- Bowls have no risk because teams are obligated to buy unsold tickets.
- Unsold tickets cost teams millions annually (subsidizing the bowls).
- 104 of 120 FBS athletic departments run a deficit.
- Athletic department deficits are subsidized by student fees and university funds (taxpayers).
- Cash strapped universities cut research budgets but continue to buy unsold tickets for the privilege of going to a bowl game.
- The leaders of these universities refuse to change to a more profitable system that would alleviate the burden on students and taxpayers.
How does this make any sense at all??
Take a look at “The Bowls: Silly Extravagance or Worthwhile Tradition?” And then consider all the corruption recently revealed at the Fiesta Bowl, with the silly $1 million fine imposed by the BCS as a pseudo punishment. Yet the Fiesta Bowl is sitting on a surplus of $15+ million as a non-profit organization? Please.
It’s time college football did something right and abandoned this nonsense that is the bowl system. All it does is put more money in the pockets of fat, greedy ass holes who go on cruises and play golf and hold one event a year as “work”. And they are subsidized by us, the taxpayers.
It’s time to start a playoff that keeps teams at home for the first few rounds, eliminating wasted travel costs and bolstering local economies of teams that earn their keep on the field.
It’s time to stop setting the example of greed and corruption in college football.
It’s time to re-introduce fair play and sportsmanship as desirable qualities in college football.
Do something about it – send your leadership an email now and let them know you demand change!
College football fans, now is the time to demand a change in the system. Do you really want the amateur sport you love to be ruined by corruption, greed and abuse by people in power? Use our system to email people involved with your favorite team and tell them you demand a change. Don’t like playoffs? Fine. Just tell them this bowl racket has got to go.
Fiesta Bowl saga strong reminder that BCS system invites corruption
What a joke this whole Ohio State situation is. Here’s a must-read column from Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel.
Why bother having rules at all if nobody cares about following them?
Love him or hate him, Mark Cuban is a smart guy. It will be interesting to see if this guy can get a playoff going in spite of all the century-old road blocks in college football.
Alright so the latest buzz around college football is conference expansion. Will the Big Ten move to 14 or 16 teams? Will the PAC Ten follow suit? You’ve heard it all before. But what I want to know is how would any conference alignment changes impact a potential playoff.
This *could* be a step in the right direction for a playoff to occur organically. By organically, I mean without lawmaker interference. I think pretty much everyone would prefer that playoffs evolve this way, as opposed to the government getting involved. Right?
So let’s look at one scenario that could work out well for us playoff junkies: Four 16 team super conferences. Suppose it just happens and suspend disbelief for a moment. This could be a great segway to a playoff, and here’s why.
First of all, Conference Championship games could be a natural 1st round of playoffs, with 4 Regional Champions that emerge. Well, with 4 teams you have a quick and easy group for a Semi-finals and Championship game to follow. Each entrant would have earned their spot on the field. Opinion polls wouldn’t factor in at all. Good teams that did not emerge as a Conference Champ would be available for bowl games.
The only problem is equal access for all Division 1 Bowl Subdivision teams. I don’t like the idea of exclusionary playoffs any more than the exclusionary BCS. The media wouldn’t like this solution, but screw them – they don’t care about the actual sport, they care about their next pay check. If 16 team conferences become the norm, why restrict it to just 4 conference champions being entered in the new national playoff? I think any conference made up of 16 D1 FBS teams should have the champion of the conference championship game be included automatically.
Today, there could be a maximum of seven 16-team super conferences. Yes, there’s a remainder, but let’s just suppose for simplicity’s sake that there are a couple of 18 team conferences. A seven team playoff in college football would NOT be too much for people to handle, I don’t imagine.
PlayoffPAC has done it again. This time it is their 2011 BCS playoff bracket that makes a powerful statement in a very simplistic way. Great job!
Source: PlayoffPAC
There are some interesting quotes in this article about last year’s BCS distributions. College football really is about the student athlete, not the money, to all the top dogs in the BCS… and if you believe that, I have some high quality air to sell you for every penny you’ve got.
It’s really a question of value, says WAC Commissioner Karl Benson. When a Utah shocks an Alabama or a Boise State stuns an Oklahoma, doesn’t that demonstrate the value of those teams and conferences to the BCS? Shouldn’t the payout to the conferences like the WAC and the Mountain West that send teams to the BCS look like the payout to the big six conferences?
No, responds Harvey Perlman, chancellor at the University of Nebraska and chairman of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee. He says there’s a difference between playing well in a game and demonstrating the kind of value that drives long-term media contracts.
“Those teams have certainly performed well, but you’re talking about adding value,†Perlman said. “The real question is whether including those conferences when you negotiate a TV contract adds to the willingness of the network to increase the bid. I don’t think we’ve seen evidence that that’s true.â€
Playoffs may or may not happen magically overnight, when we least expect it. In the meantime, we’re looking at ways to move the ball along through regular channels.
As such, WeDemandPlayoffs.com is pursuing the possibility of starting a bowl game that is played at the home stadium of one of the two participating teams. Here are the advantages we see:
- More fans can attend the bowl game
- More tickets sold, concessions, etc means more revenue
- Less travel expense for one of the teams
- Overall higher profitability for participating conferences and institutions than lower-tier bowls where both teams travel to poorly attended games
Granted, teams that travel extremely well to any bowl game to which they are invited wouldn’t necessarily find the above to be strong advantages. However, there aren’t too many teams that completely sell out all their bowl games, so we think this model could work.
You may be wondering why we are considering trying to start a bowl game, if we are pro-playoffs and hate the bowl system. The answer to that question is that we believe this could be a stepping stone to show University Presidents how profitable home games in the post-season could be for them. And if the model is more profitable, perhaps they will be more motivated to look “outside the box” for college football, as opposed to being dogmatic about “tradition”.
What do you think of our idea?
So says Bill Hancock, executive director of the Bowl Championship Series. You gotta read this article – Hancock has some incredible quotes that speak volumes to how little the BCS cares what the fans want. Hancock should simply wear a tshirt around with “F you, football fans” on it. His message would be the same.
Well guess what, Bill? We aren’t buying the crap you’re selling anymore. We want playoffs and we’re going to get them. Your big salaries and the big salaries of your bowl buddies are in jeopardy, but we’re going to win.
“The BCS is fair,†Hancock said. “People call it criminal, a cartel and unfair, and the fact is, it’s not. It’s fair.â€
If it’s so fair and wonderful, why are you spending money on big-time lobbyists in Washington DC, Bill? You shouldn’t have anything to worry about if the BCS is so great.
The Boise State Broncos are the 2009-2010 college football bowl subdivision national champions. Congratulations Bronco nation!
We’ll give #2 to Alabama, who played a decent game last night in the BCS championship game, but just didn’t prove they could beat Boise State. To you, Alabama, we say congratulations on a great season.
To Boise State, we say congratulations on your national championship!!!