We Demand Playoffs

Enough of college football preventing its fans from getting what we want! Texas, Alabama, whoever wins – we pre-emptively issue you a challenge: Put a real championship on the line in 2 weeks by facing Boise State in an unsanctioned game. Are you afraid?

Fans of college football, we urge you to let your voice be heard. Use our free email function to email your senators and congress persons and let them know you think the BCS sucks and you want to see a playoff NOW.

Boise State fans, let your voices be heard!

Our friends @PlayoffsNow issued the original challenge, and we are joining them in calling for an impromptu game between BSU and the Texas/Alabama winner.

Check it out!

This will be airing in SLC, Boise and Dallas soon, according to PlayoffPAC.

Decide for yourself when you look at the facts divulged by Brent Schrotenboer of the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Here’s the basic formula for bowl games to guarantee themselves money from tax-payer funded public institutions (and some private institutions):

• Require minimum ticket purchase by each school
• Offer guaranteed pay-out to each school, using guaranteed ticket sales as majority of pay-out
• Any losses resulting from school’s ticket sales below required allotment are transferred to schools, NOT BOWLS!

So schools lose money on everything from low-tier to BCS bowl games, while Bowl committee members and employees enjoy healthy annual paychecks and major perks. And it’s all funded by guaranteed ticket sales purchased by tax-payer funded public universities either directly or indirectly (contribution via conference affiliation).

This is why Congress should be involved in breaking up the BCS Cartel – YOU AND I ARE THE ONE BEING RIPPED OFF IN THE END!

• Ohio State was required to buy 17,500 tickets to the Fiesta Bowl last Jan. 5 but only sold 9,983, leading to a loss of $1 million for the Buckeyes and the Big Ten Conference.

• Minnesota and the Big Ten bought the required 10,500 tickets for the Insight Bowl last year in Arizona. They only sold 1,512, absorbing a loss of $434,340.

• Ball State and the Mid-American Conference bought 8,889 tickets to the GMAC Bowl in Alabama last Jan. 6 but sold only 1,431, absorbing $400,005.

• Oklahoma State and the Big 12 bought 11,000 to the Holiday Bowl last year but couldn’t sell 5,438, absorbing $318,490.

• Utah was required to buy 10,000 to the Poinsettia Bowl in 2007 (tickets at right) but sold only 2,361 and absorbed $267,365.

Congratulations on making our foes list, Glenn Dickey of the San Francisco Examiner! Your pro-bowl system views have earned you a spot of infamy with the college football playoff movement and history will mark you as one of the idiots who tried to impede progress. That’s quite a legacy to be proud of. Ahem.

Friends of playoffs, why not email your thoughts on Dickey’s column to the author? Here’s his address: glenndickey@hotmail.com

Dickey: College football bowl system works just fine

Way to go, Matt & co! Our friends at PlayoffPAC have filed a formal complaint with the Arizona Secretary of State, to investigate the Fiesta Bowl and make records public.

Hopefully this will yield more results than the Fiesta Bowl’s self-investigation, which shockingly found no wrongdoing.

Deseret News columnist, Dick Harmon, is granting pre-emptive credit to Utahns for influencing the change in college football from bowl system to playoffs.

And really, he’s right… should the BCS ever actually be toppled in favor of playoffs (please, dear god!) Several Utahns have been at the front of the BCS battles.

But you could also give some credit to politicians in Texas and California who are also fighting the BCS, right?

What do you think – if the BCS empire ever falls, will you remember Utah as being one of the major players?

Playoff Problem.com was built by the BCS group to provide information, insight and commentary about the challenges associated with a hypothetical playoff in college football.

The BCS must think the average college football fan has the intelligence of a cocker spaniel, based on all the ridiculous arguments made on PlayoffProblem.com. However, it’s thrilling to me that the BCS feels so threatened that they deem it necessary to publish propaganda in an effort to bolster their indefensible position.

You’ll get many a great laugh browsing through PlayoffProblem.com. Among my favorites:

… some have advocated for a hypothetical playoff system, which would be more controversial and contentious than the BCS.

Oh really? How convenient of you to forget to cite sources for such a claim. I’d like to see the proof. Oh wait, it’s pure conjecture and can’t be proven. And you are affiliated with America’s system of higher education? Any professor at any community college would immediately fail a paper that made unsubstantiated claims like this one. Woof woof, BCS.

Just try to create an eight-team playoff based on the latest rankings (December 6th). Should two-loss Oregon (10-2, #7) and Ohio State (10-2, #8) get in but not the other FOUR teams with two losses: Georgia Tech (11-2, #9), Iowa (10-2, #10), Penn State (10-2, #13), BYU (10-2, #14)? If you think the BCS is controversial, try sorting that out. A playoff would guarantee bigger problems, more controversy, more disappointed teams and more frustrated fans.

No source cited for this “guarantee”? Hmmm… am I detecting a pattern in my little cocker spaniel brain?

So the BCS argues that playoffs would “guarantee bigger problems, more controversy, more disappointed teams and more frustrated fans”, based on a hypothetical 8 team playoff in 2009 using an undefined selection criteria to create the illusion of playoff insanity. Surely we buy their argument, right? It is guaranteed after all.

Wait, let’s think about this for a minute. What is the BCS really saying? Isn’t the BCS saying that a situation where 4 of 6 teams with identical records NOT reaching an 8 team playoff would be WORSE than the current BCS system? That would imply that the BCS currently does not exclude teams with identical records, right? Because if the BCS does currently exclude teams under similar circumstances, how would it make sense for them to conclude that the same situation in a different system would be “worse”?

Let’s look to see if teams with identical records to BCS #1 and BCS #2 have ever been excluded from the BCS championship game (we already all know there are countless examples, but I might as well document a few since I believe in using facts, unlike the BCS). And to compare apples to apples, let’s look at how many teams have been excluded from a BCS bowl while having an “as good as” or better record than other BCS bowl participants.

2009 Championship Alabama vs Texas, both with 13-0 record
12-0 or 13-0 teams excluded: Cincinnati, Boise State, TCU
Others excluded from BCS bowls with 10-2 or 11-2 records: Penn State, Brigham Young
Total teams excluded: 5 (Dear BCS: ruh roh! Signed, Scooby Doo)

2008 Championship Oklahoma vs Florida, both with 12-1 record
Teams with 12-1 or better record: Utah (12-0 –WTF??), Texas (11-1), Southern California (11-1), Penn State (11-1), Alabama (12-1)
Others excluded from BCS bowls with 9-4 or better record (Virginia Tech at 9-4 in Orange Bowl): Georgia Tech, Ball State, Western Michigan, West Virginia, Pitt, TCU, Brigham Young, Iowa, Northwestern, Michigan State, Oregon, Oregon State, California, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Georgia, Mississippi, Tulsa, Rice, Boise State (12-0!!)
Total teams excluded: 27

Virginia Tech automatically qualified for the Orange Bowl in 2008 with a 9-4 record. There were 22 other teams with at least as good a record that were entirely excluded from a BCS bowl game. Among teams invited to BCS bowls, 5 had at least as good a record as the BCS #1 and #2 teams that played for the BCS title.

Is the BCS really trying to use an argument that teams with similar records being excluded from playoffs will be WORSE than the current BCS system??? Not only does the current BCS system exclude teams with identical (or better) records, but it does so on a larger scale. So how exactly do “playoffs guarantee bigger problems, more controversy, more disappointed teams and more frustrated fans” again? Please explain, BCS.

So what do you think? Do you buy the arguments the BCS is trying to sell on their anti-playoffs website? I don’t.

Kudos to the University of Michigan and Purdue University for lobbying in favor of college football playoffs.

Meanwhile, the University of Michigan, Purdue University and the National Collegiate Athletic Association have lobbied on the separate, but similar H.R. 599, which seeks to slash federal aid to colleges participating in a Division IA college football season that lacks a head-to-head playoff.

wedemandplayoffs.com is now on Twitter.  Follow @demandplayoffs for updates on the continuing effort to establish a college football playoff system.

Since the BCS is so fond of saying Congress has more important matters to deal with besides college football, why do they spend money on lobbyists? And why do their television network partners lobby against football playoffs as well?