It has advantages and disadvantages. As BigSooner points out one of the advantages is that it more accurately determines the best team. The other thing is that it makes regular season games more meaningful. Regular season basketball and baseball games, individually, pretty much don't matter at all.

One disadvantage is that you don't get the excitement of finals at the end but that's what the cups are for. Also games can be boring at the end if there's nothing to play for, but this usually only happens in the last couple weeks.

Coming from Australian sports which all have playoffs (soccer here does too) overseas soccer leagues took some getting used to, but I'm on board with the league system now. The increased importance of regular season games outweighs the other factors.

The problem with the BCS isn't exactly the lack of playoffs but the lack of any way of separating teams at all. It's perfectly possible for a team to go undefeated in the regular season and still have no opportunity to make it to the national championship game. That's a broken system.

You realize you're preaching to the choir though? Very few people here, or college football fandom in general, support the BCS.

ya, i dont like the way they determine the rankings. teams like houston + boise have no business being ranked as high as they are. just because you havent lossed vs a bunch of crap teams does not warrant their high rankings.

oregon's loss was pretty heart-breaking, especially after that comeback. the oregon secondary has a lot of work to do so they dont get shredded again.

It's also possible for a soccer team to tread water in the regular season and then run real hot in the playoffs.

As a non-USAian, do you think the BCS is more or less ******ed than the electoral college?

The people who run it (and their lapdog, MT2R) love it.

This is because it empowers ****ty but "traditional" teams like Illinois at the expense of newcomer but rising programs like BSU.

BCS is less ******ed, but it decides a more important issue, so it's about 50/50, in reality.

Not so in college football. Some of the biggest rivalries happen on the last weekend. I'd be very interested in the Georgia Tech game even if we were both 0-11.

There was traditionally a lot less focus in college football on the national championship than in other sports. A good season is one where you beat your rivals and win a major bowl. The BCS has many flaws, but it does preserve this to a pretty decent extent, although addition of a national championship game bastardizes it to a degree.

I'd much, much rather tackle the issue of teams scheduling cupcakes instead of good OOC opponents than anything else. There's a ridiculous amount of room for the regular season to be enhanced.

Less, but with the electoral college system at least there's the excuse that its problems stem from it having been designed centuries ago to cope with issues that don't exist anymore. The BCS is more like you asked someone to come up with a way to elect the president from scratch in 1998 and what they came up with was the electoral college.

Can we stop pretending like there is any non-******ed way to determine a champion of a 120-team league that plays 12 games?

You seem to like the regular season being meaningful in EPL, so why not in NCAA? By its very nature, it can't be all that meaningful without polls, due to the ratio of size and schedule.

The non-******ed way would be to do what the other college football divisions do.

16 teams; 11 conference champs and 5 at large bids. It sounds crazy but I think some of the lower football divisions have 24-32 teams in their playoff formats so 16 would actually not be insane. It would also be completely fair. If you don't win your conference don't be crying about getting left out of the at large selections. You had your chance and go schedule better next time or win more games.

7-4 Auburn would be undefeated in ConfUSA, MAC, and probably Big East. SEC West is just beast, no better three teams in the country IMO.

I've often advocated for this and people decry it as "too long". Psh.

Although this year I bet either Arkansas or Georgia would find a reason to complain.

meh.... it's not riggage most of the time

it's a natural bias to favor 'name' teams or home teams.
If a person goes into a game with the idea one team is better, they will see the whole game through those eyes. Most sporting events have many close calls. It's possible and sometimes happens that the bias ends up getting them to interpret every close call in the game through their preconceived notions. It's not outright cheating or riggage, but it's enough to tilt the scales on calls.

Think of homers for both teams watching a game. Play the soundtrack of them hollering for calls separately. Now, officials should be somewhere in the middle. They almost always will be. But, if they think more of a program or if they are slightly intimidated by the crowd around them (as postulated in scorecasting), they will see the events of the game just a bit differently. With the talent gap so close, numerous close calls, and the camera shots available in quantity and quality today, the officials are getting a bit of the spotlight on them. It's tough to say the breaks even out when most see it's clearly not the case. The way to do it is to make your own breaks by becoming one of the name teams or creating an intimidating home environment. Of course, in college, the barriers to cross that threshold are many.

I've thought it would be a problem for Nebraska in the conference. Yes, everyone is aware of the name and legacy, but, for almost all of the officials, it's not as firm in their minds as the decade plus of tOSU and Michigan.

Doubt it.

ding ding ding

I agree. There are not near enough games for the number of teams for it to work.

It's still better to me than the EOY flippament that ncaab uses.

8-team playoff FTW.
16 would make the regular season a lot less meaningful and there is no way the lower conferences should be splitting up the revenue money gained by the big boy conferences like they do in basketball.

Why? Arkansas can lose to LSU and still get an at large bid. Georgia probably has to win the SEC title game to get in, but that's fair.

The system I gave is completely fair because all 120 teams control their own destiny. Unlike the stupid system we have now regular season games actually mean more with a 16 team playoff. With our current system 95% of regular season games mean nothing right from the start of week 1 since in reality only a handful of teams control their destiny to reach the two team title game at the start of the season.

Maybe not Big East, but would have >30% chance in the other conferences.

I noticed you left out the WAC. Scared of Utah State?

so, for a game to matter to you, it's for #1 or bust, eh?

FYP

Of course not, but for national title purposes 95% of games mean nothing right from opening week. A real playoff system would add further meaning to the games.

you have a playoff already

the regular season for CFB is no more arbitrary and crazy than coming up with x number of teams play with y seedings in a single-elimination flippament


Go through the list of CFB mythical national champions and compare those teams to the champions of every major sport.
Do you find the other sports mechanisms for crowning their champ produce more deserving champions than CFB?
I'm strongly of the opinion that they do not.

So, if the sport has the end outcome of consistently producing the most deserving champions, perhaps we should be asking what is wrong with the title crowning mechanisms used by MLB, NCAAB, NFL, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwGpWYH8SZs

ok... let's face facts. There are over 60 teams right now that have no business playing in the top league. They're allowed in with a wink-and-a-nudge to create easy wins for the other schools.

See college football isn't really about the sport. It's about a unifying mechanism to raise dollars for large universities and have a public front porch.

Many seem to be confusing the goal.

They think it's about amateur competition. psssh.
Way off track.

Does anyone really care how the champion of the AAA Pacific League is crowned?

These are minor league entertainments. Not even, really. Anyone that actually cares about #1 in college football clearing doesn't understand the ends college football was designed to achieve.