Utah Attorney General Investigating BCS for Violation of AntiTrust Laws
 

Figure this deserves it's own thread.

The Associated Press: Utah AG: BCS may violate antitrust laws

Technically I think he could have a case. You have to show there is a conspiracy for a monopoly, which the BCS clearly is. However, those conferences do agree in a way to having themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

I am in favor of anything that brings about a playoff.

I believe all of the conferences signed on to the latest agreement which allowed for the other conferences to have an automatic bid.

But, this seems like it might be the most logical legal argument.

While certainly unlikely, I think saying that they never would get a shot at the title is a little misguided.

What's the best he's going to do? Expand the BCS bowls so every conference in 1A football gets an auto bid? You can't file an anti-trust action on how computers rank things and voters vote.

I've been wondering for a while how long it was going to take for this to happen. The BCS conferences have essentially invited this type of action.

To me the biggest obstacle they will face is that they have agreed to be a part of the BCS and agreed to be treated like second-class citizens.

That said, I like their chances and this is the time and place to do it. And barring the SEC, Big 12, ACC and Big East telling the Rose Bowl Parade to cram it with walnuts and start their own playoff, this is the best way to get one.

If college football goes to a playoff to determine a champion, I may never watch another game.

lol...you must not watch any other sport then.

They have multiple examples of undefeated teams not playing the championship. And to be honest, I can't think of a single scenario that would have a non-BCS school in the title game.

How is that done by the conferences conspiring? After all, Utah got an auto bid into the BCS. It just wasn't voted in to the top 2. Like I said, the best thing they can hope for is more automatic slots into BCS bowls.

The tradition and meaning of the bowls is something unique to Division I-A college football and gives it a flavor and richness that would be lost if it went to a playoff.

When over half the teams go to a bowl, that richness is very diluted.

I used to think the same way. However, tradition has been gone for a while.

LSU got in last year with 2 losses. If another situation like that could possibly happen again and somebody like Utah is sitting there undefeated, I think it's gonna be harder and harder to ignore them. Hawaii just isn't the kind of team that's going to make voters put them into the title game. The team that breaks through is going to have built up previous amounts of credibility to do it.

Well, I was speaking more of the richness of tradition. That said, I don't think 6-6 should be bowl-eligible. In my opinion, if you don't have a winning record, you don't deserve to go to a bowl game.

You don't have to get rid of the bowls to have a playoff.

Except that pretty much every bowl would still be in place in every playoff system I have heard proposed. Even the most outlandish playoff systems only go to 16 teams, and 60-plus FBS colleges go to bowls every year.

Did anybody look at Utah's schedule this year? LSU with two losses is still a better showing than that crap of a schedule that Utah played.

Ole Miss would make Utah their bitch.

Not a Alabama fan at all, but the Tide did beat Ole Miss and win the Division that the Rebels compete with 'Bama in.

Didn't Utah handle one of these teams pretty easily just a handful of days ago?

So, does that mean if Florida beats Oaklahoma that Ole Miss is the National Champs since they beat Florida? If Oaklahoma wins is Texas on top...et.

Its one big circle jerk.

I mean Ole Miss vs Utah now, not six weeks ago. Bring on the Yutes.

We'll just call it a grudge match.

:lol:

AP Top 25
4. Alabama 12-1 1,410
11. TCU 10-2 921
17. Brigham Young 10-2 477
24. Oregon State 8-4 163

I wouldn't say that's all that horrible.

But seriously, Utah's claim they should be in the title game should be answered with, go back and add some decent teams to your schedule and then come back and talk to us.

First of all, take Bama off, that was not a regular season game. Seriously, TCU and BYU? Both of those teams are getting a fluff bump from their pitiful easy schedules. Any BCS conference team played a schedule that is twice as tough. Let Utah face LSU, Florida, Oaklahoma State and any other mid BCS team in their schedule and I bet they end up with a loss and probably two.

Utah actually played a pretty tough schedule. I think their schedule is better than what some SEC teams played this year.

In all honesty, I do agree that Utah is a very good team. But they are not playing a top tier schedule. They did a good job in beating bama. My real point is that most BCS conference teams play a tougher schedule year over year. It makes sense to rate a one loss BCS team over Utah with the current schedule.

Or of course, go with the tourney !!

Also lol at handled easily.

At the same time, LSU had Appalachian State, Troy, and North Texas scheduled. Oh yeah, and Tulane. Another win came against an awful Miss St. team.

I'm not sure what game you watched, but I'd call what Utah did handling the Tide pretty easily. Bama was within one score for a grand total of 1 minute 37 seconds in the second half. They were outgained 349-208 and averaged a whopping 3.4 yards a play for the game.

As for Utah's schedule, I'm not sure what you expect them to do. They played in the big house this year and it's not like it was their fault that the game they scheduled 5 or 6 years ago ended up being against the worst Michigan team in the last fifty years. They played a solid PAC10 team at home in Oregon State.

Look, they clearly surprised Bama. Bama was also not mentally into the game. They were deflated about the Florida game and their star tackle was out. But don't sit here and blame Utah for that. They did what they had to do all season long. I don't think there is a chance in hell that they'd be undefeated if they played in the Big 12 or SEC.

I also don't think they'd hold up in a playoff system if they had to play 3 straight games against teams like LSU, USC, Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio State or Florida.

Despite that opinion, I'd sure as hell love to see them get the chance.

I'd be fine with keeping the status quo and instead, creating a mid-major tournament that would eliminate all of the silly second-tier bowls. Like the NIT National Championship or something.

How do you figure Ole Miss does that? Alabama is the 2nd best team in the SEC and they were destroyed by Utah.

And Utah plays the best out of conference schedule they can. It wasn't their fault that Michigan had one of their worst years. They can't help it that the teams in their conference don't recruit as well. I guarantee you that top schools will avoid Utah. Good luck finding a single powerhouse that will travel on up to Utah.

I'd also point out that the Mountain West is not that bad. After the bowls are all over, they'll end up being the 4th ranked conference in football this year. TCU is a strong team that lost both their games to top 5 teams. Their defense is arguably one of the best in the nation. They also beat a team that was one half away from winning the Pac-10.

But this is why the system sucks. Not only do you have to win your games, but you have to pray that the teams you play end up being good. It's the only sport out there where your fate is determined by how the teams on your schedule fare. USC is not in the title game because people believe the teams on their schedule didn't play as well as the ones on Floridas or Oklahomas. The same goes for Penn State, Texas, and Texas Tech.

Maybe USC should help their rivals like UCLA recruit better players so they have a shot at the national championship in the coming years.

Did you watch the game? Utah completely dominated Alabama's offense. They held them to 200 yards and 10 points. 8 sacks and 3 forced turnovers. Utah's offense moved the ball at will and put up 31 points on the "vaunted Alabama defense".

While the scoreboard at times might have looked close, this game was a dominating win for Utah from start to finish.

They run into the same problems that Boise has. No one will play them. I guarantee you that they'd jump at the chance to have a home and home with Florida or USC. Unfortunately, the powerhouses have learned not to schedule those teams.

They are! We already took one, and are angling for more. ;)

Of course, they took a couple from us earlier this season, and a couple of our recruits are visiting there this month.

Yeah. What's stopping all the smaller leagues from forming their own playoff series. Its not like someone from the MAC will play for the BCS title any time soon.

Why not just create a new division for those teams then since they are not allowed to win the D1 title? Then those 6 conferences can just play each other all year since they don't believe the other conferences count.

Thats the way it should be.

Then the 4 big conferences out of those 6 will setup a new structure to keep the money out of the other two conferences. This will go on and on till there is one or two conferences left.

I'm sure that's exactly what would happen.

I'd agree with this but those decent teams won't schedule teams like this. It's the same in basketball. BCS teams won't schedule quality power mid-majors for this very reason. They might lose. How many times will you ever see Ohio State or Florida or Oklahoma play at Utah? You won't. Utah would be lucky to get an out of conference away game against those teams much less a home game.

ESPN did a great segment with Fresno State years ago after a couple succesful seasons. They went through how hard it was for them to schedule teams. They finally landed USC which was enormous to them. But the whole segment was them trying to get games against any major conference school who would play them and consistently getting shot down.

In fact, I think Wisconsin's trip to Fresno this year is the first time a ranked out of conference foe has ever traveled to Fresno. Something like that. It was a huge deal out there to them.

Maybe the key is for the BCS to force some of the scheduling. I don't know, anything that is done is a patch as playoffs are avoided.

Nice to see this thread descend into the usual people claiming SEC teams rule over all.

Go Utah's AG. Sixteen team (11 conference champs, 5 wild cards) playoff please.


One person? The SEC haters on this board crack me up, such persistence. Even better that they're usually Big Ten or Big East fans.

Why don't they just crown the SEC champion as National Champion?

Crown their ass!

So lets look to 09...I will use BYU because they just announced their OOC schedule for 09.

BYU will play...

Oklahoma
Florida State
Tulane

plus the MWC schedule..

Hypothetical what if here....So if they run the table like Utah did, you are saying that a 2 loss LSU or Florida or Texas would still be better because of the conference they are in?

I mean, that is what I am hearing sprinkled throughout this thread....

I hate Utah as much as any other, my bias to them is now one of my best friends from high school is their DC and called one hell of a game against Alabama. But truly and honestly, they deserve the #1 because they are undefeated and they beat some great teams to get there.

And one other thing, we know Michigan wasn't that great, but Utah still went up to their place and won there as well.

Strength of Schedule doesn't mean anything? Because if you look at the computer SOS, Utah is a good deal behind Oklahoma or Florida (or Texas & USC for that matter).

It is definitely a component, but not the biggest. If you also look at the overall computer rankings, Utah is #3 or #4 in most.

Which, of course, means they wouldn't be in the NC game anyways ;).

Though, according to the final BCS Computer standings:

College Football BCS Standings, NCAA College Football BCS Standings, NCAA Football BCS Standings - ESPN

Utah was 5th with the computers.

If I was an AP voter, I'd vote for Utah just to fuck with things. Feinstein wrote a great column too.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...010600092.html

But if you look at their schedule, it's not that bad. They beat 4 ranked teams, including the 2nd best teams in the SEC and Pac-10. They beat a TCU team which is a top 10 team with maybe the best defense in the country. They also went into the Big House and beat Michigan.

And I think we've seen that many of these power conferences are nowhere near as good as we thought. The Big 12 has not been impressive at all in the postseason. In fact, the Pac-10 has had a great bowl run and that is a conference that got whooped up on by the MWC.

Then again, that is the problem with college football. The championship isn't determined by players, but perception of those players. We have this perception that the Big 12 and SEC were the best conferences in football. In actuality, they probably weren't.

If college football goes to a playoff I'll actually watch postseason games that do not involve my team.

So did Toledo.

I wish they figured out presidential elections using the BCS. I mean, when you use another lens, you see how absurd all of this conversation is.

If Utah played in a better conference, they'd likely recruit the same sorts of kids they do, plus get more blue chippers. Folks act like they'd just lose their commitment to succeed if they played against bigger schools and would wilt.

Two coaches at the schools that have won BCS games, Boise State and Utah, have gone on to the SEC and Big XII and have proven they know how to recruit, know how to coach at a high level and build programs. They're not the exceptions to the rule, either.

NCAA Basketball proven the point, that if you give these schools a chance to compete, they're going to find a way to compete, because parity is a bitch these days. Not as much in football as in basketball, but...cohesiveness and talent can be talent and arrogance on any given Saturday.

I think the barrier to a "NIT" type tournament amongst the mid-majors is simple. There isn't anyway they'd generate much money to do that. You'd have to make it a tournament that includes, say, a jilted team that doesn't get included in the BCS and then let the mid-majors play too.

Separating the BCS from say, the rest of college football isn't gonna happen. These schools still belong to NCAA Division I-A (BCS) and the NCAA schools won't create a separate division for those big-time schools to separate themselves further, nor will the existing conferences.

That should take place Thursday night around, I dunno, close to midnight eastern time.

One of the reasons I don't feel the least bit bad about these teams is because they're just as much about money as big ol' meanies in the BCS conferences that everyone hates for being all about money. The difference is they want to ride the coattails of these teams to a big payday and are willing to take whatever drops down their way except when they feel they have some sort of case and thats when they jump up and down screaming about just wanting a chance.

If they want a playoff, then break away from the BCS leagues. They want a piece of the BCS money, though, which exists because of the BCS leagues and would exist even if you removed the non-BCS conferences from the equation.

What are their options though? The BCS conferences have the majority. It's collect their table scraps or be out in the cold.

They really don't have options, though. They're part of conferences for sports other than football and so, really, there isn't much they can do.

Basketball has 1 division for D1. Football already splits those same teams into two divisions.

Welcome to Hollywood. Those table scraps are better than the most of the programs could muster on their own regardless of championship format.

The cold hard truth is that the many of the non-BCS teams are Division 1 football in name only and outside of all the boohooing about their poor fates hardly anybody gives a damn about the teams. Consider this: Michigan's average attendance for a single home game was more than the total attendance for the entire season for 21 of the 120 teams in the bowl subdivision. And those aren't all teams hurt at the gate by a bad season or small stadiums, a couple of them went bowling and only a couple were hitting 80% capacity. These are teams that hardly anybody gives a damn about & could drop football entirely tomorrow and leave a hole in D1 equivalent to the one you leave when you remove your elbow from a bucket of water.

http://web1.ncaa.org/mfb/2008/Intern...ATTENDANCE.pdf

People who want to improve college football a little bit ought to spend their time demanding that the chaff be culled away instead of wasting time crying about something they have no control over. As long as people continue to watch and everybody's getting paid, nobody really gives a damn about all the hooha.

Technically 3 divisions. I-A, I-AA and I-AAA is the designation for schools that are D-1 and don't play football.

The simplest way to eliminate all this arguing about schedules?

Dump the chaff out of the top division.

8 divisions of 8 teams each, the top 64 schools get in. Conferences can either retain current names or they can revamp it all from the ground up.

16 team playoff (top 2 teams by record and tie breaks from each conference) seeded by the voters/computers 15 bowl games rotate through with the big 3 bowl games always being the semi finals and championship.

The 65th team on down that are currently div I create a new division entirely and run the same way.


Schedules become moot points because with only 63 other teams you're eligible to play you can't create a shit schedule, you have to play the stronger schools.

Regular season is 10 games, 7 conference games, 3 out of conference games.

perfect world. No one ever confuses who the champions are or should have been at any point.


Sadly, I'm thinking rationally and this is of course never be allowed to happen because it actually makes sense and would work.

I don't see what attendance has to do with determining a champion on the field. If that's how you want to determine who can play in championships, why bother playing the season at all? Just see what team can fill up a stadium with the most people and call it a year.

I don't think you have to go that far. I think conferences are important and maintain traditional rivalries. I think what people are looking for is a system that allows all teams to have a shot at a championship in one way or another. D1 College football is the only sport where you can win every game you play and not be a champion.

And in college basketball you can lose every single regular season game in most conferences and still end up in the tournament that determines the national champion.

College basketball's tournament is a slight upgrade from rolling dice to determine the winners.

Playoffs just don't work with the number of teams in D1.

This is precisely why I posted what I did. Streamline the top level of the second greatest sport in this country and make it mean something again. its utter garbage right now when it comes down to the value and tradition that it used to hold.

College football doesn't have a conference tournament, so your scenario would never play out. The comparision between the two sports is kind of silly. Compare it to FCS, D2, or D3 that have no problems with an exciting playoff system.

Then don't pull other sports and their tournaments into the discussion.

I'm going to take a leap of faith here & figure you aren't being obtuse on purpose, that you really don't see how this could trickle down. Eliminating the pseudo-D1 football programs - teams that don't draw and that relatively no one gives a damn about - from the picture will force either consolidation of conferences or the return of a significant number of independent teams with greater schedule flexibility. Combine either one with a limit of one non-FBS game per year and you start improving both the strength of schedule for the remaining (current) non-BCS conferences/teams and their perception as well.

I could see where an unbeaten Utah who ran the table against the better programs of a combined WAC/MWC might at least be worthy of a longer look than they get (or deserve) now. Better still, the shake up could lead to the addition of teams to conferences that could use them.

Even if you shrink the number of teams down, you'll still have haves and have nots in the league. This time the have-nots won't be the Atlantic Sun and the MAC, but the ACC and Big East. You'll then just have scenarios where a Big East school will have a great year and not get a chance because they don't play in a better conference.

The problem with the system isn't the number of teams, it's the fact that Jay Mariotti has a bigger say in who wins the National Championship than the players who play the games.

Fine, what is so horrible about the way the FCS, D2, or D3 crown their champions?

Here's an Orlando Sentinel columnist who has far more patience than I do in explaining what I was talking about earlier.
http://web1.ncaa.org/mfb/2008/Intern...ATTENDANCE.pdf

I will give mild props to Oklahoma. They seem willing to pay quality non-BCS schools (though do they ever go on the road to play them?). Nice to see Florida State coming to Provo.

How much impact do you think that television coverage has on voting and such? The big powers have national and regional television deals that carry multi games each week.

And the not-big-powers have more TV exposure than they've ever had, so if anything they're closer to the powers than ever before.

I believe (and please correct this if needed) that among each and every NCAA team sport at each Divisional Level, any team within that division is eligible to compete in the season ending playoff/tournament if they qualify by winning their conference title or receive a at-large bid.

The only exceptions to this concern schools that either choose not to participate (ex; Ivy League Football not competing in the FCS Playoffs), schools that are not yet eligible due to recently changing competition levels within the NCAA's Divisions, or schools that have been deemed ineligible due to punishment for prior rules infractions.

Now it is true that in the vast majority of cases certain teams and/or conferences rarely advance far in National Championship Playoff/Tournament competitions, but the opportunity does exist nonetheless. The Campbell Camels for example, have a shot to win the national title in any sport they compete in no matter the long odds they face.

This format exists in every level of every NCAA Team Sport minus one.. FCS (I-A) Football.

This is (and will continue to be unfortunately) the problem, imho.

That's a nice spreadsheet.

Why does TV exposure and attendance play any role in what system they use to determine what team is best?

One of the AAA baseball champions could, in theory, beat any major league club in a given game or even series. Does that make them "the best team"?

What I'm getting at here (I think) is that, to be blunt, most of the non-BCS schools are D1 in name only or on paper only. I was advocating bringing the the paperwork in line with that reality.

edit to add: More in line with your actual question here, because TV exposure & attendance are what pay the bills for this entertainment-as-a-marketing too.
You want to know who is purely the best, stick 'em on a sandlot somewhere & let 'em run routes to the Buick.

A AAA team is not in the same league as the other teams. It instead is like saying the Devil Rays are not eligible for postseason play because their attendance and TV ratings are not very good. Therefore the Yankees get their playoff spot.

The divisions are already setup with a set of rules. If you want to make the rules harder, so be it, but I don't think that changes anything. You still have the Jay Mariottis of the world deciding your championship. You just have less teams he can put on his ballot.

But the high school teams have distinct lines that separate them into divisions in order to allow teams with similar sizes to compete at the same level. College football doesn't have anything like that and for some reason people seem to think that just because Middle Tennessee State is D1-FBS by name then they should have a legit shot at playing for the national title when instead they should be questioning why the hell they're D1-FBS to begin with.

Its been said at least 100 times on this board that there are too many teams in D1-FBS to have a playoff that would be in any way an improvement over the current system.

Cut the number of D1-FBS teams and then it begins to make sense. Until then people just want a playoff for the sake of having a playoff. It doesn't fix anything, just makes the pro-playoff crowd feel at ease.

NCAA Division I FCS Consensus Mid-Major Football National Championship - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think there's a lot less tolerance for a team whining about being ranked 9th rather than 3rd.

And 100 times it has been wrong. 1-AA/FCS, D2 and D3 all run playoff systems. These are teams with fewer scholarships, less money and fewer fans, yet somehow they run a playoff system under the same academic constraints as 1-A/FBS.

At least Jon has a legitimate argument (that the Big 5 conferences are on a different level than the smaller FBS schools), but while it's certainly true for revenue generation and talent level for the majority of non-BCS schools (you're MTSU's and MAC schools), it falls apart a little bit with the team in question. Between Utah, BYU and TCU, the MWC has 3 teams that could step on the field and compete in any conference in the country, and they didn't have any doormats worse than the PAC-10 and the state of Washington. Utah also played multiple teams from BCS conferences.

Yes, setting up some 8/12 team playoff would need some careful thought, and guaranteeing spots to undefeated non-BCS schools would just ensure they played cupcake non-conference schedules, but please stop pretending there are too many teams in FBS, or it would take away from academics, or it would cost too much.

Why though? There are a similar number of teams in other divisions of college football. They all have playoffs and a system that crowns a champion with no complaints.

Because hardly anyone cares enough to complain.

Or because when UMass or Georgia Southern is "shafted", they were the 3rd or 4th best team in the conference and lost multiple times.

They also don't get their systems broken down and criticized throughout the year because no one gives a shit about them.


Jon's argument and my argument are nearly identical. There are too many schools that have no business in D1-FBS so creating a playoff to cater for the small handful of schools that can compete with the mid-tier of a BCS conference once every 3-4 years (at best) creates more problems than it solves.



Yes, the could compete for a mid-tier bowl once every 3-4 years. TCU was only ranked because they ran through their D2 quality schedule and voters really have no idea how to put their accomplishments in perspective, but feel a need to rank them soley based on their record. BYU's biggest accomplishments were beating the 8th and 10th teams in the PAC-10. Utah played the game of their lives against Alabama, but showed absolutely nothing during the season that would lead anyone to believe they'd finish in the top half of the SEC.


I never mentioned acadmenics. I never mentioned cost. Don't bring them into the argument in order to prop up your own views.

You want to take a handful of teams and create a system that allows them to compete with the BCS conference schools in the postseason even though they play vastly inferior opponents throughout the regular season. The teams they beat up on shouldn't be in D-1 FBS because they can't compete yet you want to falsely boost their accomplishments to put them on the field with teams that have more talent and more resources just to see what would happen.

I have no problem with Utah, BYU, TCU, or anyone else getting a shot in a playoff if they played against the same level of opponents the other schools did to get there. That isn't going to happen as long as there's 119 teams in D1-FBS and those teams get to beat up on teams from the bottom 30 all season.

For the record, there are massive problems with the D3 playoffs and they all have to do with money.

The brackets have nothing to do with the top teams playing each other, geography wins out every time. This year, a 1 and a 2 seed played each other in the first round of the bracket, solely because they were close to each geographically.

If it were like this at the FBS level, folks would riot. So really, a playoff isn't always the answer. Especially as far as the NCAA is concerned. Just FYI.

I don't think travel costs would be a problem at the BCS level. They would generate more than enough revenue to cover them.

The D2 playoffs aren't perfect either. There was a ruckus over the second-place team in a conference making the playoffs but the conference champ didn't. In D2, 24 teams make the playoffs. The teams ranked #22 and #23 in the national poll didn't make it, but the #24 team did (the same team that finished second in its own conference). The #24 team was granted the spot that could have been awarded to #22 or #23.

So, adding in a couple of other facts, here's the scenario: A D2 team goes 9-2 in the regular season. Their wins include a victory over a D3 team, as well as a win over an NAIA team by 2 points, and they had to block a short field goal attempt on the last play to win it. They got blown out in a conference matchup in the second half of the season, and they lost their season finale at home. They finished second in their conference, ended up 7-2 against D2 competition, and they still got in over two higher-ranked teams that were eligible for that playoff spot.

Why don't many people know that story, and why doesn't anybody care about it? It's D2. Nobody cares except fans of that conference and fans of the two higher-ranked teams that got snubbed. Just because there are playoffs in other divisions doesn't mean that it's necessarily the right system.

Any system where a conference winner does not get a chance is broken. That's a stupid selection system in D2 if that happened. I still can't believe the BCS does this occasionally (I'm looking at you, Nebraska...)

You know. I think a soccer style relegation system would be just the ticket for college football.

Take each division starting from the top down.

Create 64 team *conferences/divsions/groups whatever you choose to name them. Divide those teams into 8 conferences of 8 teams each. Each team plays a 10 game schedule made up of their conference teams and 3 other teams from the same level. NO TEAM may play a team not within their grouping. This eliminates candy ass scheduling.

Do this with every grouping of 64 teams ranked in quality all the way down to the ultimate crap at the very bottom of the community college levels.

Now at the end of each season the chaff at the bottom of each division (1 team each) gets relegated down a subdivision and the winner of the corresponding conference at the lower level moves up.

It creates competitive demand for talent on every level. It creates much stronger competition to win every game because if you finish last, you move down and lose out on money.

The top tier is your big boys and they play in the bowl games laid out in a playoff format as I described earlier.

Pure communism driven by capitalism, the good of the many created by the greed of the many.

Thoughts?

Promotion/relegation is just silly talk.

If I were a fan of that conference champion, I'd be pretty pissed off about it.

To add to the story, the conference champion won its last 5 games by an average margin of 20 points. During that 5-game stretch, they defeated both teams that beat the second-place team. So you have the conference champion on a hot streak, and you have a second-place team that lost two of its last four (one of those in a blowout). The conference winner's overall record was 8-3, the second-place team's was 9-2, but 2nd place did play lower-level competition.

Really, the only reason that the conference champ didn't get in was because they suffered a "bad" loss early in the season. They lost on the road to a very new D2 program by 7 points. Still, when you finish the season strong by destroying teams in your own conference and you win the conference outright, you should at least get consideration. The selection committee didn't even give them half a thought.

In case anyone is still following my stupid story (and I don't really expect anyone to be), the second-place team did beat the eventual conference champ by 5 points early in the season. Still, when you look at how the seasons ended for both teams and the levels of competition each played, it does look a little odd.

And, finally, full disclosure: The conference is the WVIAC, the champ was Glenville State, and the playoff team was Seton Hill. I'm a big Seton Hill fan, so I was happy... until they got blown out 48-7 in their second-round playoff game.

Right, so for example, Eastern Michigan. Not a real Div IA team, let's be honest. Not one at all.

I'm as much of a fan of the WVIAC as anyone, and I recently had a job interview at UPJ, but the rating system it uses not only confuses people, but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't get much respect from those choosing the finalists.

I'm not 100% certain on this, but D2 has different rules for their playoff structure. It's setup regionally, primarily to reduce travel costs. I also didn't think D3 or NAIA games counted. Only games against D2 teams. Basketball does it this way. In fact, they only count games within the region.

Still, the system does have errors, but they are nowhere near as serious as the BCS. You won't come across teams that go undefeated and don't have a chance to win a championship. Teams who are left out are typically fringe teams that don't have a legitimate chance at winning a title.

Every system has issues, but the playoff one has less than what we currently have.

Wow, that's an incredibly weak way to dismiss Utah's biggest accomplishment.

Well, that would be D2 altogether with the ranking system.

Yes, D2 is setup regionally. That's why I pointed out two teams specifically that were snubbed in favor of Seton Hill. IUP and Edinboro were ranked higher nationally, and Edinboro was even ranked higher regionally than Seton Hill, but Seton Hill got in through earned access. Earned access is good for some folks and bad for others.

In any case, I believe that a good number of IUP folks believed that their team had a legitimate chance at winning the title. Edinboro, maybe not so much, but I think IUP had a beef. Of course, so did Glenville State, as they watched a lower-placed team from their own conference get in over them.