It's complete horse shat that teams like Georgia, LSU, South Carolina, and TAMU will be left out of BCS bowl games because of that ridiculous two team rule. Meanwhile, Northern Illinois is playing in the Orange bowl.
at it\ Of course it is, if you expect the BCS to be something that it isn't. Any system is going to have parts that people don't like; there isn't anything inherently fair about the old bowl system, or a playoff, or any other wizgidget that somebody will invent. The BCS rewards conference champions and includes mid-majors because the people on ESPN said it had to do so. It also pretends to crown a national champion by making the top two teams, as determined by mystery voters, play each other in a method that is certainly more fair than allowing the same mystery voters to name the single top team because the people on ESPN said it had to be so. The BCS system is just as fine, or just as ****ed up, as the old bowl system was and as the hypothetical future playoff will be. It is the expectation of whatever system is used that is separate from reality.
A 12 to 16 team playoff wouldn't have nearly as many drawbacks as this, imo. Teams wouldn't be left out based solely on the number of other good teams in the conference.
That's only one aspect of the problem. What is more important and impressive, the SEC regular season champion or tournament champion in basketball? I would bet that, in the many instances where they are not the same, the regular season identifies the better team far more often than the tourney does. For that matter, how often does the NCAA tournament identify the best team in basketball? Does anybody really want to argue Duke v. Butler? Tournaments do an excellent job of crowning the winner of a tournament, and that is all they do. It does not make the system any more or less valid because it is cleaner.
It gives the best teams a shot to prove it on the field of play. Teams won't be denied a shot at it just because their conference is dominant.
Also, if we are comparing to basketball, how many teams complain about the NCAA tournament and the victor? Teams that win do their part of winning games.
I think an 8-team playoff is as far as I can go. There are never 12+ teams that belong in the national championship conversation. Usually not more than 5 or 6 that are on that level.
4 is perfect. How often do you look at the end-of-season #5 and think they could (or should) be the national champion? Do you really want to see college teams playing 16 games?
Aside from the NC game, that's the only one I'll care to watch past halftime. I may check the Orange bowl out just to see if Fisher screws the pooch. Doeren is not coaching
Hardly ever are there more than three deserving teams. Never more than four. At no point will there be 8. Most years we'll hear people [itch bay]ing about which under serving team should get the four seed. Hell, I still wish we could make the 4 team playoff an optional scenario only to be used for years in which there isn't a clear cut 1 and 2.
It should be noted that before they "improved" the BCS by adding another bowl and more at large bids almost all the matchups a were great.
I'm not sure what you mean. Tournaments do a good job of identifying the team that wins the tournament. That doesn't mean they identify the best team, or even the team most deserving of being crowned "National Champion." I'd argue that football has done at least as good a job of identifying the team most deserving based on the entire season's body of work. The voting system isn't perfect, but it does have the advantage of overriding a bias against the team that lost last. I'm not knocking the basketball playoff. It has worked well for a long time, and it is the method everybody seems comfortable using. But explain to me how a system that might result in the football equivalent of Duke/Butler--say Stanford vs. A&M, as a possibility--is inherently better than what we have, or even what we had pre-BCS.
