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Presenting... the BCS Tournament

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Old 12-01-2008, 07:29 PM   #9
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Re: Presenting... the BCS Tournament

Quote:
Originally Posted by TrevJo
I disagree with this general argument. I don't think a plus-one makes more regular season games important. You'd still have all but half a dozen teams out of national title contention with a few weeks left in the regular season. That means still an awful lot of games that aren't important in terms of the national title picture. The other thing I don't like about that argument is that it fails to recognize the importance of the games for their own sake. Games are important for lots of reasons besides national title implications... conference titles, rivalry games, bragging rights, senior days... anyone who thinks you need a small number of teams in the playoffs in order to have important regular season games, to me that person isn't thinking straight.

I think an 8-team playoff is the way to go. IMO, the important thing is to make sure the best team in the country gets a shot to play for the title in the postseason. The BCS obviously doesn't do that, the best team could easily finish #3 in the BCS rankings. I don't think a plus-one would do it either. Take this year for example, let's say Florida beats Alabama in the SEC championship game. You've got 4 seemingly equal teams--Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, USC, plus undefeated Utah and Boise State. A plus-one system wouldn't do jack to solve that problem. 8-team playoff is the way to go.
Here's the problem with the 8-team playoff... with at least this season anyway. There are currently 10 teams that are either undefeated or have 1 loss(Alabama, Boise State, Utah, Ball State, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Penn State, USC, and Texas Tech). I'm in favor of 16-team playoff that rewards all the conference champions and 5 at-large teams. Out of those 10 teams, 7 of them will be conference champions. Then, the 4 other conferences not accounted for(C-USA, Sun Belt, Big East, and ACC) get a fair addition and this puts an emphasis on every conference game being important. And lastly, there's room for 2 more at-large bids. It has the benefit of being able to earn your way into the tournament but also only allowing the top tier of teams into it.

Also, I know one of the big arguments against a tournament is possibly adding 4 more games to a 13 game schedule. I'm in favor of shortening the out-of-conference schedules to 1-2 games and then only the top 2 teams play 15 games.
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Old 12-01-2008, 07:59 PM   #10
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Re: Presenting... the BCS Tournament

while i can see the arguments against the 32-team field, it was mainly something i went with because of the number of bowl games that are already out there... the other side of that coin is that i'm not necessarily a believer that 6-6 and 7-5 BCS conference teams deserve to go to any bowl, but i want to avoid making blanket statements because every team and their schedule is different...

8-4 is a strong record regardless of conference or SOS. You're winning twice as many games as you're losing. Equivalent to 20-10, which is about where the bubble is for power conference teams in basketball. The other thing that you hear in March Madness talk is "what have you done for me lately," where between two teams with similar resumes, the team playing stronger at the end of the year will usually get the nod over the team that started fast out the gate but is stinking it up down the stretch.

I think that the regular season will still be exciting AND important if a tournament is implemented. Teams that are pretty sure they will be in should be playing for a higher seed and a chance to stay close to home. Automatic bids will be up for grabs and there will be a cut-off point no matter how many at-large teams make it. Isn't vying for the #7 BCS spot to make it in to the tourney just as important as getting the #2 spot with the current system? Both teams are fighting for a shot to prove themselves for the national title at the end of the year? If anything, there should be more excitement and competition down the stretch... a really good Texas Tech team was basically out of the picture once they lost to OU and a really good USC team has had a long outside shot (at best) for several weeks.

Let me also just say that I am a HUGE basketball fan who has been known to take work off because he orders the March Madness package on his DIRECTV and watches the ENTIRE TOURNAMENT. It is the best time of the year and I think it's incredible. There is just as much arguing over the BCS as there is over Selection Sunday in bball, the point is that in basketball every team has a path that they can take to play for/win the national title!!! This does not happen in college football, period. Ask Boise State. Ask Utah. These teams can try to schedule any and everyone they can, but how many powerhouse teams do you think are looking to add BSU or Utah to their '09 schedules right now? The BCS computer rankings are way too flawed and to say that they accurately incorporate strength of schedule is really a joke IMO, especially if they use the rankings of the opponents when the games are played (as opposed to their final ranking). The BCS should be used like the RPI is as a tool to help position teams in a tournament, but it should not be the final judgment.
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Old 12-01-2008, 08:51 PM   #11
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Re: Presenting... the BCS Tournament

Since you bring up the comparisons with March Madness, I'll continue with that. 65 teams make that tournament but roughly 340 are competing for those spots. That's about 19% of teams making the tournament. In the FBS division, there's 120 teams and, in your system, they'd be competing for 32 spots. That's about 27% of the schools. Meanwhile, with 16 spots, it's about 13%. In comparison, 32 teams just seems excessive and, if you can't prove yourself to be in the top 15% or so throughout the season, then do you really deserve a shot at the championship? Yeah, it's possible that someone could get hot and make a run, but it's significantly more unlikely to happen in football than in basketball. The better team wins 90-95% of the time in football.

Plus, with 16 teams, you can devote 15 of the bowl games to the tournament which would only leave 18 bowl games for everyone that didn't make the tournament. With those 36 teams, 23 would have 4 losses or less and all teams would be above .500. And since the bowl games really don't mean anything, I'm not too worried about letting a team that's 7-5 play in a bowl game.
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Old 12-02-2008, 01:34 AM   #12
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Re: Presenting... the BCS Tournament

i thought about the comparison to the percentage of teams making the playoffs if you had a 16-team tournament vs. a 32-team tournament, and i think that you're right, leaving the other bowls for all the other teams not in the top 15% probably doesn't hurt anyone, but I just wonder if anyone outside of lackluster 7-5 teams and 2nd place small conference teams would really care about that papajohns.com bowl or whatever... regardless, I do acknowledge that my 32-team tournament is basically a fantasy, but it should be fun to have the computer simulate out anyways, and with the structure there it wouldn't be too hard to set up a 16-team tournament... i would certainly prefer 16 to 8, as you said earlier it would allow all the conf. champs plus the worthy at-large bids, however if there actually is a tournament (and not just a plus-one) system implemented in the next several years, my guess is that it would be a 4-team showdown or 8-team bracket...
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Old 12-02-2008, 11:38 AM   #13
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Re: Presenting... the BCS Tournament

Oh, I didn't realize that you were going to have these games play out to see who wins. I guess the thread got side-tracked(no help from me) but that should be cool to see what happens.

EDIT: One quick thing though about the 7-5 and small conference schools getting into bowls. While you're probably right about no one caring about the games outside of the schools, it's already in place right now and is effective. It's a nice reward for the players for not being horrible and it makes money for the schools and for the area that the games are held. They'd also probably get comparable viewership that they already do.

Oh, almost forgot this one, the individual bowls would actually have better matchups than they currently do since half the bowls would be used for the tournament. So while the papajohns.com bowl might usually have the #5 Big East team against the #4 C-USA, this year it would be something like Pittsburgh or West Virginia vs. Rice(9-3). That would actually be a pretty good game.
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Last edited by firktaf; 12-02-2008 at 11:57 AM.
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Old 12-07-2008, 04:08 AM   #14
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Re: Presenting... the BCS Tournament

well Ball State sure fell apart this weekend, and I watched the C-USA championship this morning and saw that ECU has things back on track and is definitely the stronger team (over Tulsa) at this point in the year... now I don't know whether to include the results of these conference championship games in my brackets... should ECU have a shot to take down a #1 seed instead of Tulsa? is Ball State still worthy enough to be in the hunt if I give an automatic bid to Buffalo?... i guess the conference championships could serve as a sort of play-in game for these smaller conferences.... any thoughts out there?
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Old 12-08-2008, 01:10 PM   #15
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Re: Presenting... the BCS Tournament

Well, for the 32 team bracket, the conference winners should get in. So, ECU and Buffalo should both get in. Ball State is still in the top 25 of the BCS Rankings so I would put them in but Tulsa has 3 loses now and really hasn't been strong at the end here so I don't think I would put them in. Here's who I would probably put in for each conference:

*-denotes who would make my 16 team bracket.

ACC
Virginia Tech(9-4)*
Georgia Tech(9-3)
Boston College(9-4)
Florida State(8-4)

Big East
Cincinnati(11-2)*
Pittsburgh(9-3)
West Virginia(8-4)

Big 10
Penn State(11-1)*
Ohio State(10-2)*
Michigan State(9-3)
Northwestern(9-3)

Big 12
Oklahoma(12-1)*
Texas(11-1)*
Texas Tech(11-1)*
Oklahoma State(9-3)
Missouri(9-4)

Pac 10
USC(11-1)*
Oregon(9-3)
Oregon State(8-4)
California(8-4)

SEC
Florida(12-1)*
Alabama(12-1)*
Georgia(9-3)
Mississippi(8-4)

C-USA
ECU(9-4)*

MAC
Buffalo(8-5)*
Ball State(12-1)

MWC
Utah(12-0)*
TCU(10-2)*
BYU(10-2)

Sun Belt
Troy(8-4)*

WAC
Boise State(12-0)*

Independents
None.


After going through it, North Carolina, Iowa, Nebraska, and Tulsa just missed the mark. I ended up trying to even up the major conferences some and put in Cal, Florida State, West Virginia, and Ole Miss.
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Old 12-08-2008, 02:06 PM   #16
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Re: Presenting... the BCS Tournament

A 32-team playoff would be a disaster. The suspense of the regular season would be so watered down it wouldn't even be funny.
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