BCS Changes?

That last part is why people hate Notre Dame. I will never understand how a mid level team can extort millions of dollars from the NCAA and play by their own rules (no conference affiliation, separate TV deal, etc). The further down the road the BCS goes, the more it smells, and there has to be something else behind the scenes to explain the illogicality of the whole system.

*stepping down off soapbox*

The changes are that there will simply be 2 more teams admitted into the BCS, making a 5th game. The "championship" game will just be played a week later, and will not be a plus one scenario.

All division I conferences will be included in the automatic bid process starting in 2008 or 2009. However, there will still only be a finite number of automatic berths, 6 I think. So, in order for the Mountain West, or somebody to get an automatic berth, they have to perform, as a conference, better than one of the big six conferences, over a 4 year period. I think this evaluation takes place each year.

Bottom line is that it is still very unlikely that a non-power conference will get an automatic bid.

Lots of fluff and no substance is all you ever get from these guys.

 

The new deal with Notre Dame is in some ways better for them and some ways worse. Under the current system, they get $14 million when they go to a BCS game, and nothing when they don't. Other schools that go to a BCS game also get $14 million, but that money is divided equally among all of its conference members.

The new deal has Notre Dame getting $4.5 million for going to a BCS game, and $1 million when they do not. The $1 million is roughly equal to the the share that all BCS conference members get every year.

So Notre Dame loses out on the chance of big $14 million paydays, but is guaranteed a steady flow of BCS money.

They also changed the qualification rules--Notre Dame gets an automatic at-large BCS berth if they win 9 games and are in the top 8 of the rankings. Up to now they have needed to be in the top 6 to automatically qualify. Non-BCS teams will automatically get in if they are in the top 12.

The new stuff begins in the 2006 season. This year's season will be the last under the old 4-game format.

The current 6 BCS conferences will have automatic berths for their champions in the 2006 season, with 4 at-large teams filling the rest of the slots. After that season, the set of conferences that get automatic berths will be re-evaluated each year--they can increase or decrease the number of conferences, but there will be a maximum of 7.

 

tea leaves

 

They say they're trying to create a new poll to replace the AP rankings. They will still use a numerical ranking based on the coaches poll, the computers, and whatever new poll they come up with.

 

You know what's funny? College football doesn't want playoffs for academic rasons, but NCAA just passed a resolution allowing a 12-game regular season.

 

The NCAA doesn't care. Baseball players are away from classes for an obscene amount of time.

 

Did you see any explanation about why this was signed? I agree with MHT's posting, the NCAA has been talking out of both sides of the mouth on this issue for a while...but you'd think they'd at least have some sort of reasoning on why this is good and doesn't impact academics (if only to make a good pretense)

These new changes won't solve anything - it will just move the "line" where teams get in down by 2 teams...we'll still hear the argument about how the next best team got left out, etc. Will be interesting to see if the Coach's poll eventually agrees to release the voting information instead of keeping it anonymous.

 

I think that this will cause even more people to claim they should have been given a chance. By lowering the bar you include more teams/fans that think team X was better than team Y. If anything I think this is more of a step backwards than anything, but I certainly don't think those within the BCS care. People aren't going to turn off bowl games and including more bowls they get to sell more ads make more money........

 

Someday there will be a playoff, someday......I might be dead by then, but it's gonna happen....

 

The only way they would do a playoff, is if they could keep the bowl system. The only way I could see them doing it, is like this, but it would take some time.


First, the NCAA would have to tell all the major conferences, that to be BCS eligible, their conference would have to have a conf championship game.(Can't be a national champ if you aren't a conf champ) This would be the 1st round of the playoff system and it would take several years for all the conferences to adjust schedules and number of teams in their league etc...


The 2nd round, would be the bowl games themselves, by also using the rotation system they use among the 4 major bowls. Except, they would only use 2 of the 4 major bowl games for the top 4 ranked teams to decide the final two teams for the 3rd round - the National Championship.

It would be hard for the NCAA to argue against, because there is only one extra game for 2 teams out of the 100+ teams in division 1-A. Keep a normal schedule when factoring in the conf championship, and your still looking at a 13/14 game schedule. And that extra game is nothing for the two remaining schools in the championship game.

 

The two-faced NCAA response would be that they are allowing 6 wins to be bowl eligible, with one of those wins against a div II opponent. So that extra div II opponent can still be treated as sort of a pre-season thing.

 

I agree with you here - the bowls are simply too profitable, and using the Conf championship as de facto first round makes sense - it eliminates the need for an "at large" team.

Now, I brought up the 12th regular season game thing earlier, but to be fair, the 12th game wouldn't affect academics that much. A football team misses, at most, 6 Fridays during the fall semester. Other sports miss a lot more than that.

But I brought that up because that also means they can do football playoffs with very few missed classes. A lot of schools are on break for all of January, and even if they are in session, only Friday classes will be missed - assuming the NCAA doesn't force teams to do Super Bowl-style meet-and-greets.

Of course, most of us know better. The people in charge of college football don't give two shits about academics. And Lloyd Carr is right - there's nothing amateur about Div 1 college football.

 

If academics were a priority, they wouldn't let the lower collegiate divisions use a playoff system. And those players are student-athletes when compared to the div 1-A player