There has been a lot of talk surrounding college football about formulating a playoff system to replace the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Let's face it, the way the business is done now is strictly business.
Mark Nesbitt, my colleague and fellow sports reporter here at The Monroe Times, talked with both Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez and current Badgers football coach Bret Bielema about the BCS and if a change should be made. Alvarez said no - the universities get such a pay raise now if they make the BCS, that switching the scheme would not hold the dollars. Bielema said there should be a four-team system.
Last week, the NCAA's top decision makers declined a proposal put in by the Mountain West Conference that would have put eight teams into a playoff.
My view is simple.
- Twelve teams, just like the NFL. With 12 teams, ranked on the basis of the BCS system, the top four teams would receive first round bye's. Then, the teams ranked 5 to 12 get bracketed into two divisions.
- No BCS conference would be guaranteed a spot in the playoffs, only the top 12 teams. This allows for a better chance at a school from a smaller conference, like Boise State, Utah and Hawaii to make the playoffs after an outstanding year.
- Strength of schedule holds more ground during the regular season, therefore forcing schools like Wisconsin, Texas, Missouri and other BCS schools to end the scheduling of "cupcake" games. Drawing in better competition allows for advertising dollars to grow anyway.
- The BCS playoffs will start the third week of December. Two games on Thursday, two on Friday for the first two rounds (staying away from the NFL on the weekends). Both games are played in the late afternoon and at night for best dollars numbers on television. In the third round, both games will be played on Friday. The championship will be played 10 days later on a Monday. This will draw national exposure and hoopla to the playoffs, along with the extra few days of breakdown.
The season will also end pretty much on the same day as usual. Also, each BCS team will be guaranteed at least two bowl games. That way, the four teams who lose in the first round still have a shot at another bowl game, like maybe the Capital One Bowl. Most bowls would likely save a spot for a BCS team because of their national prominence, rather than fill the void right away.
Also, the main-event bowls, Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, etc., will go back to their roots. For those who grew up watching the No. 1 team in the Big Ten play the No. 1 team in the Pac-10, welcome back to the old days. The Rose Bowl can take the top team from each conference based on how the first round of the BCS plays out. If Wisconsin and USC both make the playoffs and lose in the first round, wouldn't that be a great game to watch in the Rose Bowl as well?
That means that...
- Each BCS playoff game becomes its own sponsored bowl game. Right now, if sponsors are dropping millions of dollars to both teams for one bowl game, why not negotiate each BCS game to a slightly fewer millions of dollars per game (as a discount), and allow other name brands to go at it. With each team guaranteed to take a large slice from each game - and conferences, too, as Alvarez put it - playing in two games would bring in that much more.
Where's the money complaint, Barry? Why wouldn't sponsors want to dish out to a BCS playoff system? More people watch football than any other sport, in fact, arguably more people watch college football than any other sport. Television ratings may not say as much when compared to the NFL, but remember, the NFL has 16 games every week. College football has over 60. Many more people are attending college football games than the NFL could every dream of.
- With a BCS playoff, bowl games like the GMAC, Chick-Fil-A and the Humanitarian Bowl continue to stay as "off" bowl games. If anything, those ratings go up with college fever already hyped up due to the playoffs.
My solution is not 100 percent perfect, but it seems logical and doable.
With a month or more break between games for most top schools, the play is sometimes a letdown. The mood is a letdown. All of a sudden the games catch up to you, or you are worn out and fully into NFL mode. This kind of playoff series allows for likely every major conference and a few mid-majors gain national prominence for at least a week every December.
The BCS Championship won't have the terrible computer complaints as they usually do, and there won't be a worry of a team getting left out of the limelight when three teams have only one loss.
And remember this, the television agreement between CBS and the NCAA ends in 2010 - the perfect time to add a college football bargaining chip for even more dollars. You following me Miles Brand?
Mark Nesbitt, my colleague and fellow sports reporter here at The Monroe Times, talked with both Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez and current Badgers football coach Bret Bielema about the BCS and if a change should be made. Alvarez said no - the universities get such a pay raise now if they make the BCS, that switching the scheme would not hold the dollars. Bielema said there should be a four-team system.
Last week, the NCAA's top decision makers declined a proposal put in by the Mountain West Conference that would have put eight teams into a playoff.
My view is simple.
- Twelve teams, just like the NFL. With 12 teams, ranked on the basis of the BCS system, the top four teams would receive first round bye's. Then, the teams ranked 5 to 12 get bracketed into two divisions.
- No BCS conference would be guaranteed a spot in the playoffs, only the top 12 teams. This allows for a better chance at a school from a smaller conference, like Boise State, Utah and Hawaii to make the playoffs after an outstanding year.
- Strength of schedule holds more ground during the regular season, therefore forcing schools like Wisconsin, Texas, Missouri and other BCS schools to end the scheduling of "cupcake" games. Drawing in better competition allows for advertising dollars to grow anyway.
- The BCS playoffs will start the third week of December. Two games on Thursday, two on Friday for the first two rounds (staying away from the NFL on the weekends). Both games are played in the late afternoon and at night for best dollars numbers on television. In the third round, both games will be played on Friday. The championship will be played 10 days later on a Monday. This will draw national exposure and hoopla to the playoffs, along with the extra few days of breakdown.
The season will also end pretty much on the same day as usual. Also, each BCS team will be guaranteed at least two bowl games. That way, the four teams who lose in the first round still have a shot at another bowl game, like maybe the Capital One Bowl. Most bowls would likely save a spot for a BCS team because of their national prominence, rather than fill the void right away.
Also, the main-event bowls, Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, etc., will go back to their roots. For those who grew up watching the No. 1 team in the Big Ten play the No. 1 team in the Pac-10, welcome back to the old days. The Rose Bowl can take the top team from each conference based on how the first round of the BCS plays out. If Wisconsin and USC both make the playoffs and lose in the first round, wouldn't that be a great game to watch in the Rose Bowl as well?
That means that...
- Each BCS playoff game becomes its own sponsored bowl game. Right now, if sponsors are dropping millions of dollars to both teams for one bowl game, why not negotiate each BCS game to a slightly fewer millions of dollars per game (as a discount), and allow other name brands to go at it. With each team guaranteed to take a large slice from each game - and conferences, too, as Alvarez put it - playing in two games would bring in that much more.
Where's the money complaint, Barry? Why wouldn't sponsors want to dish out to a BCS playoff system? More people watch football than any other sport, in fact, arguably more people watch college football than any other sport. Television ratings may not say as much when compared to the NFL, but remember, the NFL has 16 games every week. College football has over 60. Many more people are attending college football games than the NFL could every dream of.
- With a BCS playoff, bowl games like the GMAC, Chick-Fil-A and the Humanitarian Bowl continue to stay as "off" bowl games. If anything, those ratings go up with college fever already hyped up due to the playoffs.
My solution is not 100 percent perfect, but it seems logical and doable.
With a month or more break between games for most top schools, the play is sometimes a letdown. The mood is a letdown. All of a sudden the games catch up to you, or you are worn out and fully into NFL mode. This kind of playoff series allows for likely every major conference and a few mid-majors gain national prominence for at least a week every December.
The BCS Championship won't have the terrible computer complaints as they usually do, and there won't be a worry of a team getting left out of the limelight when three teams have only one loss.
And remember this, the television agreement between CBS and the NCAA ends in 2010 - the perfect time to add a college football bargaining chip for even more dollars. You following me Miles Brand?
