NWLB wrote:
Hamm: I do recall lots of teams thinking they should have been seeded differently in the NCAA tournament, even though they had no realistic chance in the world of actually winning.
They may complain about a seeding or something, but they still control their destiny and they all realize that. If you want to win at some point you're going to have to beat the other good teams. May as well get to it right away.
Plus I don't really care what Boise State thinks, they, along with even Utah, aren't the best team in the country, and this is not the NFL. The NCAA isn't a league of 32 teams, it is an administrative body that over sees 117 1A football programs.
I fail to see the point in what you're saying. They oversee 300+ basketball programs, but manage a tournament. I'd rather have actual games to base my opinion of Boise & Utah on. I don't think they're the best, but you could sure as hell make a case for Auburn. Either way they should get the shot when they finish undefeated.
I don't care about the logic or lack of it in terms of having a football tournament. No system can be crafted that won't either screw the teams that would otherwise get a chance to be in a bowl, or send a small number to teams to a pointless display they can't hope to win.
Do you think the small schools in the hoops tourney feel its a "pointless display they can't hope to win"???? C'mon man. These kids have competitive fire, and they all believe they can win every game. If they didn't have that fire they wouldn't have made it that far in the first place. I tell ya what winning one of these games in the first round would mean about a million times more to me than winning some meaningless 3rd rate bowl. If someone told me that we were having a playoff and BG would go 4 times in a 10 year period and win one game in that time period I'd trade 10 bowl wins for that in a heartbeat. Why? Because that one win actually MEANS something. Like it or not bowls are a more "pointless display" than any tournament game would ever be. The Bowls exist for the sole purpose of making money.
And simply making the point that "we'll never know" doesn't appeal to me. I don't make this arguement because of what I think is the most cold and logical theory. I am saying that people are hiding behind a load of BS when they try to sell a football tournament as the cure-all for the college game.
I never heard anyone claim it was a cure-all. Certainly there are flaws in any plan. However, if you wish to have a national champion, which I believe myself and countless others do, it is a helluva lot better than what we have currently.
What we have isn't simply pretty darn good, and getting better, it is great. What a bunch of radio personalities and TV talking heads would foist on us is more destructive than anything that would be gained. This isn't like the human race building cars or whatever that was supposed to illustrate. You can't go back from this if you try it. What you would destroy doesn't grow back.
My car example illustrates your profoundly flawed logic. You clearly stated that what we have isn't perfect, but we shouldn't try to improve upon it until we develop perfection. That's madness, if you ask me. Back to the subject at hand, the BCS is not getting better, its doing its damnedest to continue to lock out the smaller conferences, and it still fails in its goal of creating a consensus #1-vs-#2. On top of that, and possibly worse yet, it has destroyed what we did have, traditional conference matchups in the post season. The Big10 fan in me still misses the traditional Rose Bowl. That tradition has been lost in the name of a methodology that still stinks.
I care about the game BGSU is in, if we won a conference title, etc.
Forgive me for believing that winning a conference title should give us the opportunity to pursue a further title. We win the MAC now and we get to go compete in one of your great "pointless exhibitions". Yippee.
I'm as entitled to the way things are, as are the programs, as are the majority of fans. The ones pushing for a tournament are tossing half-baked ideas that do nothing more to my world than crush it because they just have to have the latest thing in sports-radio conversation starters.
It has nothing to do with wanting what sports radio jockeys want; I couldn't care less. It comes from the competitive nature of sports, and wanting a chance to become champion. I find it laughable that only the top 20% of a given group of teams have any hopes of becoming the champion.
You talk about the majority of fans, but I think you are in the vast minority when it comes to college football fans. I have had similar conversations with MANY football fans, and very few dispute the fact that a playoff is preferable over the current situation. Not all feel as strongly as I about having 16 teams and allowing all conference champs an automatic bid, but certainly most seem to be in some favor of a playoff.
