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Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - 82 Card - 12-15-2015

Why does it matter who is the bestest in all the land on a given day? Why the push for a system that makes losers out of everyone but one team? I think the proper place to determine a champion is in a drunken argument in a sports bar.

Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - pauloalto - 12-15-2015

(12-15-2015, 05:44 PM)82 Card link Wrote:Why does it matter who is the bestest in all the land on a given day? Why the push for a system that makes losers out of everyone but one team? I think the proper place to determine a champion is in a drunken argument in a sports bar.

And what will the sports talking heads on TV and radio have argue about?

Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - stupac2 - 12-15-2015

(12-15-2015, 05:04 PM)Boston Card link Wrote:[quote author=stupac2 link=topic=12576.msg148485#msg148485 date=1450223731]
FCS has a 24-team tournament! But no, it's just impossible for college football to have a reasonable playoff!

Yeah, and you know, for decades attendance and television of of those FCS playoff games far exceeded that for the FBS Bowl Games.

BC
[/quote]

Because it's a lower level of competition. How many people were watching our soccer final? I didn't even know it was happening until it was over. This is an incredibly shoddy argument.

Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - jacketree - 12-15-2015

And bowls are sacrosanct why exactly?

Are people worried about losing a second round playoff game with three losses to cap off an excellent season instead of walking away from the Rose Bowl with two or three losses feeling great? Or not great?

Frankly I'd be totally down with Stanford heading into the national playoff as Pac-12 champion this year.  But fine, y'all get drunk in bars and argue till the cows come home.

The bowl "system" is a sham.  Tons of half-empty stadiums feeding money to ESPN.  The total number of post-season games could stay the same.  Just pull 15 of them into a meaningful playoff. The rest can remain. Or not.  But I'm sure there will always be room for the ShamWow Bowl. To be held in some vague city near you.

Did all those final four seasons (way more often for the women than the men of course) suck because titles weren't won at the end? Was Stanford basketball a "loser" all those years?

I love how we are destroying a soccer thread with football talk....



Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - BostonCard - 12-15-2015

(12-15-2015, 06:29 PM)stupac2 link Wrote:[quote author=Boston Card link=topic=12576.msg148487#msg148487 date=1450224254]
[quote author=stupac2 link=topic=12576.msg148485#msg148485 date=1450223731]
FCS has a 24-team tournament! But no, it's just impossible for college football to have a reasonable playoff!

Yeah, and you know, for decades attendance and television of of those FCS playoff games far exceeded that for the FBS Bowl Games.

BC
[/quote]

Because it's a lower level of competition. How many people were watching our soccer final? I didn't even know it was happening until it was over. This is an incredibly shoddy argument.
[/quote]

It's no shabbier than saying that FBS should go to a 24-team championship because FCS does it.

BC


Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - stupac2 - 12-15-2015

(12-15-2015, 09:44 PM)Boston Card link Wrote:It's no shabbier than saying that FBS should go to a 24-team championship because FCS does it.

Because I definitely said that. What I actually have been saying is that the FCS playing that big of a tournament shoots holes through most of the arguments about it being untenable for FBS to go to 8 games, and no one has yet to come up with anything at all to counter that.

Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - BostonCard - 12-15-2015

(12-15-2015, 06:30 PM)jacketree link Wrote:And bowls are sacrosanct why exactly?

Are people worried about losing a second round playoff game with three losses to cap off an excellent season instead of walking away from the Rose Bowl with two or three losses feeling great? Or not great?

Frankly I'd be totally down with Stanford heading into the national playoff as Pac-12 champion this year.  But fine, y'all get drunk in bars and argue till the cows come home.

The bowl "system" is a sham.  Tons of half-empty stadiums feeding money to ESPN.  The total number of post-season games could stay the same.  Just pull 15 of them into a meaningful playoff. The rest can remain. Or not.  But I'm sure there will always be room for the ShamWow Bowl. To be held in some vague city near you.

Did all those final four seasons (way more often for the women than the men of course) suck because titles weren't won at the end? Was Stanford basketball a "loser" all those years?

I love how we are destroying a soccer thread with football talk....

Were it up to me, we would go back to the old pre-BCS conference-aligned bowl system and have a +1 (one national championship game a week after the bowl games).  I would also get rid of about 25 - 50% of the bowl games, for the reasons you mentioned (tons of half-empty stadiums feeding money to ESPN [actually, feeding money to the bowl organizing committees because schools have to guarantee ticket sales]).

Sporting events are meant to be fun for the fans.  I certainly enjoy the NCAA basketball tournament, but I don't enjoy it more than going to the Rose Bowl.  And, for all the greatness of making the final four the one year the MBB team did it, we have at least three years where we were upset in the second round as a #1 seed by some super-talented number 8 seed that underperformed all year and then just turned it on for the tournament.  Yeah, upsets are one of the things that make the NCAA tournament as a whole so much fun, until they happen to your team.  The best part of the NCAA basketball tournament is seeing Duke choke and following brackets.  The football product at the top 10 bowls stands on its own, without the need to add low-level gambling to make it more interesting.

I have never been to a Final Four in person.  I went to a sweet sixteen once, when it was in San Jose, and I've been to women's tournament games when they were at Maples.  On the other hand, I've been to the Seattle Bowl (yuck), two Rose Bowls, and the Foster Farms bowl.  With the exception of the Seattle Bowl, which was cold and rainy, in a baseball stadium, resulted in a loss, and was the last game before Willingham left to Notre Dame, win or lose the other bowl games were great experiences (yes, even the loss to MSU at the Rose Bowl).  The sweet sixteen was fun despite the loss, but was not as fun an experience as the Foster Farms bowl (-20 wind chill and all).

The bottom line is I don't think that a playoffs or an expanded playoffs is any better or worse than the old bowl system; it's just different.  I don't have an unwavering need for every conference champion to be included in a playoff, or for the championship to be decided "on the field" (and remember, every year the basketball tournament committee generates tons of controversy over who it leaves out, who it seeds how, and who gets sent to the other side of the country to play.

I like watching Stanford football because I like watching Stanford football, not because of a chance that it could make it into the college football playoff if X, Y, and Z happens.  The speculation is fun, but it's not the biggest thing in the world.  I like going to bowl games/playoffs/conference championships when I can, but I am much more likely to want to go to a Rose Bowl than go to a national semifinal (let alone a quarterfinal).  Judging by prices on the secondary market, I'm not the only one.  Who would have guessed that a Rose Bowl featuring Stanford and Iowa (not even its conference champion) would be more expensive on stubhub than a playoff game featuring Alabama and Michigan State. Now add a playoff round to that, and feature Houston or whatever group of 5 team is invited to get them to agree.

As much as I like football and generally think more is better, there is something to be said for the fact that there are only 12 games in the season, and at most an extra couple games.  It gets you to appreciate each and every game more, both as a fan, and as a team (every game is more important).  I am resigned to the fact that we are never going back to the pre-playoff system; there's just too much money in the game for networks, athletic departments, and universities to turn down.  I sadly think it is likely that at some point those same forces will lead to an eight team playoff, and it won't ruin football.  But it will not necessarily make it better, and it will change it.

Two last quick thoughts... 1) Given what we know about the neurological problems that football causes, it seems a bit callous to be agitating for more football games.  2) Given concerns about whether student athletes are truly students and whether the whole concept of amateurism is a sham, since everything else in football appears driven by money rather than the well-being of the athlete, I'd like to see a few examples where decisions are driven by something other than TV contracts.  I love being able to watch every away game on the Pac-12 network, and have mentioned as much, and for the most part I don't mind going to late home kickoff games, our coaches have noted that the weeknight and late games are detrimental to the student athletes, who are also juggling papers, problem sets, and exams.  I could live with not being able to watch some games if I knew it benefitted the athletes.

BC

Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - Mick - 12-15-2015

(12-15-2015, 10:24 PM)Boston Card link Wrote:Two last quick thoughts... 1) Given what we know about the neurological problems that football causes, it seems a bit callous to be agitating for more football games.

Just saw the HBO specialist on the physician who examined CTE in Mike Webster and Terry Long (among others).  Fascinating.  Now I don't have to see the Will Smith movie.

But what I find curious...does it really surprise anyone?  If you've played high school football you know how damaging it can be.  I can't imagine it at the D1 and professional levels.

Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - Leftcoast - 12-16-2015

Look more closely At the dates from the first posts.  This thread, like Lazarus, has risen from the dead. 

Given it's extreme shift in personality and subject matter maybe I should have used a Walking Dead analogy.

Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - Papa John - 12-16-2015

Is there an award for "driftiest" thread of the year?

Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - OutsiderFan - 12-16-2015

Bowl games are just legalized racketeering.

1. A non-profit organization
2. Pays its executive in many cases, more than $500k/year
3. Teams who play in them are contractually obligated to buy minimum ticket allotments
4. Teams who play in them must stay in contracted hotels
5. Claim most of the money they raise goes to charity (but what about those $500k/yr executive salaries?)

I used to work for a guy who worked at the Fiesta Bowl.  It was absolutely a racket based on what I learned about bowl games from him.





Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - Mick - 12-16-2015

(12-16-2015, 02:24 PM)OutsiderFan link Wrote:Bowl games are just legalized racketeering.

1. A non-profit organization
2. Pays its executive in many cases, more than $500k/year
3. Teams who play in them are contractually obligated to buy minimum ticket allotments
4. Teams who play in them must stay in contracted hotels
5. Claim most of the money they raise goes to charity (but what about those $500k/yr executive salaries?)

I used to work for a guy who worked at the Fiesta Bowl.  It was absolutely a racket based on what I learned about bowl games from him.

Hence the need for 40 of them.

Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - Rally - 12-16-2015

(12-16-2015, 02:24 PM)OutsiderFan link Wrote:Bowl games are just legalized racketeering.

1. A non-profit organization
2. Pays its executive in many cases, more than $500k/year
3. Teams who play in them are contractually obligated to buy minimum ticket allotments
4. Teams who play in them must stay in contracted hotels
5. Claim most of the money they raise goes to charity (but what about those $500k/yr executive salaries?)

I used to work for a guy who worked at the Fiesta Bowl.  It was absolutely a racket based on what I learned about bowl games from him.

You're probably right but I don't know about the Rose Bowl.  My late father in law was on the committee for many years and, had he lived, would have been President in a year or two.  All he ever got was four tickets and four VIP bleacher tickets at the start of the parade.joe http://thecardboard.org/board/index.php?topic=14084.msg109438;topicseen#newas the kind of guy who, if he recieved too much change, would drive back to the store, if he had already left, to make it right.

Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - 82lsju - 12-16-2015

the form 990 for the Tournament of Roses Association is here (year ending April 30, 2014 so it includes the BCS championship game that year so the grant numbers below are higher than normal)

http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/951/951725190/951725190_201404_990.pdf

the bulk of the "grants" in the filing are (see page 22 of the PDF)

$18m to the Big Ten
$18m to the Pac 12
$50m to the NCAA FBS conferences and ND

the rest of the grants are ~$65k

the highest paid people were (page 25 of the PDF)

exec director $365k
CFO $231k
CAO $234k
director of operations $174k

Re: Men's Soccer starts regular season vs. Gauchos - jacketree - 12-16-2015

[Image: snowdrift2.gif]
The Value of Pasadena in January

You all raise some good points in defense of the better bowls. I'd still love to see an expansion to include major conference champions.


I attended one Final Four in person.  The Michael Jordan v. Georgetown final in 1982. New Orleans.  It was insane.  The game was pretty good too.