Obama Wants Playoffs

Q: You’ve obviously coached at Division I-A at Auburn, but also at other levels. Could a playoff system work in I-A?

A: I think playoffs would be great for Division I-A football. It’s been great for everyone else. I think you should have them. There’s no reason we cannot have bowls included and use those in the process of having playoffs. There’s no question Division I-A football should be played in a playoff. That’s the only way to have a national champion.

Q: How would you organize it?

A: You always hear four (teams), but I’m a big proponent that you start at eight. You start at eight, take seven top bowls, you go to the Saturday and Sunday closest to Christmas and you play two games on Saturday, two games on Sunday. So you have the top eight games playing four games in four top bowls, then the four winners play two games on Jan. 1 and the national championship is played on the eighth.

It would be the top seven bowls and, just like the BCS they have now, you would take those bowls or whichever bowls bid for those games. Every year they could rotate those things around. The other dates, the other bowls exist just like the NIT does.

http://www.ajc.com/sports/five-questions-terry-bowden-465350.html

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski took a shot at college football on Sunday and may have provided testimony for any future lawsuits against the Bowl Championship Series.

Krzyzewski said there was no way a team such as Butler could make it to the championship game in football.

“It’s a completely different animal,” Krzyzewski said. “And they don’t have a system that would allow a smaller school to get into the spotlight with the BCS. They know what the heck they’re doing as far as monopoly.”

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/04/sports/la-sp-0405-ncaa-notes-20100405

Q: How do you feel about playoffs?

A: I really do love it. I cannot think of any reasonable expectations why we would not play a playoff at the Bowl Championship Series level as well. I do believe we should use the bowl sites, but I do not think there’s any justification for us not playing a playoff at every level of football. It’s a lot of fun, it’s just a lot of excitement, it builds the pressure, but I think it’s how the game was supposed to be played. It’s supposed to be won on the field. Mythical national championships are fun to write about, but they’re not much fun to earn.

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/sports_college/2010/03/terry-bowden-bring-on-playoffs-in-bcs.html

When the Division I-A head coaches met at the AFCA convention Tuesday, they discussed several important issues facing the sport.

There was talk about academic reform. There was talk about dealing with agents and their influence on athletes. There was talk of player safety and concussions. And of course, there was some talk about the controversial Bowl Championship Series.

American Football Coaches Association executive director Grant Teaff presented the results of a survey of all 120 Division I-A coaches during the meeting. What was found was not surprising: a majority of coaches want to keep the system the way it is.

“Right now, we have a good system,” said Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, whose team has played in three BCS championship games. “That’s not to say we won’t improve it. How it will improve over time we’ll find out, but I wouldn’t be in favor of scraping what we do. There are too many things to keep in mind, bowls, student athlete welfare, all the rest. I wouldn’t start over.”

Teaff said 73 percent of the coaches want to keep the current BCS system the way it is. He also said that 96 of the 120 coaches voted to keep transparency in the final regular-season coaches poll. And 95.7 want to maintain the final coaches poll voting the BCS champion No. 1.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/college/os-coaches-convention-issue-0113-20100112,0,1073733.story

Georgia head football coach Mark Richt was once asked why he supported the Bowl Championship Series instead of a playoff. “I think college football has the most exciting regular season of any sport because there is not a playoff system,” he answered. “The whole season is a playoff system.”

Perhaps the best reason for supporting the BCS can be summed up in three words: Every game counts. Since teams know they have to fight during the regular season for a spot in a bowl game, there are no games off. One loss and postseason chances are diminished. Every play and every game count every year.

As a result of this emphasis on the regular season, college football is more exciting, more popular and more successful than ever.

http://www.star-telegram.com/1021/story/1853019.html

Patterson’s fourth-ranked TCU team is undefeated and pretty much has no shot at playing for the national title. He should be a little upset. He should be the champion of people with common sense – those in favor of a playoff system – and speak out for change.

But instead he slept with someone he shouldn’t have, the BCS. On Wednesday, when it was announced that Patterson got a contract extension through 2016, he said that he is in favor of bowl games and not a playoff system. Patterson cited a 16-team playoff rather than the four-team scenario that many advocate.

“Is it easier to win one game for a championship? Or to have to win four?” Patterson told reporters this week. “If you have a playoff, you practice and get on a plane and play. And if you lose, it’s over. If you go to a bowl game, you’re there seven days and the kids can enjoy a place and get rewarded.”

College football coaches want a playoff and prefer a plus-one. However, many don’t think schools from non-BCS conferences should get greater access to those bowls.

The greatest hot-button issue with fans — playoffs — also is one with coaches. Thirty-two of the coaches who responded want a change. Of those, 16 prefer a Plus-One, in which the top two ranked teams after the four major bowl games would meet in a championship game.

“I like the bowls,” Arkansas’ Bobby Petrino said on Wednesday’s Southeastern conference call. “I like the fact that it’s a long season and — these are student-athletes — they get a break at the end of the season. They get time to study, prepare for finals and be a student, then get prepped for bowl games. The way it’s played out the last eight years, I think a Plus-One is a good idea if you could ever work it out.

“It would end all the controversy.”

One of the closest tallies revolved around schools from the five non-BCS conferences getting greater access to the four rich BCS bowls. Currently, a non-BCS school can qualify only if it finishes in the top 12 of the final rankings or ahead of a BCS conference champion.

Twenty-four coaches who responded said non-BCS conferences should have greater access, and 14 said no. Not surprisingly, non-BCS coaches voted 15-3 for greater access and BCS coaches voted 11-9 against it.

“I coached in the MAC for seven years,” Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said. “Anybody outside the BCS to play week in week out the schedule we do within the BCS and our leagues, that’s something that has to be entertained.”

http://www.denverpost.com/colleges/ci_13265995

“If there is anything that I dislike about the whole system now, and I have always been a bowl guy. I’ve always been a guy that lots of positive reinforcement for a lot of players who get the opportunity to play in a bowl game for their efforts. If there is anything that has created a negative situation in college football, to me, it’s the fact that there is only one thing that matters and that’s who wins the national championship. I don’t think that’s fair to all the other good teams in college football, or all the other players who play in college football.

“It’s a pretty significant accomplishment to win the SEC. It’s a pretty significant accomplishment to win the ACC. So, if there is a down side to our system right now, that’s why I’ve always been kind of for the plus-one thing, where there are at least four teams involved in this. Maybe it wouldn’t be so much that way. Because if you had four teams, there would be one and two losses, would not knock you out of it and a lot more people would be interested and there would be a lot more teams in the end. So now we’re talking about the first game of the season, you’re out of it. It’s horrible. It’s a horrible thought for any team to be out of anything for one game.”

http://alabama.scout.com/2/893835.html

Not everyone with Big Ten ties wants to keep college football’s postseason status quo.

Former Michigan coach Lloyd Carr said Friday that he’d like to see four teams advance to the bowl season with a chance to win a national championship. Carr advocated a sort of bracketed plus-one system, with the winners of two semifinal bowls advancing to a national championship game.

http://www.sportingnews.com/college-football/article/2009-07-31/lloyd-carr-advocates-four-team-playoff

IRVING, Texas — All you folks who hate the Bowl Championship Series and favor a playoff, meet your new hero: Texas Tech coach Mike Leach. He doesn’t want a Plus-One. He doesn’t want an eight-team playoff.

How about 64 teams?

“The thing that always interested me on this is: ‘Oh, my God! This has never been done! How can you suggest this? This has never happened in college football,’ ” Leach said Wednesday on the last day of the Big 12 media days. “Everybody else does it this way. There’s nothing unique in what I’m saying. I’m the mainstream. This other system is not the mainstream.”

Leach’s idea is to cut the schedule to 10 games and run the playoffs through December, like Division I-AA, D-II and D-III and use the bowls in the process.

“Texas high school champion: 16 games,” Leach said. “Division II: 16 games. Division III — and some of them fudge on a game — 15 or 16 games. And everybody thinks I went into a cave and carved all this out.”

http://www.denverpost.com/sports/ci_12942296