All-American solves the BCS problem

[Color Me Badd Fan]

and?

Ohio State and Michigan fans (fanbases that travel well) can afford to to fly out with a month's notice to the Rose Bowl. That doesn't mean they can subsequently afford to fly to 2 other bowls with less than a week's notice. The further along in the playoff, the more critical it is to fill those 90K seats per venue. And the less likely it becomes because the alumni base is now all tapped out of funds.

You couldn't make it out to one game in Dallas, with months of advance notice, unless someone paid for everything for you. You aren't being practical.

At most, the final two rounds could be neutral, but I could see the reality of only having the final round be neutral.

A possible middle solution is forcing the home teams to create a bigger ticket alotment for the visiting team's fans. The visiting team could have a certain amount of time to buy the tickets before they'd go on sale back to the home team's fans.

I think you'd also have to only have 3 rounds and possibly think about spacing the games 2 weeks apart.

[TripletDaddy]

At most, the final two rounds could be neutral, but I could see the reality of only having the final round be neutral.

A possible middle solution is forcing the home teams to create a bigger ticket alotment for the visiting team's fans. The visiting team could have a certain amount of time to buy the tickets before they'd go on sale back to the home team's fans.

I think you'd also have to only have 3 rounds and possibly think about spacing the games 2 weeks apart.

It is no wonder the BCS won't change. Why would they want it to change? These proposed solutions are loaded with all sorts of impractical assumptions. As is, the BCS schools keep making nice cash. Why go through the headache of changing it?

I get a kick out of BYU fans. They gripe when they have to fly all the way to the Liberty Bowl once. They didn't even purchase our allotment of BLUE RIVERSHOOTouT tickets because the price was $100 and because we were likely going to lose the game. Now all of a sudden everyone has the time and money to fly to 3 different locations around the entire country within a few week's time. Magic happens, I guess.

[Surfah]

I'd prefer a 16 team playoff. But as a compromise I'd take is an 8 team playoff using the BCS poll to seed accordingly. 1-6 get in automatically. 7-10 play each other for the 7th and 8th seeds. 7 vs 10 and 8 vs 9. That way the top 10 teams in the country get a chance to play for it all.

[beefytee]

no, it is not the same scenario. basketball arenas hold around 15-20K. BCS football venues hold 80-100K.

They had close to 73,000 at the championship game this year.

http://scores.espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=294000063

And I don't know where you came up with 80-100K. The superbowl has been held in all the venues, and the only one that is greater than 80K is the Rose Bowl.

http://football.about.com/od/histo2/a/SBattendance.htm

[All-American]

They had close to 73,000 at the championship game this year.

http://scores.espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=294000063

And I don't know where you came up with 80-100K. The superbowl has been held in all the venues, and the only one that is greater than 80K is the Rose Bowl.

http://football.about.com/od/histo2/a/SBattendance.htm

They played in the Detroit Lion's football stadium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stadiums_by_capacity

Rose Bowl: 91,000
Sugar Bowl: 72,000
Fiesta Bowl: 63,000
Orange Bow: 74,000

[TripletDaddy]

They had close to 73,000 at the championship game this year.

http://scores.espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=294000063

And I don't know where you came up with 80-100K. The superbowl has been held in all the venues, and the only one that is greater than 80K is the Rose Bowl.

http://football.about.com/od/histo2/a/SBattendance.htm

The Final 4 tickets are split amongst 4 schools. If your team loses in the Final Four, you still have a ticket to the championship game. So they didn't sell 73K to the final game. They sold them as a package. The other half showed up because they had already purchased the ticket. Early rounds of the NCAA are even worse. One ticket gets you into 8 games!

I suppose if you presell all BCS bowls the same way, attendance might go up. Buy a Rose Bowl ticket, get to attend 3 other BCS bowl games with the same ticket.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

It is no wonder the BCS won't change. Why would they want it to change? These proposed solutions are loaded with all sorts of impractical assumptions. As is, the BCS schools keep making nice cash. Why go through the headache of changing it?

I get a kick out of BYU fans. They gripe when they have to fly all the way to the Liberty Bowl once. They didn't even purchase our allotment of BLUE RIVERSHOOTouT tickets because the price was $100 and because we were likely going to lose the game. Now all of a sudden everyone has the time and money to fly to 3 different locations around the entire country within a few week's time. Magic happens, I guess.

It's not difficult to see that a game between #1 seeded Florida and #16 seeded North Texas from the Sunbelt playing in Arizona would be a disaster. I just don't want to see every conference champ go to a playoff, it just wouldn't work. The Florida fans wouldn't want to travel to see a blowout and the North Texas fans (all 500 of them) wouldn't want to go for the same reason.

The ACC championship game has been a debacle thus far. The prime reason is because the game usually doesn't have much meaning. You're not going to sell 60-70k tickets to a game that will decide who gets to go to some NIT bowl. If the national title is on the line, then it does matter. The Big 12 and SEC title games have been huge successes for this reason- usually national title implications are on the line. Most of the time, the teams only have one week between the final game and the championship game. But, it's also a regional game and someone can realistically travel the night before to the game. If they went to that kind of "neutral site" system, they would, at best, have situations like that between Oklahoma and BYU where 90% of the crowd is for one team and it creates a de facto home team. Might as well just give the higher seeds home games.

But I think the big conferences (SEC, Big 12, Pac 10, Big 10) are leaving money on the table by not having a playoff. I watched the Sugar Bowl last year because of the Utah angle. I then watched the Rose Bowl and the national title game. I didn't care much about the Fiesta Bowl and definitely didn't bother with the Orange Bowl. But let's face it, basically all of these bowls are NIT games except for the national title game. In some years you still have the split national title possibility (2003), but that doesn't come along very often.

The Orange Bowl on Fox drew a 6.1 rating last year. The Monday Night Football game between the Chargers and Raiders (this was not supposed to be a good game) was 8.9.

[beefytee]

The Final 4 tickets are split amongst 4 schools. If your team loses in the Final Four, you still have a ticket to the championship game. So they didn't sell 73K to the final game. They sold them as a package. The other half showed up because they had already purchased the ticket. Early rounds of the NCAA are even worse. One ticket gets you into 8 games!

I suppose if you presell all BCS bowls the same way, attendance might go up. Buy a Rose Bowl ticket, get to attend 3 other BCS bowl games with the same ticket.

If it is modeled like the DIV 1AA (and the NFL) where the higher ranked team plays home until the the championship game, I don't see a problem getting people to the championship game.

It wouldn't be as hot a ticket as the Superbowl, but I don't think it would be much behind.

[TripletDaddy]

If it is modeled like the DIV 1AA (and the NFL) where the higher ranked team plays home until the the championship game, I don't see a problem getting people to the championship game.

It wouldn't be as hot a ticket as the Superbowl, but I don't think it would be much behind.

Totally agreed. However, this goes back to my assertion that these are impractical solutions. At best, this scenario literally eliminates the existence of every single bowl but the 4 BCS venues. While I personally have no problem bidding farewell to the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl, the local college presidents of the BCS schools will not go for it.

I used to buy into the comparisons to D2 playoffs, but those comparisons always ignore 1 huge factor: D2 schools don't have to deal with unwinding 20+ bowls that are currently in existence and locked into lucrative sponsorship deals.

The playoff idea is a fun idea in concept, but not very practical. I think the most likely scenario is the current crappy format, but instead of 4 stupid bowls and 1 championship bowl, we have an Elite 8 format, with 3 total playoff games. And then hope that the fanbases of each school have the coin to travel to multiple games. So, in other words, nothing is going to change.

[All-American]

Totally agreed. However, this goes back to my assertion that these are impractical solutions. At best, this scenario literally eliminates the existence of every single bowl but the 4 BCS venues. While I personally have no problem bidding farewell to the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl, the local college presidents of the BCS schools will not go for it.

I used to buy into the comparisons to D2 playoffs, but those comparisons always ignore 1 huge factor: D2 schools don't have to deal with unwinding 20+ bowls that are currently in existence and locked into lucrative sponsorship deals.

The playoff idea is a fun idea in concept, but not very practical. I think the most likely scenario is the current crappy format, but instead of 4 stupid bowls and 1 championship bowl, we have an Elite 8 format, with 3 total playoff games. And then hope that the fanbases of each school have the coin to travel to multiple games. So, in other words, nothing is going to change.

Why would it eliminate the bowls?

[TripletDaddy]

Why would it eliminate the bowls?

What would be the purpose of the other bowls once there is a playoff? If the first rounds are played at the home stadium, then the latter championship rounds would be played in the major BCS venues. Which games are being played at the Outback bowl or Copper Bowl?

[OrangeUte]

my opinion... keep the bcs bowls, but add the cotton bowl as a fifth, and go back to rotating the national title game between the 5 bcs games. there should only be 20-25 bowl games, and a team should need at least 7 wins in a 12 game season or 6 wins in an 11 game season to qualify for a bowl game. the conferences can sort out who will play in the bowl games, as it is done now.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Totally agreed. However, this goes back to my assertion that these are impractical solutions. At best, this scenario literally eliminates the existence of every single bowl but the 4 BCS venues. While I personally have no problem bidding farewell to the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl, the local college presidents of the BCS schools will not go for it.

I used to buy into the comparisons to D2 playoffs, but those comparisons always ignore 1 huge factor: D2 schools don't have to deal with unwinding 20+ bowls that are currently in existence and locked into lucrative sponsorship deals.

The playoff idea is a fun idea in concept, but not very practical. I think the most likely scenario is the current crappy format, but instead of 4 stupid bowls and 1 championship bowl, we have an Elite 8 format, with 3 total playoff games. And then hope that the fanbases of each school have the coin to travel to multiple games. So, in other words, nothing is going to change.

If the bowls were going to be involved with an eight team playoff, you'd have to have 6 bowls involved and then the national title game. The six bowls would be the current BCS bowls plus the Cotton and either the Holiday or some other Florida bowl- for the sake of argument I'll include the Capital One Bowl because San Diego is too far away for all of the teams from the SEC, ACC and Big 10. You'd have to line the bowls up so a higher seeded team would be in relative proximity (within 800 miles or so) of the site. Let's say the first four games are the Cotton, Rose, Capital One and Sugar Bowl. Right now, you'd have matchups (from the current Coach's poll) as following:

Cotton: Texas vs. LSU (Texas)
Capital One: Florida vs. Cal (Florida)
Rose: USC vs. Ole Miss (USC wins)
Sugar: Alabama vs. Penn State (Alabama)

Those games would all sell out.

Second Round:

Fiesta: Texas vs. USC

Orange: Florida vs. Alabama

This scenario kind of sucks for Texas, the higher seed, because the Fiesta is closer to USC's fanbase than Texas's base, but it's not like the trip from Dallas/Houston/Austin to Phoenix is really that bad. But again, both games would sell out. I think as a concession to a team like Texas, they should originally get a bigger alotment of tickets and if they could sell them, they'd still have some edge on the number of fans (and I think Texas would sell them).

This wouldn't hurt the other bowls because they're already crappy NIT football games anyway. This would, though, make more bowls relevant.

[All-American]

What would be the purpose of the other bowls once there is a playoff? If the first rounds are played at the home stadium, then the latter championship rounds would be played in the major BCS venues. Which games are being played at the Outback bowl or Copper Bowl?

What is the purpose of the other bowls without a playoff? For the twelve teams not involved in the playoff, nothing changes.

[beefytee]

Totally agreed. However, this goes back to my assertion that these are impractical solutions. At best, this scenario literally eliminates the existence of every single bowl but the 4 BCS venues. While I personally have no problem bidding farewell to the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl, the local college presidents of the BCS schools will not go for it.

I used to buy into the comparisons to D2 playoffs, but those comparisons always ignore 1 huge factor: D2 schools don't have to deal with unwinding 20+ bowls that are currently in existence and locked into lucrative sponsorship deals.

The playoff idea is a fun idea in concept, but not very practical. I think the most likely scenario is the current crappy format, but instead of 4 stupid bowls and 1 championship bowl, we have an Elite 8 format, with 3 total playoff games. And then hope that the fanbases of each school have the coin to travel to multiple games. So, in other words, nothing is going to change.

I'm probably more in your court on this than it appears by my dissension.

I just don't see attendance or financial allocations being the issue that can't be solved. It is trying to displace those institution that have an interest in things not changing, namely the bowl games.

I imagine it will take government intervention for things to change drastically.