Two Republican senators move to create college playoff system......
 

This won't end well.

Thank god we have a president and Congress that stick up for the Sun Belt Conference.

God bless America.

Not Obama. Not Congress. One Republican senator.

whoops... two republicans...

looks like I'm voting Republican next election.






I can't believe I said that.

Wasn't this one of Obama's campaign pledges on Monday Night Football?

OK, that's cynical, but when the president publically states approval for something that some legislators have been blowing steam about for years, it's relevant.

don't worry, I'm sure MBBF has a source, or even more likely an article he's read attributing this action to the president. He won't give us a link despite us asking repeatedly, but he'll swear by it and condemn us all for not listening to him.

:+1:

And I'm sure there will be a lot of intellectual and insightful comments in this thread. It definitely won't be a rehash of stupid political partisanship, tired sports arguments, and childish name-calling

SI

As an aside, I wish there was a way to mark a thread as a "hot topic"- something where you get a lot of snap comments and silly one line cliches with no insight behind them. There would be 2 conditions:
-You can't submit the post until 10 minutes after you've finished typing (so no quick posting)
-Any response must be more than, say, 100 words. That way you have to actually give some nuance to your argument.

SI

Both of whom have teams that have grips about not being in the title game. I wonder how the senator from Florida feels. :lol:

What does Obama feel about the Memphis basketball team?

You could check his bracket on ESPN.com

Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon added a rider to his World Hunger Initiative preventing Major League Baseball from calling any of its games a "World Series" unless they are held in Dubai and include players from Syria and North Korea.

Hatch is obviously just looking for campaign contributions out of this, but its Obama's own fault for getting associated with this kind of stuff - he needs to stay away from college football playoff discussions, ESPN.com brackets, and The Tonight Show.

I don't know, but it's pretty clear that at least one Representative feels strongly the other way:

So will Obama put in a Notre Dame rule now? :)

I hope they go with the 11+5 playoff format but I doubt it. An eight team playoff wouldn't be too bad.

I know this is obvious and I'm just playing to him by posting this, but give it a rest MBBF. And I better not read you say that you don't play partisan politics one more time. Obama has stated that, as a football fan, he would like to see a playoff system. There is no evidence whatsoever that he is behind any attempts by congress to legislate such a system.

There's literally nothing a Republican can do or say that isn't at heart the fault of a Democrat.

LOL. It's a discussion topic. Obama has mentioned repeatedly that he'd like to see a playoff system, albeit tongue in cheek. As someone mentioned above, this will likely dive into a partisan snipe-fest where none is needed. I guess I assumed that everyone would be at least interested in the thought. I think we can all agree that a playoff system is needed, but this isn't the place for Hatch or anyone else to do it.

Well, considering you said "Obama and Congress move to college playoff system" on an article about a couple of congressmen considering it- you started the partisan snipe-fest, as you intended.

SI

This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb. This is dumb.

Both requirements met.

OK, this is just silly. That's not the way it was intended at all. There's little question that Obama would approve of a playoff system and that's the only reason that I included his name. I'd note that most agree with his opinion in that regard. If people want to bitch about politics, take it somewhere else. I thought it was interesting and little more.

Some people around here have nothing better to do than look for motives that simply are not there.

Yes, this. Well said.

My UIC meter just exploded.

There, I've edited the topic. Now we can actually discuss the topic rather than have people bitch about things I'm supposedly trying to do.

You're so full of shit, it's actually crazy.

(technically, Barton's a representative)

You could have even just said "Two members of congress" and then it would have no partisan slant whatsoever

SI

Obviously, I should have done that. Unbelievable. Might as well toss this discussion in the trash at this point.

I was hoping to get some input from some people as to the legal nature of the discussion in the bill.

Uh huh. Even GWB would have called bullshit on you.

+1


Toa ctually contribute to the discussion:

I don't think Congress should have any roll in this. Just like I didn't think they should be involved in the steroids topic in MLB. However, I do think they need to investigate the tax breaks given to colleges because of their "not for profit" status while they are pulling in millions of dollars from their sports programs (and I know that this was a topic years ago when it was in the news).

I'm not really sure why Congress is sticking their hands into professional (and now amateur) sports. I suppose they do it with other industries as well, it just gets less publicity. Having two congressman discussing this is far from it gaining much traction, but the fact is that schools could create other champsionships (I assume) such as the NIT in basketball. Someone, in theory, could go out and create a playoff style championship for college football and nothing is preventing schools from joining it. I realize it's a compeition factor, but I don't quite think this falls under any sort of anti-trust concern, particularly when the NCAA is a not for profit entity.

Of course, I'm not a lawyer, accountant, or any other profession that would actually know two shits about this topic.

I like the off-hand comment about how we can all agree that a playoff is needed. Sadly, this is still not the case (I wish it was).

I was going to latch onto that comment as well.

Several threads on this message board have proven that statement to just be blatantly false.

I heard there's some Libertarian politicians trying to ban college football because it's too violent and that sending high school kids away to a college out of state is the same thing as sending kids overseas to fight in Iraq and Afganistan.

Come on, man. You're not even trying to be honest here.

That doesn't make sense. It sounds like the very opposite of what a Libertarian would stand for.

Yep.

And I was quite prepared to make this another one of those threads but since we've established that already ... I'll just go with "somebody ought to walk over to Hatch and just slap the shit out of him while screaming 'IDIOT !' as loud as possible." He's a great reminder for me that what is ostensibly my side of the aisle has idiots that are occasionally useful as well.

I think he's kidding.

Sarcasm is lost in translation for some people when politics is involved.

I don't think a bill has been offered yet and it is not a serious effort. Senator Hatch is grandstanding for University of Utah fans that hate the BCS because their beloved school could go 25-0 in a season and not get a sniff at the championship game. Rep. Barton is doing the same to cater to University of Texas fans that feel they got screwed by the BCS process last season.

Obviously, Obama was doing the same thing during the Chris Berman interview -- even if it was clear at the time that he didn't actually mean that he would ever do anything about it as President.

Hope this spreads and increases pressure for something to be done. Just an 8 team bracket would be very exciting to handicap and venture future matchups, not to mention WATCH:)

Sarcasm or not, I just thought Libertarian was an odd choice in that sentence. It had nothing to do with my political stance.

Makes more sense, IMO, in a sport like baseball, which has a very strong anti-trust protection given to it by the government.

I hope a playoff happens and the teams that don't make it can have bowl games.

The football part or the going to Iraq and Afganistan part? As far as I know, Libertarians are all for NOT going to Iraq and Afganistan.

Oh, and I think your sarcasm detector is turned off. ;)

I think I'd like to see the big-6 conferences have their own "Division 1-A" in football and basketball, with the other conferences being bumped down a division. That might straighten a lot of this out. They could still play each other, but they should have their own championships. When you have Texas and Kentucky in the same division as Florida International (Football) and Kennesaw St (Basketball), things are never going go completely smoothly.

It was the "banning" football part.


That much is clear. :)

It is so weird to me that Kennesaw St even has a division 1 basketball team. Growing up, it was a state college that pretty much was just the local college that kids who couldn't get into Georgia Tech or Georgia State University went to. (or kids who had SAT scores too high to get into UGA) ;)

Anyhow, I don't even think they had a basketball arena back in the day, just a step up from a small gym... Now they are big time just blows my mind.

As of '05-'06 I believe they're now D1 in everything that they play, as members of the Atlantic Sun. Women's soccer got an NCAA tourney bid last year.

The big step for them for men's basketball was probably the hiring of Tony Ingle, who is a great marketer & all around hype guy and a pretty fair coach, getting them a D2 national championship in '03-'04 and then posting the second best transitional record of any program moving into D1 in the past six years (bio doesn't say who has the best record & I don't know off the top of my head)

The reason I remember Ingle is because he spent several years coaching at a high school rival back in the early 80's before moving through a series of Juco and small college jobs before going to BYU as an assistant, circa Shawn Bradley era. He also used to have his toddler sized sons put on dribbling exhibitions at halftime Hawks games and such. Those sons later played for him at KSU and now are the head coach at Gordon JC and director of basketball operations at KSU.