<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
Dr. Strange-Bowl, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the BCS<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n This is part 1 of Leaky Pipes’ thoughts on the Bowl system; Part 2 (A Modest Proposal for College Football) will appear tomorrow.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Complaining about the BCS has become so common that even the President-elect can score points by criticizing it—of course, he has a better chance of fixing Social Security, the Middle East, and the Clintons’ marriage than he does of “fixing” college football. <\/span>And that’s fine, because, contrary to popular opinion, there is a lot right with bowl games. <\/span>I love the one-and-done aspect. 32 bowl games gives 32 teams happy endings to their season. <\/span>The Oklahoma-Boise State Fiesta Bowl was one of the best football games ever, or at least the most fun. That’s because when every game is meaningless, it makes every game fun in and of itself. What if Boise State knocked off the Sooners, then went on to lose in the next round? <\/span>Would we still remember the game so fondly? <\/span>Would they still have proposed to their cheerleader girlfriends? <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n For those of you that subscribe to the “Highlander” school of thought—there can only be one—<\/i><\/span>there is actually a playoff system already in place in NCAA football. <\/span>Division I-AA, aka the “NCAA Football Championship<\/span> <\/strong>Subdivision<\/span><\/strong>” (true story), aka the “Long Beach Poly could beat these guys Subdivision” (probably a true story), has a 16-team playoff. <\/span>Each year the championship game is held in the bustling metropolis of Chattanooga, Tennessee (sadly, also a true story); after all, Chattanooga is the fourth largest city in Tennessee. Their playoff is simple enough: 16 teams, seeded 1 through 16, and it just follows the standard NCAA bracket. <\/span>This works well enough: you get a true playoff system, you get enough teams in there to make it interesting, and in fact the bracket even gives home field advantage to the top-seed of each game before the championship game is played at a neutral site (the aforementioned Chattanooga). This whole system works well enough for the “Long Beach Poly could beat these guys” Division.<\/span><\/p>\n However there would be a few downsides to this if it were implemented in Division I-A, aka the “Detroit Lions couldn’t beat these guys” Division, aka the “NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision.” But before we can really address the problems, we need to establish what is good about bowl games and why they are being protected so heavily. <\/span><\/p>\n 1- There is only 1 postseason game per team<\/b><\/span>. <\/span>When Alabama plays in a bowl game, the entire state makes it their family vacation. In January 2002, the Rose Bowl was the National Championship game between the University of Miami and Nebraska. <\/span>I worked at a sports bar near a popular tourist attraction at the time, and for a solid two weeks before the game we were absolutely packed with out-of-town fans. <\/span>These bowl games bring in millions, MILLIONS, to local economies around the country. These local economies won’t give up their bowl games without a fight. <\/span><\/p>\n 2- There is too much money in it for the schools.<\/b><\/span> Making the Orange Bowl earns a school around 15 million—not bad if you’re Ball State, especially since their football program usually loses a few million dollars a year. Even a non-BCS bowl nets a team about a million dollars. <\/span><\/p>\n 3- Essentially, every bowl game is meaningless.<\/b><\/span> <\/span>Yes, the “National Championship” game decides the “National Champion” but even that’s not a certainty (split-titles have still happened in the age of the BCS). <\/span>Ultimately every other game carries no true significance towards determining anything. <\/span>The bowl system lets us sit back and enjoy; no awkward morning afters, no commitment. We enjoy the game for the good time and we move on to the next one—in fact on a good night the next one is already waiting for us.<\/span><\/p>\n So, there are a few problems with the D-1AA scenario: 1) the 16-team system is big enough to over-shadow and eliminate every other bowl but it isn’t big enough to dominate the month like the other NCAA tourney does. <\/span>2) Also you have eliminated a ton of teams from the system and cut out the local economies—except of course for Chattanooga’s. <\/span>3) Furthermore, you have gone from one game that everyone wants to travel to, to potentially having multiple games; would fans and alumni want to travel just for a first-round game? <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Even the teams that would stand to gain from this playoff have to ask where the money will come from. The Bowl title sponsor puts up a lot of that money, but would Chic-Fil-A want to sponsor a first-round game? <\/span>If every BCS team currently makes 15 million for one game, how can a playoff top that? We can’t just give a flat-15m to every school no matter how far they advance, because each round carries costs like travel or coaches’ bonuses, so a flat-payment means schools are losing money if they go deep into the tournament. <\/span>Are we going to give them 15 million per round? Are we going to stagger the amount made by how far you get? If so then a school will now have millions of dollars riding on their team winning (and therefore advancing). I’m not opposed to that idea but we need to be honest that paying per round seems like a University putting money on the game. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Is this system the best we can do? <\/span>I don’t know that it is. <\/span>I think you deserve better, and even if you don’t I still have other ideas that I’ll share in Part 2 tomorrow. <\/span>But frankly I don’t expect a playoff to happen, and you know what? <\/span>That’s fine. Like I said before: I love me some bowl games! Meineke Car Care Bowl? <\/span>You bet I’m watching it. <\/span>If every game is meaningless, then every game is important. <\/span><\/p>\n Last year, 4 of 5 of the BCS games ended with lopsided, double-digit wins. What do they do from there? Georgia beat the crap out of Hawaii but they had no prayer at a real shot at the “Champion.” <\/span>And it’s disappointing that they will never know how far they could have gone. <\/span>But then again, nobody had to worry about the morning after. They can just finish the season on a high note, drop to their knee, and propose to a cheerleader.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We wanted to not be convinced by this article, but Leaky Pipes makes a great argument for keeping the BCS system in part one of this week’s column.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5138"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5138"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}