many times have we watched a college senior fail to make one grammatically correct complete sentence during an interview. If you can't speak the language, you certainly can't write the language. But then how much writing does one have to do on a multiple choice test. None! Just color in the selected square.

We see the results of the successful players that make it to the pros, but we never see any followup studies about the multitudes of NCAA athletes that fail to make the next level. Wonder why? Perhaps if we did, the taxpayers that funded their four or five year stay at the college might realize that it was a bad investment except for the entertainment value the young man or woman afforded the rabid fans. Meanwhile a real student-athlete that could have performed adequately on the field and in the classroom never got the chance.

Our military academies are the only institutions of higher learning that truly have student-athletes today. They do not compromise their standards for the sake of winning athletic contests.

[ozdragon]

Yes, and those fans buy the tickets and the jerseys and the hats and those make the bowls profitable.

[Paco]

So what you're telling me is that teams that don't play non-conference powderpuff schedules and lose will be given more "weight" that those that don't? How can that be? That sounds awfully subjective doesn't it? Would a 3 or 4 loss SEC or Big 12 (or other major conf) team deserve more weight than a 1 one loss Mid-America team? In the case of 4 losses...what if all those losses were to top 10 or 15 teams when the loss occurred? Again...it's subjective...someone is going to get hosed and everyone will argue about it.

I'm not saying other conferences don't know what they're doing, I'm sure they do. In fact, I like the idea of a playoff, however, I'm playing devil's advocate here. When you consider what's happened in Div 1 basketball throughout the years, you could infer, that the result at the end would be the same. The winner of the big dance has basically been one of the top teams during the year anyway. Same would probably hold true in football. The end result would be the same, the path to get there would be different. And for many, a lot less enjoyable. People are bowlitized (that's a new word)...they like them. Change is hard for people.

I'm curious as to how many teams would be involved in a playoff, etc.

[The Lumster]

The SEC, ACC and Big 12 have 12, so they can't be talking about number of teams

Big 10 controls more TV sets - More big TV markets - that's what makes them the 'biggest"

[Night Hides Not]

About a playoff...be careful what you wish for...

A playoff will come when Congress takes away college sports' "non-profit" status.

[lepton]

In the case of 4 losses...what if all those losses were to top 10 or 15 teams when the loss occurred?

Like Penn State? They lost only to Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Notre Dame.

[BigBobber]

You could have a very viable D1 playoff with 8 teams. These are the eight teams that play in the four major BCS bowls (Rose, Sugar, Orange, Fiesta), all these games would be played within a few days of Jan 1. The major bowls and conferences would still get their money this way.

The four remaining teams would play the following week (note this is the same time that the current BCS "championship" is played. The final two teams would then play in a much hyped game in late January during the dead weekend before the Superbowl. A playoff like this would generate huge fan interest, comparable to March Madness.

I think a 32 team bracket would be even better, starting in early December. This way teams would earn their way to the final. The problem is Team 1 playing Team 32 in round 1 is likely to be a blowout. I don't think it is a good idea to have athletes off for five weeks as in the current system.