Tuesday, November 22, 2011

College Football Playoffs Please...

Good evening.  I'd like to apologize to those of you who follow this blog regularly.  My posts are usually up much earlier in the day, but I worked a rare day shift today, and that lasted longer than planned.  It seems just a little ironic that the need for a college playoff system was my planned topic for today, given the crazy happenings of this past weekend.  With the losses by Oklahoma State, Oregon, and Oklahoma, the BCS standings just became even sillier.  My favorite team to pick on, Boise State, is now ranked ahead of both Oklahoma and Oregon.  For those of you who would tell me that the Sooners and Ducks both have two losses while the Broncos have one, I would respond by asking why Boise is ranked ahead of the unbeaten Houston Cougars.  While I am sure that the one thing that all of us would agree on is that no system would be perfect, I would much rather have an eight-team playoff at the end of the season than the popularity pageant that we are currently stuck with.  If we did have eight teams playing for the championship at the end of the season, I am pretty sure that the new debate would be focused around someone's opinion that the 9th-ranked team should be in the playoffs, or the 10th-ranked team, etc...  I personally think that is a much better situation to have to deal with than what we are stuck with now.  Suppose that LSU does lose before their bowl game - HOW do you justify picking ANY of the teams as being #1 or #2?  The only undefeated team would be Houston - do they deserve going over everybody else?  If not, which two teams do deserve to go.  If so, then you have the Boise argument - the Cougars just don't play a very tough schedule.  If we drew the line between number 8 and number 9, at least the national champion would have to win 3 playoff games to earn that title.  I think that the current system is laughable, so bad in fact, that people in the future will probably look back on it after it has changed someday, and they'll be saying, "how could they ever have decided the champion like that?"  Believe it or not, it actually used to be worse than it is now before the BCS (for you younger readers).  There was no championship game, but there were two polls.  If the two polls didn't agree as to who the number 1 team was, we had co-national champions.  I am pretty much rooting for both LSU and Houston to lose now.  I think that the only hope for change is for such a big mess to exist at the end of a season that the presidents of the universities will be forced to change the current system.  If at least LSU loses, then I believe that there will be a lot of heated debate at the end of this season, and I am dying to see how the proponents of the BCS try to justify the current system that is in place.  I am going to give the blog the day off for Thanksgiving on Thursday, but I will be back on Friday with my weekly football predictions.  I hope that you have a tremendous holiday and enjoy all of the football games that go with it! 





     

4 comments:

  1. NCAA FCS Championship second round playoff game between No. 8 Towson University! Congrats to the Towson Tigers on the great turn around and a playoff birth. FYI my old boss and good friends son Derrick Joseph Jr. had the first kickoff return in 15 years for Towson two weeks ago of 93 yards for a TD!

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  2. I remember when I used to be able to run 93 yards... :) Happy Thanksgiving & Happy Birthday!

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  3. I like Stewart Mandel's playoff plan. An 8-team playoff seems, to me anyway, a bit much ;)

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  4. I need to look up Stewart's plan. I'm pretty sure that if they went to 4 or fewer teams, I would get sick of #5, #6, etc... crying and whining. If you can't get in the top EIGHT teams without dispute, I won't have much empathy for the complaining... :)

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