Stewart Mandel: Future of the BCS via Football Outsiders
Check out Mandel’s piece on the plus-one. Below are a few snippets.
It is no big surprise that the Big Ten isn’t too thrilled. Right now, at least they get to go to the National Championship game before getting beat. With a plus one system, the Big Ten teams might not get a shot! Of course, i say that in jest, but to not consider improvements to whatever system you have, regardless of whether it was supposed to be the be all-end all, is just moronic:
Delany, the Big Ten commissioner, declined to be interviewed for this story, but recently told Sports Illustrated his conference’s original decision to join the BCS “was not considered the first step toward a playoff, but the last step.”
Mandel explains the playoff system:
A seeded plus-one is exactly like it sounds — the top four teams at the end of the regular season would meet each other (No. 1 playing No. 4, No. 2 playing No. 3) in two of the BCS bowls. (Because the BCS wants to remain at 10 berths, a fifth non-title game — either a newly created one or an existing one like the Capital One or Cotton — would likely need to be added.) The winners would advance to the championship game, which, conveniently, is already being played about a week after New Year’s.
A plus-one solves the problems of bowls such as the Rose Bowl, who loses one of its traditional champions:
A pure plus-one would theoretically alleviate those concerns. All of the BCS bowls would host their traditional partner conferences’ champions, regardless of ranking, and then the BCS’ No. 1 and 2 teams left standing would advance to the title game.
FanHouse via With Leather knocks college football with What if the BCS ran the NFL?:
Jaguars fans are livid that they were shut out of the bowl games, even though Jacksonville finished with an 11-5 record and was one of the hottest teams in the league. But when the Titans were selected for the Fiesta Bowl, the Jags chances dropped to zero, because BCS rules prohibit three teams from one division landing bowl bids. The Titans edged the Jaguars for a bowl berth because they have more recognizable players (namely Vince Young), but even more importantly because they have more fans than the Jaguars to buy bowl tickets.
But all of that is just the warm-up for the Bud Bowl. Colts-Patriots, white hats vs. the black hats. Some fans may be tiring of seeing the same title pairing time and time again, but they’ve been the best two teams during the regular season year in and year out, so fair is fair.
Good stuff here. I wouldn’t mind seeing this at all. Come on, it’s one more friggen game! Being an Iowa guy I don’t even feel like the Big Ten thing would effect me because they won’t be up there anyway…lol.
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