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.

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.

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.

Read his column here.

The first of Frohnmayer’s “fatal” flaws was the claim that the pundits and broadcasters (and presidents of the United States) were completely ignoring the academic calendar. Seriously? Let’s walk through this one more time: A college football tournament, whether it was the proposed eight teams or 12 or even 16 would require far less missed class time than the NCAA basketball tournament does in March. Most, if not all, of the games could be played in January, virtually all of them between semesters. Teams would miss less class time during the tournament than they miss during the regular season. Final words to Frohnmayer and the other 66 BCS presidents on this issue: Shut up.

You tell ‘em, John. STFU BCS a**holes!

Sure sounds like it in this Yahoo! Sports column by Dan Wetzel and Josh Peter.

Okay so let’s get this straight… the BCS wants us to believe that the bowl system should stay intact because:

• Bowl games give “tens of millions of dollars” to local charities
• Loss of economic impact on host cities would be disastrous

Don’t look now, but it appears that neither excuse is valid and it appears that the BCS reps lied about at least one of their main arguments.

The remaining 23 games enjoy tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service, but combined to give just $3.2 million to local charities on $186.3 million in revenue according to their most recent federal tax records and interviews with individual bowl executives.

Bowl games actually received more in direct government spending (almost $5.5 million) than what they gave directly to charity, according to the tax records.

Bowl games donated less to charity than they received from the government. Let that sink in for a moment.

The BCS’ main argument is a fraud. What will they say now? They have no defense. Here’s the real reason they don’t want to change:

Thompson, the Mountain West commissioner, testified that the six major conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC) received 87.4 percent of BCS revenue. In contrast, the same six conferences took home just 61 percent of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament revenue.

We, the fans, are not stupid. When will we collectively demand change?

The MWC’s playoff proposal may not be perfect, but it’s a playoff. ANY playoff system, no matter how imperfect, is light years better than the BCS. College football fans need to focus on just getting a playoff system in place, instead of nitpicking over imperfections in proposals.

4 teams, 8 teams, 16 teams or more – who cares?? 4 would lead to 8, 8 would lead to 16 and 16 might just lead to more (although it’s my opinion 16 might be the golden number in football).

The bottom line is that we need to break the BCS barrier and get any sort of playoff implemented. That is the hardest part!

Not coincidentally, it’s also the thing BCS commissioners are scared to death over:

The Bowl Championship Series last summer shot down a proposal brought by Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive that would have created a four-team playoff.

One of the reasons commissioners from the Big East, Big 12, Pac-10 and Big Ten gave for being against the so-called plus-one model Slive presented was a fear that any playoff system would inevitably expand.

From ESPN article