betterREDthandead

Um, I know I suck, but now that Michigan is confirmed for the NYD Rose Bowl, that time just went out the window, as it is something of a family thing to watch when the Wolverines and the Rose Bowl are in the same place at the same time. I would be able to come after the game.

$$$$ Eventually I think GVSU will outgrow DII and move up to I-AA. Already they're far, far bigger than most schools in the GLIAC (the only exception being Wayne State, which is basically a commuter school). Boosters and alums will start dangling money to move up. On another note, here's an article worth reading: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...mp;lid=tab2pos1 In defense of the BCS, basically. Makes the very good point that we sure wouldn't be seeing any kind of a definite national champion under the system of 15 years ago. Who would we declare national champion if USC beat OSU in the Rose Bowl, and Florida lost in the Sugar?

Quinn's overrated. He makes bad throws under pressure (both big-game pressure and D-line pressure). He's real slick looking, just so wonderfully smooth when he's got all day to throw and a wide-open receiver. He's got Samardzija and McKnight making him look real good by going up to get throws most college receivers couldn't tough. It would be just like Millen to pick him. FIRE MILLEN.

Michigan Tech?? F that! Grand Valley! They beat Tech AND are undefeated. edit: Blak beat me to the punch. I'll be watching this weekend. My brother started at Grand Valley this year.

Hasek was not a free agent signing, he was acquired for Slava Kozlov. The other deals I wouldn't call blockbusters, but that certainly was. You acquire the league's top goalie for one of your key wingers, that's a blockbuster. But neither were those other deals small-fry deals. Trades shouldn't be judged as small trades just because we gave up nobody. We needed a puck-moving offensive defenseman at the time of the Schneider deal, Holland went out and made the trade to get us one. Just because he didn't give up a major piece of the team, that makes it a small deal? That makes it a good deal.

Once again. Not including the bowls in a playoff system devastates the bowl system. Destroys it. Absolutely takes a giant crap on over 100 years of Rose Bowl tradition and decades upon decades of the other bowls as well. Also, it lops off 5-8 bowls off the bottom of the system, which would be a loss to the NCAA of about $10 million. So not including the bowls means the playoffs have to pay out $10 million more than the current BCS just to break even. Remember that the reason they played games on the last weekend in August in '02 and '03 was because those weekends fell at the very tail end of the month. Saturday was August 31st and then the 30th. The calendar basically put an extra week into the season. These past years, that hasn't happened. You can't finish a playoff before Christmas without going through finals, removing bye weeks, or lopping a game or two off the regular season. None of which will happen - do you want to remove bye weeks, for example, and force 18-20 year olds to play 16 straight weeks of football? Obviously you will not see games taken away from the regular season due to money. Especially not conference championship games. Division II plays a no-bye, 11-game regular season, with a one-week break for the playoffs. The regular season is over a month before the Division I-A regular season. You won't get the regular season truncated for a playoff. Won't happen. Too much money at stake. Again: apples and oranges. Bowl games have to be included then. But how do you get 11 games (minimum) to participate? You're asking fans to travel three times to see their team in the playoffs. Suppose we applied 12 bowls to the 12-team playoffs you propose (I picked what I think are the better bowls): Sun Bowl: Auburn d. Boise State Liberty Bowl: Wisconsin d. Oklahoma Outback Bowl: Notre Dame d. Louisville Holiday Bowl: USC d. Wake Forest Peach Bowl: OSU over Auburn Gator Bowl: Florida over Wisconsin Citrus Bowl: Michigan over Notre Dame Cotton Bowl: USC over LSU Fiesta Bowl: Michigan over USC Orange Bowl: Ohio State over Florida Sugar Bowl: USC over Florida (consolation) Rose Bowl: Michigan over Ohio State (the hell I was gonna suggest the other way round ) Are OSU fans going to travel to Atlanta, then Miami, then Pasadena? Are Michigan fans going to go to Orlando, then Phoenix, then Pasadena? Are USC fans, having just been to San Diego, Dallas and Phoenix, going to bother getting to New Orleans to watch a meaningless game? Florida fans going to Jacksonville, Miami....then New Orleans for the same meaningless game? You'd have to be both rich and a diehard fan (not to mention entirely without family commitments) to make all three. You're just not going to fill the stadium for the early rounds, and who's going to bother going to the consolation game? I'll bet you the Holiday Bowl would rather continue to take enthusiastic fans of a more local team than Wake Forest, especially ones that know they're only gonna have to travel once. This is just unworkable.

Playoff junkies think it's so simple. Just play it out on the field and everything will be fine. Everything solved neat and clean. Nobody thinks of all the little details that have to be worked out - and once you do try to work them out, what used to be so simple becomes extraordinarily complicated. BEWARE - I'm about to write a friggin' manifesto, so only read if you've got time. But it's well worth the time. At the very least I hope you'll all read before proposing yet another playoff system without thinking it through. For starters, you cannot propose a system that has any less than 10 teams. Absolutely impossible, because of the money. Sponsors will not pay the big bux for costume jewelry bowl games outside the playoff system. The BCS is, among other things, a revenue-sharing system, designed to bring in money to the five BCS conferences and placate the smaller conferences so they don't sue. They will not cut down the number of teams participating in the money games. So any 4, 6, or 8 team playoff is dead. A nonstarter. A complete nonissue that isn't even worth talking about. So, what about the bigger ones? 10, 12, 16 teams? Where, for example, will the games be played? You could force them into the current bowls. But the bowls are not operated by the NCAA. Start with the issue that, even if you rotated the championship game and semifinals, one current BCS bowl will have to be a quarterfinal game each year, and you'll have a hard time convincing the bowl officials to take that kind of a prestige hit. The bowl officials will also have to be convinced to accept the teams foisted upon them, rather than having the leeway to negotiate their conference affiliations and invite teams of their choosing. Who gets the guaranteed cash cow Notre Dame (whose fans travel very, very well) and who gets forced into the laughable Wake Forest matchup (which is the 3rd smallest DI-A school and not likely to bring huge amounts of fans to the game)? In a 12-team playoff, do you contract with 11 bowls (meaning enormous complexity) or do you double up and have some bowls host two games? Either way, it's important to remember that the NCAA doesn't operate the bowls and therefore, it requires a lot of juggling and back-scratching to get that done. But you could avoid that by playing the games at the home fields and maybe the championship at a neutral site. This is a popular choice, because the argument has been that the regular season would still matter because teams would fight for seeding and home-field advantage. Shall we ignore the fact that we've then just screwed 5, 6, or 8 once-prestigious bowl games out of a lot of money and very good matchups? Look how the matchups would be: Rose Bowl - BCS: Michigan/USC ; Playoff: Penn State/Cal Fiesta Bowl - BCS: Oklahoma/Boise State ; Playoff: Nebraska/Oregon Orange Bowl - BCS: Louisville/Wake Forest ; Playoff: West Virginia/Georgia Tech Sugar Bowl - BCS: LSU/Notre Dame ; Playoff: Arkansas/Texas Only one of the new bowl participants has less than three losses. But it gets better: Citrus Bowl - BCS: Wisconsin/Arkansas ; Playoff: Purdue/Tennessee Cotton Bowl - BCS: Nebraska/Auburn ; Playoff: Georgia/Texas A&M So we've absolutely wrecked the Rose Bowl, among others, by allowing just any ol' fourth place team in. We've turned the Orange Bowl into the Gator Bowl. Don't forget we've lopped six bowls right off the bottom, because we don't have enough bowl-eligible teams - a loss of money that isn't coming back. And that aside, how do you split the gates? - You could divide all the revenues equally among the playoff teams, which would piss off the winners of every game, because they have to spend all that extra money to travel, but earn nothing extra. You'd end up with more money by losing in the first round. - You could split it between home and visitors, which also pisses off the better teams, because earning a bye actually costs you money. It would also piss off Auburn and Boise State (under eva's scenario) because they have to play their game in a 30,000 seat stadium, which is 1/3 the size of the rest of them out there. - You could divide it proportionally by assigning a percentage of the revenues in order of finish - winner gets X%, runner-up gets Y%, semifinal losers get Z%, and so on. But remember - the whole idea of revenue-sharing in the first place was to avoid a rich-get-richer scenario. Nobody in charge is willing to risk the chance of losing out on millions that way. They're in it to make money, not gamble. I have yet to even touch on how we decide teams will make the playoffs. Or the obvious ruination of the regular season, which I believe I addressed earlier. What formula would we use to seed the teams? What would we do about the many other teams that have just as legit a claim to that 12th spot or 16th spot as the team that actually got it? Remember - under the current system, if a team gets screwed out of the championship game, they still get the big payout. Under a large playoff (and you can't have a small one), a team that gets screwed loses the chance to play for the title AND the money. How about the academic year? Will the big schools sacrifice regular season games (hint: lose money) so the playoff can finish on time? Survey says no. Would it be a good idea to eliminate regular season games? Again, survey says no - the fewer regular season games you have, the more muddled the seeding picture would be, and the more controversy you get. This isn't about D-II or D-III, no matter how smoothly a playoff might seem to go there. The comparison is apples and oranges. D-III schools aren't even permitted to offer scholarships. They play fewer regular season games. It's not even close. So why is the money so important? It'd be fine and dandy to pine for the purity of athletic competition for competition's sake, but that's not going to happen. Easy for us to bash the presidents, commissioners, and ADs for chasing the money, because we get none of the money. But that money pays for all those other sports. Football money pays for Title IX. Gender equity and all that. Football money pays for other sports to have nice facilities. Football is part of the prestige and acclaim of a school, like it or not. For some schools, it's the best thing they do. Think Michigan would attract so many students without football? As long as so many millions of people take an interest in what goes on on the field, and pay good money to get into the stadium to watch, there will be money involved. Money drives this thing. Trying to draw up a playoff system without taking into account the money is absolute foolishness. To summarize, it comes down to this: There's only three ways to run a playoff: Home fields, neutral sites outside the bowl structure, or bowl adaptations. - Home fields and neutral sites devastate the bowl system. Who's willing to turn the Granddaddy Of Them All into a sideshow for mediocre outfits? And it complicates the revenue issue so that it's practically impossible to set up. - Bowl adaptations would be colossally difficult to pull off, because they are contracted, not operated by the NCAA.

Really? Hasek wasn't a blockbuster? Chelios? Lang? Schneider? Ulf Samuelsson? Wendel Clark? I wouldn't call those "small deals".

You're still only paying 8 teams. Currently, it's 10. The fifth game was added, for more this reason than any other, because non-BCS conferences were starting to make a real stink about being left out of the pie, and they were starting to have a point. Hence the fifth game, to make it easier. That proposal entirely leaves out the ACC, which would scream so loud you'd hear them in Pasadena; and Notre Dame, which just might drown out the ACC. They will never approve a system that reduces the number of teams getting paid - not only would there be money issues, but PR issues as well - "You're making this a good ol' boys club again!" The 8-team playoff might appear to be more open from a championship point of view, but from a money perspective, it's more money to fewer teams, and wouldn't work. And timothy, you're a great guy, I like ya, but if you ever again propose a setup wherein Boise State plays in the Rose Bowl, I will gather a posse of furious Wolverine and Buckeye fans and burn down everything you love It's bad enough the Cornvicts and Hurr-Insanes soiled the Bowl in 2002.

That's exactly why they brought the computers into the BCS equation, and then a couple years ago people were complaining that computers were deciding too much and the trained human eye for the game was being removed from the equation. So they de-emphasized the computers, which were fed a bunch of stats and cranked out rankings, and brought the polls back into it. Now this year, suddenly the human element is the problem. I wouldn't argue with a revamping of the system used to determine the participants. But not as applied to a playoff. A single loss, as Matt said, would not bump you past the #8 spot. A second loss might not even do it. Go ahead and lose to Oregon State and UCLA, it won't affect anything. And remember - there are five BIG MONEY bowl games and several more that also generate significant cash (Cotton, C*****l O**, C****-F**-A, Gator, Holiday, etc.) The money value of the non-BCS bowls would be severely diminished with a playoff. An 8-team playoff would only mean seven games and probably end up a net loss of money, so they would need to have at least 12 teams (11 games) to make it viable. And 12 teams means probably five to seven more that can legitimately squawk about being left out, rather than one.

No, I predict one more win for the Lions this year. At Lambeau. It'd be the perfect WTF icing on this horrible cake.

Oh, a coin toss would really settle things. Nobody would feel jobbed if it came down to heads or tails. Then why not apply tiebreakers to the current situation and drop the whole notion of a playoff? Strength of schedule, perhaps? They purposely took point differential out so that Nebraska would stop playing West Southeastern North Dakota State and running up 90 points on them. Don't see that coming back any time soon. Wins and conference wins are not gonna tiebreak anything. Head-to-head might eliminate a few conference rivals, but do nothing for Arkansas vs. West Virginia, say. I'm at work, so I don't have time to actually apply tiebreakers to a potential 8 or 16 team playoff and really find out if that would solve things, but my gut says the human element will always be at work, and so will the computers.

How does anyone get away saying a playoff would take the human element out of it? They'd still have to decide who gets the last spots somehow. It's not like a playoff would magically "decide it on the field", because they'd still have to decide in a boardroom and on a computer chip who plays. And what's harder? Picking between Florida and Michigan for the second spot? Or picking between Arkansas, Virginia Tech, Rutgers, Oklahoma, LSU, USC, Auburn, West Virginia, Wake Forest, Texas, and Tennessee for the final couple spots in a playoff?

What's more embarrassing: being the Lions, or losing to the Lions? Tough question to answer because the second one may never happen again.

That'd work this year. Last year it would have been a joke, as there were two very definite clear teams that should play for the title, Texas and USC. There was no third team.

OK, playoff junkies. Here's a list of games that had an effect on the title race. Some of these games were "dagger" games - the first loss of 2 for contenders, and others finished them off. Some of them gave a boost to the winner. They all involve at least one team that had a legitimate hope at winning the title - that is, were highly ranked with just one loss at some point during the period that BCS rankings were coming out. Keep in mind that some teams (California, Clemson, etc.) may not look like actual contenders, but their losses came at times that, had they won, they would have been in the hunt. Cal lost three games, for example, but their games against Tennessee and Arizona are important because had they won, the game against USC would have been a colossal matchup. Clemson, though not spoken of in terms of the title chase, was ranked 10th at the time of their loss to VT, and would have gone even higher with a win thanks to USC's loss that week, and West Virginia and Tennessee losing the week after. USC @ Arkansas - Sep. 2 (Dagger for Arkansas) California @ Tennessee - Sep. 2 (Boost for Tennessee, dagger for Cal) Ohio State @ Texas - Sep. 9 (#1 vs. #2 - dagger for Texas) Clemson @ Boston College - Sep. 9 (Dagger for Clemson) Michigan @ Notre Dame - Sep. 16 (Boost for Michigan, dagger for Notre Dame) Oklahoma @ Oregon - Sep. 16 (Dagger for Oklahoma) Florida @ Tennessee - Sep. 16 (Dagger for Tennessee) Nebraska @ USC - Sep. 16 (Dagger for Nebraska) LSU @ Auburn - Sep. 16 (Dagger for LSU, boosted Auburn) Wisconsin @ Michigan - Sep. 23 (Finished Wisconsin) Georgia Tech @ Virginia Tech - Sep. 30 (Dagger for Virginia Tech) Arkansas @ Auburn - Oct. 7 (Boosted Arkansas, dagger for Auburn) LSU @ Florida - Oct. 7 (Finished LSU) Texas @ Oklahoma - Oct. 7 (Finished Oklahoma) Oregon @ California - Oct. 7 (Dagger for Oregon) Virginia Tech @ Boston College - Oct. 12 (Finished Virginia Tech) Florida @ Auburn - Oct. 14 (Nearly finished Florida, boosted Auburn) Oregon @ Washington State - Oct. 21 (Finished Oregon) Texas @ Nebraska - Oct. 21 (Finished Nebraska) Clemson @ Virginia Tech - Oct. 26 (Finished Clemson) USC @ Oregon State - Oct. 28 (Dagger for USC) West Virginia @ Louisville - Nov. 2 (Dagger for West Virginia) LSU @ Tennessee - Nov. 4 (Finished Tennessee) Louisville @ Rutgers - Nov. 9 (Finished Louisville) Georgia @ Auburn - Nov. 11 (Finished Auburn) Texas @ Kansas State - Nov. 11 (Finished Texas) California @ Arizona - Nov. 11 (Finished Cal) Michigan @ Ohio State - Nov. 18 (THE game - finished off Michigan, put OSU in the game) Rutgers @ Cincinnati - Nov. 18 (Finished Rutgers) LSU @ Arkansas - Nov. 24 (Finished Arkansas) South Florida @ West Virginia - Nov. 25 (Finished West Virginia) Notre Dame @ USC - Nov. 25 (Boost for USC, finished Notre Dame) USC @ UCLA - Dec. 2 (Finished USC) Florida vs. Arkansas - Dec. 2 (Put Florida in the game) What would lose significance under a playoff? Well, most of these games, for starters. Michigan-Ohio State. USC-UCLA. Florida-just about anyone. USC-Arkansas. Pretty much every game early on, since with a playoff, you can slip up (and slip up again) and it won't matter. Pretty much every important non-conference game (check out the lineup on Sep. 16 - most of those teams would make a playoff, so why bother?) And of course, mistakes that are currently magnified (USC-Oregon State) get swept under the rug with a playoff. Would we have tuned in so interestedly to Michigan's games against Northwestern or Indiana or Iowa if there was a playoff? Would anybody at all have cared about what happened on Saturday? Nope. Arkansas, Florida, USC, West Virginia, and Rutgers would all have been in the playoff (assuming 16), rendering the games totally meaningless.

On the contrary, I think it takes away from "running the gauntlet". What's harder, winning 13 games or winning three? Yeah, supposedly most of those 13 games are against easier teams - ask USC if they really are easy. Suppose a scenario played out where USC beat Ohio State in the championship of a playoff this year. What makes 2-loss USC any more legit of a champion than 1-loss OSU? USC supposedly ran the gauntlet, right? Not against Oregon State or UCLA.

It's officially LSU and Notre Dame in the Sugar - which, though they have yet to announce it, makes it also official: Michigan and USC. Big 10/Pac-10, as it should be. Perfect. I hope we stomp them.

No. I won't be. In fact that's exactly what I'm hoping for. I'm tired of the SEC's crying and moaning. That league is quickly becoming forever dead to me. You never hear the end of it, how Michigan and Ohio State would have at least two losses or how Alabama would be 9-3 in the Big Ten. I hope Ohio State blows the Gators into Mexico.

Almost right. The Rose Bowl is the Granddaddy Of Them All. Big Ten fans (and I'm sure Pac-10 fans as well) enjoy going to the other BCS bowls but consider them consolation prizes for not getting to go to the Rose. I feel very strongly about this.

Buncha crazy Cajuns, mostly. There were radio reports that LSU was going to be the team invited to the Rose Bowl to face Michigan. But they've also been snapping up Sugar Bowl and Citrus Bowl (oops, sorry - C*****l O** Bowl) tickets. The radio report was long before USC was upset. Here's how it shakes out: Conference champs with auto-bids and their bowl affiliations: Ohio State - Rose Louisville - None Wake Forest - Orange Florida - Sugar USC - Rose Oklahoma - Fiesta Other auto-bids: Boise State Michigan That leaves two at-large spots. The NCG will be Ohio State and Florida. Because the Rose and Sugar lose the #1 and #2 teams, they get first and second pick of the rest of the teams, respectively. And here's the crucial paragraph: In other words, the Rose can't take an SEC team unless the Sugar OKs it. And I promise you, with the chance to take LSU on the table, the Sugar won't be cool with that. The rest of the picks are Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, according to the rotation. So the picks will go like this: Rose Sugar Sugar Orange Fiesta The Rose Bowl will almost definitely take Michigan, since they can't have LSU. The Sugar will ****** up LSU, and probably Notre Dame as well. That leaves the Orange to choose from Louisville and Boise State, and Louisville is the obvious pick, leaving the matchups as follows: NCG - Ohio State/Florida Rose - Michigan/USC Fiesta - Oklahoma/Boise State Sugar - LSU/Notre Dame Orange - Louisville/Wake Forest

BCS predictions: Rose - Michigan vs. USC Orange - Louisville vs. Wake Forest (pretty much already set) Sugar - LSU vs. Notre Dame Fiesta - Oklahoma vs. Boise State Title game - Ohio State vs. Florida Cop-out prediction in case Michigan goes to the title game is Florida-Notre Dame in the Sugar and USC-LSU in the Rose. Really, I can't see how it can shake out any other way, given the setup.

I don't think the SEC is the best conference. They've got more good teams (Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee, LSU, Auburn vs. Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin) but their bad teams are absolute pattycakes. The Big Ten's bad teams are better than the SEC's bad teams. And the Big Ten's best are better than the SEC's best.

If she was a really savvy Cub fan you'd say "1908" and she'd just go "and who did we beat?" It's a shame though: I like the Cubs, and they looked pretty promising in '03. Since then it's been hard-luck injuries and very poor management.

If it comes from Gammons, there's probably a measure of truth to it. It's plausible, at least. We can replace Manny for them and improve their LF defense besides, by offering up Monroe.