The haves and the havenots

[perunapower]

[u="http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/preview07/columns/story?columnist=maisel_ivan&id=2965756"]ESPN article[/u]

His comparisons to March Madness and the likes of Valparaiso and George Mason are bunk. All they have to do is win their conference tournament to get an automatic invite to the NCAA tournament.

While I enjoyed Boise State sneaking away with the OT victory against OU last year, all that did was give the BCS more of "evidence" that they give the non-BCS a fair shot.

The problem is that there is no good way to fix college football without a wipe the slate clean kind of solution. With now 120 I-A teams, how do you weed out the contenders from the rest?

[EmeraldCityPony]

Two words...

Playoff

...er...off

[perunapower]

Two words...

Playoff

...er...off

Surely that wouldn't make things better. Do you have a 16-team bracket or an 8-team bracket? An 8-team bracket would make it harder than it is now for a non-BCS to compete for a national championship. There are 11 conferences, if you give a playoff slot to each conference champion, how do you justify putting in a Sun Belt champ like Troy over teams like UCLA, UT, Michigan, and Wisconsin? I'd love for the non-BCS teams to get an auto-bid to compete for the national championship, but you can't keep the same conference affiliations while doing so, for fairness sake, not that fairness plays a role now.

[EastStang]

Go back to the recent pre-BCS conference alignments. Imagine the SWC the way it was and the BE with Miami and VT, B8, the SEC, B10, P10, the ACC, the WAC, CUSA, SBC, and the MAC. You take the WAC, CUSA, SBC and the MAC and the lowest seeded four big conference teams and have a play-in game and then have an 8 team round robin between the top four seeds and the survivors of the play in games. Put them at bowl sites. I am sure more fans would show up for the Emerald Bowl if it was a play-in game between the WAC the PAC 10. Teams like SMU, Duke, Vandy would have to win their conference championship against teams like UT, A&M, FSU, Florida, etc. Keep the 12 team rule for championships. That might give incentive to conferences like the SWC to add a Tulane, a Tulsa and a Memphis. But who knows. I think you need at least one more big boy conference to make things work for a tourney. Of course that could mean that a number 21 Hawaii is in the play-in game while a number 5 Michigan sits at home because it lost to Ohio State. But that's what the other bowl games would be for.

[Mexmustang]

What would really happen if the BCS schools had to play only other BCS schools? I know that schools like SMU need the revenues from playing a TT or OSU so it is an unrealistic proposition. But, what if?
How many coaches would have had losing seasons last year? How many would have lost their bowl eligibility? In a way we (Non-BCS schools) are our own worst enemy.
Would Texas have gone undefeated two years ago if they had been forced to play say Georgia, instead of North Texas? They probably would have beaten Georgia, but would they have had the stamina to run the table?
This year they would have to drop Ark St., Rice, TCU and Central Florida! I say, replace them with Notre Dame, LSU, Florida and Ohio State. Let's see them crash in their own pond. How many years would Mack last? Seems to me the big boys need us or in a matter of years there will be two BCS pools, the Super BCS, madeup of ten traditional teams, playing Sub BCS, those that can't schedule a winning season.

[perunapower]

Go back to the recent pre-BCS conference alignments. Imagine the SWC the way it was and the BE with Miami and VT, B8, the SEC, B10, P10, the ACC, the WAC, CUSA, SBC, and the MAC. You take the WAC, CUSA, SBC and the MAC and the lowest seeded four big conference teams and have a play-in game and then have an 8 team round robin between the top four seeds and the survivors of the play in games. Put them at bowl sites. I am sure more fans would show up for the Emerald Bowl if it was a play-in game between the WAC the PAC 10. Teams like SMU, Duke, Vandy would have to win their conference championship against teams like UT, A&M, FSU, Florida, etc. Keep the 12 team rule for championships. That might give incentive to conferences like the SWC to add a Tulane, a Tulsa and a Memphis. But who knows. I think you need at least one more big boy conference to make things work for a tourney. Of course that could mean that a number 21 Hawaii is in the play-in game while a number 5 Michigan sits at home because it lost to Ohio State. But that's what the other bowl games would be for.

If you are going to realign the conferences, why not make entirely new ones. 12 conferences of 10 teams a piece (5 in each division, so you can have a conference champion). Disperse the current BCS and non-BCS teams in the conferences. Take the 12 conferences winners and 20 at-large and develop a playoff system. But such a mammoth overhaul of college football is not going to happen. There is too much money in the BCS and the NCAA hasn't the 'nads to do anything about leveling the playing field, so all of this is just a silly pipe dream.

[EastStang]

My reason was entirely selfish. I'd love to see the SWC reconstituted and if that is the excuse, so be it. It'll never happen, but one can always wish. And you want to keep some old rivalries together, so putting the old WAC back together reunites UTEP with BYU and NM. You want to keep the MAC rivalries together Ohio, Bowling Green and Kent State for example. But I have no gas with 10 team conferences. The SWC could add one or two depending if Arkansas was back in the fold perhaps Tulane or Tulsa. Big 10 would have to lose one team. Perhaps Penn State (or perhaps Iowa moves to Big . PAC 10 is set. Big 8 would have to add two. SEC would have to lose 2 (one perhaps would be Arkansas back to the SWC). MAC would lose 2, CUSA would have to add a few and SBC would have to add a few. ACC would have to lose 2 perhaps Boston College and VT back to BE. Lots of fun would be had by all.