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Bowl Championship SeriesThe Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is a five-game arrangement for post-season college football that is designed to match the two top-rated teams in a national championship game and to create exciting and competitive matchups between eight other highly regarded teams in four other games. The bowl games participating are the Allstate Sugar Bowl, Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, FedEx Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl and the BCS National Championship Game which will be played each year at one of the above four bowl sites. They Said It(...just a sampling from many affirmative comments about the current post-season football system...) # # # "For one thing, with a playoff, you'd have the same issues we have now, with some 10-2 team that won their last six games getting left out and not being happy about it." # # # "How many fans are actually going to travel to these road playoff games? I'd like to see a playoff, but we're not going to get that without answering a lot of tough questions." # # # "The whole bowl experience is great. It's just like bowl camp, a good time to bond with the guys after a long season. Then when you go to the bowl destination, it's even better. I'm not sure with a playoff system you have that." # # # "[When people say] we don't have to get rid of bowl games but we can still do a playoff. but here's the problem. if you do anything like that, and teams have an opportunity or the potential to have an opportunity to play the following week, the bowl experience is done. I mean, you don't go for a week or 10 days and have all your coaches' families and everything there. You go in just like the NFL playoffs the day before the game, you play the game. if you win, you go back and start preparing for the next game. so you know, the idea of having bowls co-existing is really, that's a pretty naive thought. If we had something different, if we had a playoff, it would change dramatically what we have right now and I think there's too many people in high places that don't want to change what we have right now." # # # "For the average fan, they probably don't care about the student-athlete experience or the fact that a bowl trip might be the ultimate experience that kid has had in his four years of college. The truth is there's 5,000 student-athletes that are playing in a bowl game every year. Half of them are getting to end the season a winner. It's usually close to a full-week experience where communities are rolling out the red carpet, and it's just an unbelievable, you know, milestone for most kids' college-football career. And these are kids that aren't going on to be professional football players, and it's something they will always remember. and that's what matters to coaches, athletic directors, university presidents when they think about the bowls. I can understand from a fan perspective, you know, that may not be the most important thing. But the people that are making the decision, they care about how this matters to students." # # # "Obviously, a true playoff gives you a national champion. But my answer has always been it's for the kids. And bowl games are for the kids. If you're in the playoff, you spend all week at your place, and if you get beat, you're done. You never experience a new place; you never see new things. For me, the key to the bowl games is you get to experience another place; you get to learn about another program. A lot of our kids never get to go to the West Coast. -Gary Patterson, TCU head coach to Sporting News Today, July 7, 2009 # # # "[The BCS] has met its objectives. It has not always been about controversy. During the 11-year period, college football has flourished. The sport has always been very popular, and now it's more popular than ever. The presidents, the athletic directors, and the commissioners decided to stay with the BCS for the next four years because it serves the game overall. The regular season has been enhanced to the point that it's the best regular season in all of sports."-John Swofford, ACC Commissioner and BCS Coordinator, July 5, 2009 "The 10 conferences and Notre Dame committed to the ESPN contract back in December. An amendment was prepared later, primarily to cover a small number of changes proposed by the bowls. July 9 is the date when the conferences can sign the amendment. The BCS is voluntary. If a conference decided it did not want to be a part of the BCS there is certainly no requirement that it do so. Obviously if certain conferences said they were not going to be a part of it, that could be a factor in its continuation--depending on which conferences, that is. -Swofford, ibid # # # "[A playoff] would diminish the bowl structure and it would reduce the number of opportunities for student-athletes to play in the postseason and that's not a good thing. If you look at college football now, it's the greatest sporting event spread over September, October, November, December and a little bit of January that the country has. A playoff would seriously diminish the regular season, as it has in college basketball. # # # "I don't think the man on the street has the full picture to evaluate ... a playoff. I don't think they begin to envision the negatives of a playoff, which would have to be 16 teams for political reasons. "Most people want to have one more game with four teams playing. That can never be. They vastly underestimate the complexity of a playoff, the fact that you have to play on the college campuses. You'd probably kill the bowl system." # # # "I don't want to sniff a playoff. The bowl system is the best thing that college football has going for it. There's a reason why college football's popularity has never been bigger." # # # "(College football) is the only sport where every single game truly matters, where you can't afford to take your foot off the pedal for even one week. Were there a playoff, the Gators -- which, like the Cardinals, clinched their division early (Nov. 8) -- could have tanked their last three regular-season games without jeopardizing their title hopes in the slightest." # # # "I am a college president or administrator and am thinking pragmatically, I would run away and hide from any playoff proposals." (A playoff) "would be the most impractical, counterproductive and risky thing the NCAA could do. I became more convinced of that than ever, watching the bowl schedule unfurl the past two weeks." # # # "Watching the NCAA Tournament has given me a greater appreciation for the current college football system because the same intensity provided during the three weeks of the NCAA Tournament is provided every week during the college football season." # # # "Even those longtime BCS critics like myself have to finally admit that the imperfect system has perfectly transformed the sport from a Saturday afternoon cookout to a national obsession." # # # "Division I-A college football has the greatest regular season in all team sports, and a playoff system would ruin that distinction." # # # "(The BCS) has been great for college football. It's not perfect, but it has been great for college football." # # # "The regular season is the main course, not some overpriced appetizer. There still might be a tidier way to settle the championship issue on the field, but don't let it come at the expense of the 12-game meat of the schedule. Want a playoff? It's taking place right now." # # # "A playoff would present as many problems as it does solutions. A playoff is politically unfeasible unless the regular season is shortened, which is financially unfeasible. A playoff could suck the life out of the regular season..." # # # "As much as coaches beat up the BCS, and I'm one of those that have been critical, I do think it's much better than the system we had when it got in place. There are a lot of really good things about the BCS, and it's got everybody talking about it right now. It's what college football wants. It wants attention, good attention, and everybody is sitting down with a pencil and a piece of paper trying to figure out how this crazy stuff is going to work." # # # "The BCS is making an effort to do three things - preserve the bowl system, create a winner on the field based on a season's work, and maintain college football as the most important regular season in all of sport. It's been incredibly successful. Controversial, and successful." # # # "The part of the sport to savor is not the finale but the regular season. In college football, every game has the fierce urgency of now. The uncertainty of what lies at the end makes the 12-game gantlet all the more nerve-wracking." The BCS provides a "common-sense solution for a seemingly intractable problem that plagued the country for decades." # # # "I coach high school football in Texas, and every year only one team ends up happy in your classification. You go the playoffs, the first round, the second round, the quarterfinals - oh how exciting for everyone. But you look at it, as soon as one of those teams gets beat, they're just forgotten. # # # "Isn't this fun? Is the way we do it really that bad? Think about it, we rarely argue about the national champion, just about the teams that ought to be talked about before we decide the national champion." # # # "The decision makers for postseason college football have to consider much more than the entertainment aspect of the sport, and in weighing all the factors carefully and repeatedly, we have concluded that the format we currently enjoy is best." # # # "I think college football has the most exciting regular season of any sport because there is not a playoff system. The whole season is a playoff system." # # # "The overriding point playoff supporters miss is that a playoff changes everything. There's nothing neat and tidy about an eight-team playoff. # # # "But here's the thing: since college football adopted the BCS as a convoluted, inexplicable method of staging a national championship game, the sport has never been more successful." # # # "This amazing season does not prove, once and for all, the crying need for a playoff system, as some have argued. It's exactly the opposite. This season is proof that a playoff would only muck up something that works, albeit works chaotically. In college football, the known is the unknown. That's what makes it unique." # # # "A playoff system would destroy college football as we know it." # # # "The argument we hear most - that college football is the only sport that doesn't have a playoff - is the best argument for keeping things the way they are. What's wrong with being unique? Why do people want college football to be like everything else?" # # # "There is no regular season that delivers like college football. In movie parlance, it's an unpredictable two-hour thrill ride. Amid all the fun, we have people yelling that the sport has to change. It needs a playoff system. Why? So the casual fans who are confused by the BCS and the angry columnists who write about college football three times a year can get finality. So the next time someone complains about a ‘BCS mess' or you hear the inane ‘the BCS shouldn't have a ‘C' in it' comment, roll your eyes, shake your head and smile. You know better." # # # |
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