Obama Wants Playoffs

Strange BCS bedfellows

Facing frustration, stalemate and outright defeat on numerous fronts — that isn’t the only way of looking at his first year in office, but it seems to have some currency in the media of late — you’d think President Obama and his administration would be looking for an easy win, maybe some change and some hope, right about now.

We have just the thing for them.

It’s a sure thing that would allow the Democrats to seize the initiative, to work in a genuinely bipartisan way with the Republicans and to produce a popular and beneficial change for the nation. It is, of course, the Bowl Championship Series, an issue that Obama discussed repeatedly during the campaign in 2008 but has left on the back burner ever since.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=munson/100211

Thursday night’s championship game between Alabama and Texas, featuring head coaches paid $4 million and $5.1 million, respectively, will be an occasion for more hand-wringing about the “commercialization” of college football. That is a hardy perennial.

The 1920s, which worshiped stars such as Red Grange and coaches such as Knute Rockne, saw a boom in construction of capacious stadiums. Southern Methodist University built its stadium 13 years before it built its library. The decade ended with a 1929 Carnegie Foundation report ineffectually deploring the “corruption” of grafting this lucrative entertainment industry onto academia.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/06/AR2010010603914.html

No, the most important press conference at any Bowl Championship Series title game is one in which an ESPN executive shows up. In my mind, the only hope of revamping the most mindless, short-sighted and ill-conceived creation in the history of sports — college football’s current bowl system — is if the biggest entity in sports broadcasting takes advantage of its new four-year relationship with the BCS and does the following:

1. Tells university presidents, athletic directors and coaches that they’re missing out on a wonderful opportunity called an eight-team postseason tournament, which would trigger much higher revenues, much larger TV ratings and considerably more national interest than the discombobulated slop presently trotted out. If necessary, slap these people silly, bop them on their heads with a hammer or make them sit a room with Lou Holtz for a week, anything to prompt dramatic reform in a system that is killing — yes, killing — the sport.

http://jay-mariotti.fanhouse.com/2010/01/06/espn-must-push-bcs-to-adopt-playoffs/

(12-10) 20:13 PST — There was a time when the college football bowl system had a rhythm, nice and easy, leading to a very proper conclusion: the four most important games in one glorious, New Year’s Day package.

Let us begin today by turning to John Swofford, the commissioner of the ACC, a football conference that might — might — have one good football team. As it happens, this is Swofford’s year to be the spokesman (read: spinner) for the BCS because the six commissioners who run the so-called power conferences take two-year turns trying to defend their indefensible system.

After Sunday night’s BCS “selection show,” — which had all the suspense of the tallying of the electoral college — Swofford said this about the fact that undefeated Texas Christian and undefeated Boise State had been so graciously included in the BCS bowls — actually one BCS bowl, since they will play one another in the Fiesta Bowl.

“I think it certainly shows that there’s more access than before in terms of the BCS system,” Swofford said. “If you look back in recent years, there’s a consistency in that access that is evident and very healthy for college football.”

Gee, why does the BCS need to spend all that money on former White House flack Ari Fleischer when it has Swofford and his fellow commissioners out there to drop such words of wisdom on us?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/07/AR2009120702185.html

This column is going to written in a very calm tone. There will be no calling the BCS presidents liars because their veracity really isn’t a relevant issue at this point. There will be no calls for a congressional investigation or even for President Obama to follow up on his comments of a year ago calling for a college football playoff.

The president has other issues on the table and, to be honest, short of threatening the tax-exempt status of the big-bucks schools, even his presence probably won’t force the heads of the 66 BCS schools in question to end their hypocrisy.

Let us look factually at the college football landscape with five weeks to go before BCS bids are handed out.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/02/AR2009110201833.html

The reason college football does not have a playoff is that most of the people responsible for administering the sport do not want one. I include in this group college presidents, conference commissioners, athletic directors and coaches. It is not a unanimous view, by any means of measurement, but I believe a significant majority opposes a playoff because of a number of specific factors.

In my view, the attitudes of college administrators in opposition to a playoff are sincere, and they have strong belief in their positions. They can do nothing about the fact that bandwagon-jumping legislators somehow believe that the determination of college football’s national champion ought to be grist for their political mill. They understand that some among the fan base and the news media want what they want, and they want it now.

Take my word, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/sports/football/06bcs.html?_r=1

The BCS.

It’s waiting out there, determined to ruin your season because of its very makeup. It’s the ultimate wet blanket.

Unless you’re a college president or a bowl executive, you hate the BCS and all that it stands for. You want a playoff, sooner rather than later.

Obama is pro-playoff. The wide majority of fans have been screaming for a playoff for years. Some members of Congress are starting to see the light.

Know what? You’re not getting a playoff. Not sooner, maybe not later.

The BCS isn’t going anywhere. And if we can’t get rid of the darn thing, at least we can fine-tune it so it’s a little more palatable and might actually come closer to assuring the two most deserving teams in the country play for the national championship on Jan. 6, 2010.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090830/COLUMNIST0202/908300357

The college football season is a mere 10 days away, even less depending upon your team of choice.

As opposed to those of you who would like to see the BCS disappear by means of lethal injection – some e-mailers get so overheated I think they would prefer it suffer a more painful demise – I simply want to rehabilitate it.

Although none of these fixes would satisfy those who lust for a lengthy 16-team playoff (preceded, of course, by a substantially less intriguing regular season), here are the five changes I would make to the BCS to create a more palatable system for all.

1.   In with the Mountain West. Out with the Big East
2.   Conference champions only, please
3.   Bring back New Year’s Day Madness
4.   Take the gloves off the computers
5.   Put some meaning in the nonchampionship bowls

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/colleges/preview/football/stories/082609dnspocowlishawcol.4011369.html

David Schoenfield: OK, let’s get this out of the way: A playoff system isn’t going to happen. We know most fans want one, but you may as well dream about Lane Kiffin and Urban Meyer spending a week together on Marco Island. So the real debate here is whether the current BCS system is better than the old bowl system, when conference winners all had automatic bowl tie-ins.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hill_schoenfield/090806&sportCat=ncfAu