Conosticator wrote:

The minor bowls would suffer if the non-BCS restricted the number of OOC games against BCS schools. How many Big Least, Big 10 or SEC schools would be bowl eligible if then couldn't pad their schedule with extra home games against the non-BCS schools. At the very least mandate that only home-and-home contracts are allowed, none of this "two for us and one for you" crap.

BTW, your ABA & AFL examples don't fit. The AFL did not fold. It was so successful that the NFL found it necessary to propose a merger.

Even the ABA, though far less successful, managed to get several of their teams into the NBA through a limited merger (more like a leveraged buy-out).

Hey, no poking holes in my detailed analysis!

Actually, the ABA was bankrupt and was lucky the NBA took the teams they did. The NBA was hurting badly then as well and needed the successful franchises from the ABA to switch so they wouldn't have to expand into those cities and dilute the competition even more so.

The AFL can be considered a success of sorts, but that was because they showed that pro football was viable outside the monopoly the NFL had. What made them successful to some extent against the NFL was that they could compete for players. They payed much higher salaries than the NFL was willing to pay, which cannot be done in college football. That was my main point.

The idea of separating from the FBS really is still born if you want to compete at the highest level of college football.

mormonrasta wrote:

What a playoff featuring the 5 nonBCS conferences and independents would do is kill the smaller bowls. Because then you are talking about the best teams from the nonBCS conferences not playing in these smaller bowl games which trivializes them more than they already are.

This would eventually hurt the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place teams in nonBCS conferences because there would be no bowl games for them to play in. It is not worth the sacrifice to crown a "champion" that few would take seriously because the best college football team chose not to participate.

Could they really be trivialized more than they already are? Back before every team with a .500 record got into a bowl game, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place teams in nonBCS conferences didn't get into a bowl anyway. Do we really want to sacrifice a playoff so that we can save a bunch of watered down mediocre bowl games? Rewarding the top team in each conferecne with a tourament berth would make the regular season just as important as it is now. Besides, I would guess that several lower tier bowls would adapt to the change in the market and survive.

stjohnsmythe wrote:

The NIT was (and still is) a private entity very similar to the BCS, and has no actual affiliation with the NCAA. The NCAA was able to relegate the NIT into obscurity by creating their own tournament, so why couldn't (or should I say won't) they do the same thing to the BCS? Does the BCS kick money back to the NCAA? Why would the NCAA sit back and let the BCS rake in all the cash, while sitting back and not even officially recognizing a national champion in football?

If they had started a tournament this year (this is hypothetical - I know all of these teams' conferences have contracts with bowls) teams like Missouri, Florida, Texas, BYU, Boston College, Auburn, Tennessee, Boise State, and a bunch of others could have participated. These teams aren't a bunch of scrubs that wouldn't generate any interest either, plus with almost every sports fan and sports journalist clamoring for a playoff, this thing would catch fire sooner rather than later. Maybe you would miss out on a few teams like USC, OSU, and LSU for the first couple of years, and you'd also have to wait for a bunch of lesser bowl contracts to expire, but the interest, money, and TV ratings the tournament would take away from the BCS would hurt their revenues, and they would slowly fade....just like the NIT did.

BTW, have any of you visited the BCS website lately? On the front page under the heading of "BCS news" are 5 headlines, four of which are anti-playoff-pro-BCS propaganda....looks like they might be nervous about something. http://www.bcsfootball.org/bcsfootball/

Now days the NIT is fully owned and operated by the NCAA. It is "private" only in the sense that the NCAA is "private".

Conosticator wrote:

stjohnsmythe wrote:

The NIT was (and still is) a private entity very similar to the BCS, and has no actual affiliation with the NCAA. The NCAA was able to relegate the NIT into obscurity by creating their own tournament, so why couldn't (or should I say won't) they do the same thing to the BCS? Does the BCS kick money back to the NCAA? Why would the NCAA sit back and let the BCS rake in all the cash, while sitting back and not even officially recognizing a national champion in football?

If they had started a tournament this year (this is hypothetical - I know all of these teams' conferences have contracts with bowls) teams like Missouri, Florida, Texas, BYU, Boston College, Auburn, Tennessee, Boise State, and a bunch of others could have participated. These teams aren't a bunch of scrubs that wouldn't generate any interest either, plus with almost every sports fan and sports journalist clamoring for a playoff, this thing would catch fire sooner rather than later. Maybe you would miss out on a few teams like USC, OSU, and LSU for the first couple of years, and you'd also have to wait for a bunch of lesser bowl contracts to expire, but the interest, money, and TV ratings the tournament would take away from the BCS would hurt their revenues, and they would slowly fade....just like the NIT did.

BTW, have any of you visited the BCS website lately? On the front page under the heading of "BCS news" are 5 headlines, four of which are anti-playoff-pro-BCS propaganda....looks like they might be nervous about something. http://www.bcsfootball.org/bcsfootball/

Now days the NIT is fully owned and operated by the NCAA. It is "private" only in the sense that the NCAA is "private".

thanks for the info...but in it's heyday it was a private company like the BCS

Actually, the NCAA owns the NIT. Link here.

The reason the NCAA is impotent in running college football is because of the US Supreme Court. The CFA rose up after the SC's landmark decision that said the colleges owned the broadcast rights to the football games, not the NCAA. Once that came down, it eventually evolved to the current state of the BCS. There are threads around here that go through history. We've talked about this issue s number of times with no clear solution other than beat the BCS teams head to head.

stjohnsmythe wrote:

The NIT was (and still is) a private entity very similar to the BCS, and has no actual affiliation with the NCAA. The NCAA was able to relegate the NIT into obscurity by creating their own tournament, so why couldn't (or should I say won't) they do the same thing to the BCS? Does the BCS kick money back to the NCAA? Why would the NCAA sit back and let the BCS rake in all the cash, while sitting back and not even officially recognizing a national champion in football?

If they had started a tournament this year (this is hypothetical - I know all of these teams' conferences have contracts with bowls) teams like Missouri, Florida, Texas, BYU, Boston College, Auburn, Tennessee, Boise State, and a bunch of others could have participated. These teams aren't a bunch of scrubs that wouldn't generate any interest either, plus with almost every sports fan and sports journalist clamoring for a playoff, this thing would catch fire sooner rather than later. Maybe you would miss out on a few teams like USC, OSU, and LSU for the first couple of years, and you'd also have to wait for a bunch of lesser bowl contracts to expire, but the interest, money, and TV ratings the tournament would take away from the BCS would hurt their revenues, and they would slowly fade....just like the NIT did.

BTW, have any of you visited the BCS website lately? On the front page under the heading of "BCS news" are 5 headlines, four of which are anti-playoff-pro-BCS propaganda....looks like they might be nervous about something. http://www.bcsfootball.org/bcsfootball/

stjohnsmythe wrote:

Could they really be trivialized more than they already are? Back before every team with a .500 record got into a bowl game, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place teams in nonBCS conferences didn't get into a bowl anyway. Do we really want to sacrifice a playoff so that we can save a bunch of watered down mediocre bowl games? Rewarding the top team in each conferecne with a tourament berth would make the regular season just as important as it is now. Besides, I would guess that several lower tier bowls would adapt to the change in the market and survive.

I think they are worth saving. I think the smaller bowls have increased the strength of the smaller conferences. Many of these schools would NEVER get a chance to play on ESPN or ESPN2 if it weren't for the smaller bowls. This would hurt their overall exposure.

I think the Humanitarian Bowl played a large part in Boise State's success. They virtually had an extra nationally televised game each year which allowed them to outrecruit their peers.

I believe the New Mexico Bowl could be a similiar thing for New Mexico. Their 30 year streaks of bowl ineptitude and going winless against the Pac-10 ended this last season which probably wouldn't have happened if they were not a frequent visitor to many of these minor bowls.

And think of the kind of playoff that we would be sacrificing for. It is not worth getting rid of these smaller bowl games so we can have a playoff that doesn't include the best teams in the country. That doesn't help anyone.