College Football - Goin' Bowlin'

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Naked Gents Rut
Boise is a city, not a state. The University of Idaho is the state school of Idaho.

Then what is Idaho State University?

ACK!

[Naked Gents Rut]

Idaho State isn't a land-grant university as far as I know.

[Tuberski]

Says on their web page they are a state run university.

ACK!

[Naked Gents Rut]

So what? Almost every state has multiple public universities. The "state school" is the flagship public university, which is often (but not always) a land-grant university.

[SlowwHand]

A general rule of thumb is that if it has state in the name, the state has influence.

[Naked Gents Rut]

Yes. Alcorn State, Fresno State and Chadron State all come to mind first when one thinks of the state schools of Mississippi, California and Nebraska...

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Boise State. It's state, as state is. I didn't say it was Ohio State. It's the biggest school around a rural area,though. I't sertainly not Texas/Oklahoma either; but it's still all relative.

I was hoping you weren't actually being that silly (but, yes, its all relative, which is why Boise didn't deserve a BCS slot, which is what this conversation was about in the first place), but if you are trying to make distinctions between state and private schools, there happens to be a private school that deserves to be in the BCS and is there currently. It's called "The University of Southern California".

[SlowwHand]

That's known as an exception to the rule, Imran.
Quit being so silly.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Most private schools don't shell out for football teams, and if they do, its a small portion of the budget... because people pay the extra for private school because of the education, not the sports.

However, those that do put money in tend to do somewhat decently, like Southern California, or University of Miami, or Syracuse (up until lately), or Notre Dame (again, up until lately).

I'm sure TCU spends much more than a Rice or even a Stanford.

[Naked Gents Rut]

Notre Dame is now exposing another WAC team. I hope DanS is enjoying this.

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Naked Gents Rut
Notre Dame is now exposing another WAC team. I hope DanS is enjoying this.

[SlowwHand]

I don't think you can call Southern Cal or Notre Dame representative. You can't compare them to Rice, or TCU, or Tulsa, or most. Not sustained. What about Cal-Davis? Why not throw them into the discussion against USC and Notre Dame? And they're a campus of University of California. I don't eeven know if they have a football team, but they might.

[Naked Gents Rut]

Each year, when fans, broadcasters and columnists engage in their annual hand-wringing over the lack of a college football playoff, the lords of the BCS defend their divisive system by noting a playoff would deflate the sport's uniquely gripping regular season. Playoff proponents never want to hear it.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present the living embodiment of a devalued regular season: The Arizona Cardinals. ...

Most playoff proponents refuse to believe that. Of course the regular season would still matter, they say. Alabama fans will always care about the Auburn game, Florida State fans the Florida game, regardless of record.

That may be true at first. But as with every other single-elimination sport, sooner or later, the playoffs would become the only thing that matters. As it is today, fans of all but the most woeful teams retain a vested interest until the very end due to the prospect of a bowl berth. With a playoff in place, fans would inevitably lose interest once their teams were eliminated from contention. Even if the bowls stayed in business, they'd become to football what the NIT is to basketball.

Meanwhile, the regular season would become just like the NFL's and college basketball's. Instead of revolving around the national-title race, the biggest games at the end of the season would be those involving potential wild-card or at-large teams. In college football, there's always at least one, if not several, big "national" games each week (like the ones GameDay features). With a playoff, it would be more like basketball, where there are only two truly "big" games unaffiliated fans watch in droves: The two Duke-North Carolina games. Just substitute Ohio State-Michigan and Oklahoma-Texas.

Obviously, the NFL doesn't exactly suffer because of its playoff format. Fans will not be any less interested in next September's games due to the Cardinals' presence in this year's Super Bowl. But the ebb and flow of professional football's season has been entrenched for 40-plus years. It's engrained in us that the regular season is merely a build-up to the playoffs.

For 100-plus years, it's been engrained in college football fans that every week matters, and that teams are judged on their season-long performance. The prospect of a 9-7 team (or 9-4 team, as the case may be) playing for the national championship flies in the face of the sport's entire tradition.

The single most common argument college playoff advocates make is that: "Every other sport does it." What they never bother to consider is that perhaps there's a reason college football is different than those other sports.

If the Cardinals played in college, they might have finished their season in the hometown Insight Bowl. Last month, two 7-5 teams -- Minnesota and Kansas -- played in that relatively low-profile game.

It's funny. In college, we complain when mediocre teams like the Gophers and Jayhawks are rewarded with bowl berths. In the pros, the system rewards comparable teams with a shot at the championship.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/stewart_mandel/01/22/cardinals-bcs/1.html

Amen to that.

[SlowwHand]

Did Texas or Texas Tech fans lose interest when their team was out of the championship bowl? No.
Texas vs. Oklahoma, or Texas vs. Texas A&M will always be as important as ever.
I expect the same would be true around the country. Rivalries are rivalries.
Pro level? You say no rivalries? That it doesn't matter, if the SB isn't a possibility? I disagree there, too. Dallas and Washington will forever and always have a rivalry, as will Chicago and Green Bay. There are others, college and pro, that still matter.

[Tuberski]

That may be true at first. But as with every other single-elimination sport, sooner or later, the playoffs would become the only thing that matters. As it is today, fans of all but the most woeful teams retain a vested interest until the very end due to the prospect of a bowl berth. With a playoff in place, fans would inevitably lose interest once their teams were eliminated from contention. Even if the bowls stayed in business, they'd become to football what the NIT is to basketball.

Most bowls but the big 5 are already the NIT equivalent, who's he trying to kid?

It's funny. In college, we complain when mediocre teams like the Gophers and Jayhawks are rewarded with bowl berths. In the pros, the system rewards comparable teams with a shot at the championship.

Not if they use a selection committee instead of automatic berths.

Hell if they used a selection committee, Texas,USC, and Utah would have had a chance to win the title.

ACK!