(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
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