The reason college football owns the NFL Options

[Oasis]

Is the thing that everyone is bitching about

The BCS.

Say whatever you want about the BCS. The fact is that it (along with the Bowl Alliance and all previous incarnations) is the reason college is infinitely better than the NFL.

Kirk Bohls - resident token dumbfuck negative apocalyptic sportswriter for the Austin American Statesman - had this gem of a headline today: Time to trash the map that led to this state of confusion

Yeah.

It's a computer's fault that thirteen football teams compromised of living breathing human beings beat 13 top five teams. It's the reason 5 different teams were ranked #1 this year, most in college football history.

Yeah, right.

A playoff would royally suck. It would destroy what makes college football great. Not only the fact that every game matters. I don't know about you, but most football fodder between my friends involves college football, not the NFL. We talk about the NFL on Sunday, Monday, and occasionally Thursday. College football comes up every single day.

Controversy is good. It keeps people talking and watching, which is really all the NCAA really cares about. Money. And a team like App State beating Michigan is controversial. Constant upsets are controversial.

I don't feel like looking up the TV ratings (and honestly, I don't even know where the hell to find them), but I'm willing to bet that the ratings are up this year vs. last year. And a big reason is because this is a wacky season. And one of the main reasons it's a wacky season is because of the ranking system they have in place.

I wish sportswriters and the general public would realize this and appreciate it for what it is. Especially sportswriters, because honestly the BCS is the reason some of those morons still have jobs. I can't imagine they could find anything to write about if it wasn't for controversy

[Oasis]

Also, right now, they have this big pile of money from the BCS that they share among themselves. If there is a playoff, the pile of money might be bigger, but the wealth would get shared more evenly. Why would the big schools go for that?

I don't know if I agree with this.

In fact, I think the exact opposite would happen.

I think the BCS bowl system determines percentage payouts to schools and conferences. I'm not gonna research this shit, but I know for a fact that the Bowl Alliance had a different profit sharing system than the BCS does.

There won't be a playoff system when the BCS still has a contract, obviously. If they went to a playoff system when the BCS contract is up it would more than likely be the NCAA running the bowls and playoffs directly. That'd mean the profit sharing system was reworked, and most likely it would be a lot more even in terms of schools actually playing in the bowl games getting a larger (and probably more fair) cut.

It's the loser schools like Baylor who don't want a playoff because it would mean they'd be getting less money for effectively doing nothing other than being in a BCS conference. Remember 2004, when Mark Mangino started whining about how the refs were favoring UT because "it all comes down to the BCS"? Mark, because the refs "threw" the game your program got a cool $1.2 million extra. Sit down, shut the fuck up, and go eat another taco.

I don't know if this is right, but it makes a lot more sense than the quote. If the BCS schools got less of a cut, a lot more AD's would be screaming for a playoff system and there might actually be one in the future.


Oh, and the logistics of a playoff. An 8 game playoff would mean three additional games. That's 15-16 games a season. That's tolerable in the NFL, where guys are getting paid millions of dollars to play. These are still college kids who have finals and a Christmas break. 99% of them will not be playing football on Sundays. The three games would either have to be played concurrently with regular bowl games, effectively ruining their holiday break; or be played starting in early January, cutting in to the first few weeks of school. Not really feasible and it's the reason a lot of athletic directors will never agree to any sort of playoff system.