I have suggested this several times in other posts. No pussy footin either, call it the NCAA championship or the CFC.

Of course there are some negatives to the move.

What would the BCS do with the current inclusion if the other conferences made the move?

Would it really be as intriguing without the undefeated teams i.e. Hawaii, Boise State, and Utah in the respective year?

For me, I would enjoy watching extra BYU games every year. Some people want to play the games against big programs on the BCS stage. Personally, I don't care about Utah beating a mediocre Pittsburgh or Hawaii not hanging with whoever they played last year. What is the point of ending the season playing for 4th place and never losing a game.

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.

There are so many problems with this idea that I don't know where to begin. Ammon, you've been around when we've talked about this proposal before.

Firstly, this is exactly what the BCS conferences would want. Then they could continue to hoard the money, talent, and tv even more than they do now.

Secondly, there already is a second level playoff system called the FCS. How popular is that? I think the championship game gets on television, but that is about it. We'd become the FCS without even a thought by the press as to whether the teams play good football, appalachian state included.

Thirdly, the talent would gravitate to the FBS-BCS schools. BYU has trouble competing with USC now, think how much more difficult it will be to compete with UCLA, Oregon, and Colorado should BYU step down in football competition, which is what would happen by separating from the BCS conferences.

Fourthly, TV would focus more on the haves, who would then have even more. No more mtn. deal, which as bad as it is, is infinitely better than what the MWC could get if they pulled out of the FBS.

Fifthly, coaching would suffer. All the good coaches would leave for the BCS teams, where now, coaches like Mendenhall actually stay in the MWC because they are at least competitive with the BCS conferences and even better than more than half of the BCS teams, regardless of being in the MWC and not one of the BCS conferences.

Lastly, the ABA and AFL all folded even though they could compete with the NBA and NFL on salary. Since there is no salary in college football payed to the players, there is no advantage gained by separating. The best players will continue going to the dominate schools, ad nauseum.

The only way to beat the BCS and break it is to play them and beat them. Without Congressional intervention, there is no other way.

I'm ok with it, so long has we had rules regarding bowl elgibility similar to now...

Only one game against a BCS school can be counted towards meeting the requisite six wins.

We change the maximum # of scholarships so that it exceeds the number allowed for BCS schools as follows:

1. For each recruit, rated 4 stars or better by the two top rating services, that signs a committment letter and sticks with it, the school is allowed 1/2 additional scholarship (recruiting incentive reward) the following year.

2. We allow boosters to subsidize the "student athlete's" income with phone jobs and gifts - they just all have to be declared.

3. Every non-injured player that has started at least 10 games at a BCS school is allowed to transfer without penalty and the school that he transfers to is awarded 1/2 additional scholarship the following year.

We don't play mid-week games.

We have our own combined (all five non-BCS conf) sports broadcast network with exclusive broadcast rights for all the non-BCS conf sports.

The new sports network negotiates broadcast contracts that guarantee broad based coverage.

To limit future growth we prohibit admission of any "research universities" (including those with just a medical school).

Once in a while we allow a BCS school to play for the championship, but reserve the right to arbitrarilly change that rule at any time.

Good thing they haven't put me in charge...

CougarPeasant wrote:

There are so many problems with this idea that I don't know where to begin. Ammon, you've been around when we've talked about this proposal before.

Firstly, this is exactly what the BCS conferences would want. Then they could continue to hoard the money, talent, and tv even more than they do now.

Secondly, there already is a second level playoff system called the FCS. How popular is that? I think the championship game gets on television, but that is about it. We'd become the FCS without even a thought by the press as to whether the teams play good football, appalachian state included.

Thirdly, the talent would gravitate to the FBS-BCS schools. BYU has trouble competing with USC now, think how much more difficult it will be to compete with UCLA, Oregon, and Colorado should BYU step down in football competition, which is what would happen by separating from the BCS conferences.

Fourthly, TV would focus more on the haves, who would then have even more. No more mtn. deal, which as bad as it is, is infinitely better than what the MWC could get if they pulled out of the FBS.

Fifthly, coaching would suffer. All the good coaches would leave for the BCS teams, where now, coaches like Mendenhall actually stay in the MWC because they are at least competitive with the BCS conferences and even better than more than half of the BCS teams, regardless of being in the MWC and not one of the BCS conferences.

Lastly, the ABA and AFL all folded even though they could compete with the NBA and NFL on salary. Since there is no salary in college football payed to the players, there is no advantage gained by separating. The best players will continue going to the dominate schools, ad nauseum.

The only way to beat the BCS and break it is to play them and beat them. Without Congressional intervention, there is no other way.

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).

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/