Interestingly enough, this will be my thousandth post on this board. Go me!

I was watching the first college bowl game of the season last night, the New Orleans Bowl between North Texas and Southern Mississippi. During the game, the commentators whined endlessly about how Division I-A is being ruined by the BCS system and how they are the ONLY major sport that doesn't have some sort of postseason tournament to decide a champion. I honestly don't see what the big deal is--they never worried about national championships for the first 125 years, why worry about it now?

There are several problems with implementing a playoff system as most have thought of it, though. The first is that you could potentially lose bowl games, or, if you turn the bowl games into the playoff games, a lot of schools will lose bowl bids. You may ask "Who cares?", since most of those bowl teams aren't very good anyway, but for a college football fan, I like to see guys I haven't gotten a chance to watch all year, like UNT's Jamario Thomas, one of the NCAA's leading rushers. Also, it's nice to se the kids get some postseason experience and a trip to (typically) a warm-weather climate.

And let's not forget the bonus for the fan, getting to see a bunch of games, mostly on weeknights, in the otherwise bland month of December. How many playoff games do you suppose could get scheduled for a Tuesday?

Then there's the money factor. I-A football is a huge cash cow to the universities, much more so than any other sport (except I-A basketball, but rest assured that if THEY had had bowls for the better part of 100 years, they wouldn't have a tournament now). So the money they get from bowl games and the like isn't going to be reduced very soon.

And no matter how many teams you invite to a postseason tournament, someone worthy is going to be left out and get their feelings hurt. It happens even in basketball when they pick 65 teams...

One idea for a playoff I like is to have the top eight teams play a mini-tournament around the same timeframe that the lesser bowls are going on, then put the finalists from the tourney into whichever BCS bowl is hosting the championship game, and the other six allocated to the other three BCS bowls as normal. If desired, this could be the top eight in the BCS standings, or they could select the eight teams as they do now, with the six major conference champs and two at large teams. This preserves all the bowls and lets a few more teams into the mix for the national championship.

Go you, Red. Go you. Amazingly, this is infact my 304 post. Coincidence? I think not! Irrelivance? hmmmm

Anywho, I wish I could contribute. Football could easily become a passionate subject for me, alas time and availablity reduce it to mere curiosity. I wish we had something to the equivelent of college ball here. Such feverish passion.
Contrary to popular opinion around here, I enjoy a good CFL game. But doesn't compare with my first NFL game in Buffaloo last year.

I know nothing about I-A, BCS, WTF!? Could you briefly explain to me the structure of college ball? Is there one league? I take it from your comment that there isn't, hence the lack of a determined single champion. I understand a bowl game to be a one time game, or is it more of a tournament?

Man, I wish I could get into football. I love playing, love watching, love the atmosphere. Just hate the timing. Would rather watch any Leaf game late January than get into a football game, even if its the superbowl.

College football is divided into "divisions", which are similar to divisions between major and minor leagues in pro sports (the difference being that, typically, people don't move up and down between the levels as they usually stick to one school for the duration of their college years). Division I-A is like the NHL of college football, there's also I-AA (roughly like the AHL), II (ECHL and the like) and III (UHL and the like).

In the case of Division I-A, there is not a playoff to determine the national champion. In essence it's decided by polls, the accepted standards being the AP (sportswriters) poll and the ESPN Coaches poll--if you're #1 in either of these polls you can claim a "national championship". The BCS system complicates things but I'll expand on that later. All three of the other divisions have a playoff sytem to determine the national champion.

The lack of a determined single champion is partly based on the fact that the 117 I-A teams are divided into 11 conferences (plus a handful of "independent" teams that have chosen not to be affiliated with a conference), and the schedule is heavily dependent on in-conference schedules. You only play a handful of the other 110 or so (depending on your conference's size) teams in a given year, and it's unusual for a big-time school from one conference to play another big-time school for another conference, so you wouldn't see top ranking teams play each other outside of the bowl system. The result of this is that you can't arbitrarily say that team X is better than team Y, if they are in different conferences, because they will have played completely different schedules and typically haven't played each other.

BCS stands for Bowl Championship Series, a mechanism put in place to at least attempt to determine the national title on the field. What happens is, they take averages of the two major human polls, and certain computer rankings, and calculate BCS "ratings" for each team. The teams are ranked in order of their BCS rating. Whichever two teams have the #1 and #2 rankings at the close of the regular season go to the "BCS Bowl" that is chosen for that year's title game (the four BCS bowls are the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta, and they take the championship game on a rotating basis). The winner of that game is given the #1 ranking in the Coaches poll, but the AP poll can still vote for anyone they want (which created a split national title last year)

There are 24 other bowl games that aren't part of the "BCS System". In the case of these, and the three BCS bowls that don't get the title game that year, it is simply a "final game" and a way for the schools to make some more money (each bowl invitation carries with it a payout of varying amounts). As you state, it is simply a one-time thing--so both teams that played last night (the first bowl game this year) have completed their season, but there are 54 other teams that are not finished yet as there are 27 more bowls to be played.

Yikes. That's more complicated than I thought.

Thanks for your time in replying, I appreciate it. With 117 teams in the top league (wow), it would be impossible to have a playoff type tournament to determine the champion. So they have a ranking system to determine the top teams (I would assume that would be top 8 teams, since there's 4 bowls?) that play in the BCS.
Is one bowl of greater meaning than another? You said the championship game rotates among the four, so if the 'Rose Bowl' is the championship this year, does that mean the 'Whatever Bowl' is the game for 3rd and 4th place, etc?

Also, do the top 8 (if that's the case) play the BCS tournament-style, or do they just get assigned a single game? In other words, does the 3rd ranked team have a shot at winning it all, or are they SOL and must settle for 3rd or 4th....
oops, hold on, I think you answered that in your last paragraph.

Out of curiosity then, what is the signifigance of the New Orleans bowl you mentioned? And are schools always playing in the same league, or are they assigned a league according to their skill level each year?

Sorry bout the barrage of questions, I just find this all fascinating. Thanks alot!

Well, not impossible--in Division I of NCAA basketball, there are over 300 teams, and they have their postseason tournament with 65 teams (formerly 64, now there's a "qualifier" game for the two bottom teams--more politics and not really the subject here). In the case of football, there would have to be far fewer teams involved in a playoff since they only play once a week.

The ranking system is just for the sake of matching up #1 and #2. The eight BCS teams are actually determined by the conference champions from the six major conferences (Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, SEC, ACC, Pac-10) plus two other high-ranking teams that were not one of those six. The other two are referred to as "At-large" teams and the method for selecting them alternates between complicated and arbitrary. All this means you won't necessarily have all top 8 finishers in these major bowl games. (and in fact, they're not--this year Texas is #5 in the BCS standings but will be going to one of the other 24 bowl games)

The purpose behind the other three BCS bowls is, essentially, tradition and money. Including each year's deignated "championship game", the four bowls offer huge payouts (14.4 million per team this year) and have traditionally matched up conference champions and other high-ranking teams.

Yep, just a single game. this is one reason a lot of pundits have a problem--there's no elimination-style tournament to get to the "final" game.

There isn't much, outside of the aforementioned money and tradition. Even small bowls like this pay out a generous $750,000 per team. One reason many pundits are against the BCS/bowl system is that all these "worthless teams" are playing "meaningless games". As stated earlier, I sure don't think they're meaningless to the particpants or the schools...

Occassionally a team will move up or down between divisions, but it's not very common. A little more (but still not very) common is teams moving laterally to other conferences--a couple teams moved from the Big East to the ACC last offseason. Both conferences are in Division I-A so those teams basically didn't change their standing.

Gotcha, you mentioned before that the bowl games were mostly about the cash prizes, I missed that. So really, I guess any city with the facilities, could create a bowl game? How 'bout the BrianBowl, right here in T.O. No cash prizes I'm afraid, just an exotic trip to the great white north and an afternoon to chill in my apartment.

One more question, and I'm sorry if it was covered, I just don't have time to reread our entire discussion: The "worthless teams" in the "meaningless games" are determined how then? Invitation only or is it all part of that big ranking system too?- oh wait, I did just read the part about how the rankings is only for the top 2.

Thanks again Red, you've deepened someones appreciation today.

Most bowl games have conference alliances. The bowl games pick teams out of a conference in a certain order.

For example, let's take the Big Ten. The order of selection goes: Rose, Capital One, Outback, Alamo, Sun, Music City, Motor City. The Rose is required to take the Big Ten champion (unless it's being used as the title game, in which it takes #1 and #2, the Big ten champ goes to one of those other three BCS bowls, and things get complicated further)

In either case, the Capital One Bowl has first pick of the remaining bowl-eligible teams from the conference. (read: any team with a plus-.500 record) Technically, they could take a team that finished in sixth place and racked up a 6-5 overall record, but they typically take the second-best team (best available) to generate viewer interest, as fans are more likely to watch a 9-2 team in a bowl than a 6-5 team.

And so it goes like that. The Outback Bowl picks next, then the Alamo Bowl, then the Sun Bowl, then the Music City bowl, then the Motor City Bowl. Each of these bowls has a tie-in with another conference (for instance, the Capital One is affiliated with the SEC as well as the Big Ten), and those teams are selected in a similar fashion to determine the opponents.

Reading through these posts I've made, I suddenly realize that college football is really complicated. Guess I've taken it for granted all these years...

Well you've done it Red, I think I understand finally. I don't think anyone could ever understand completely unless they experience it on a regular basis (like you said, take it for granted), but its clear enough for me.

After re-reading myself, one of the questions I had about the system is what you proposed in your first post, that being an 8 team tourney for the top spots with the top two teams playing in the championship bowl and the other six playing the other 3.

So with my new expertise, I proclaim the pundits should stop their bitchin' and all the other stuff Red says.