Comments on: Football Playoff To Be A Big Focus At SEC Meetings

By: buddha22

buddha22 — Tue, 22 May 2012 00:51:18 +0000

Whatever they decide, 4 teams is not enough…8 is the minimum to cover the best teams and 16 would be preferable.

By: WillieT

WillieT — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:48:37 +0000

I have my doubts regarding the time line for this thing to play out. Agreeing upon a plan will require quite a bit of arm twisting and back-room dealing and quite frankly, the positions staked out publicly by the various parties make one think those who will decide the fate of major college football ARE congress (Democrats, Republicans, Tea Partiers, et. al.)! Getting agreement on anything will require some compromise and there are some personalities involved who clearly don’t include the word in their vocabularies.

So, The BCS ends after the 2013 season contractually. Suppose no new agreement is reached? Suppose we return to the “old” system where every Bowl scrambles to create it’s best match-up, no one trying to match #1 & #2 or any deeper.
With the new SEC/Big12 “bowl” (let’s call it the “Thorn” bowl since it is clearly intended as a thorn in the side of Jim Delany) what could we expect to see? The Rose would crown a champ of conference champs & the Thorn would crown a champ of conference champs. The polls could then decide if one of these two bowl champs was worthy of their trophy or if some team from a less powerful conference deserved it. Most years, there’d be little argument as to who ended the season #1. Some years, the title would be split. Some years there’d be controversy. It may even play into the SEC’s favor to NOT have an agreement in place before the BCS dies. There are a lot of fans around that don’t remember the chaos of the preBCS era.

By: RussH

RussH — Mon, 21 May 2012 17:52:49 +0000

@JohnVol True, but that just makes the Sec/Big12 worth more $$$$. The bigger the game, the more valuable it is to the TV markets. And with the SEC/Big12 owning the bowl, instead of just being paid to play in the bowl, the game with the best teams is worth the most money.

By: JohnVol

JohnVol — Mon, 21 May 2012 17:40:49 +0000

@RussH That would be unfair to the SEC and Big 12 teams, as they would have a more difficult semifinal every year.

By: RussH

RussH — Mon, 21 May 2012 17:25:58 +0000

The last answer might be the more realistic than we think. the winner of the champions bowl planing the winner of the rose bowl. While you are correct that politicians would try and get involved, however I do not think they much to stand on. As long as the the winner of the Champions/Rose Bowl would not automatically be awarded the national championship, I cannot see that legislators would have much to stand on.

Just because a major network would pay $$$$ for that game, does not mean that the other leagues are being hurt. They can schedule all of the ACC/BE/MW bowl games they want and the same major networks could pay as much as they want for those games.

This is not much different that the scheduling alliance between the Big10/Pac12, it just takes it 1 step further.