Saturday, November 15, 2008

Barack Obama to Push for 8-Team College Football Playoff on "60 Minutes"

Barack Obama will re-affirm his personal endorsement for an 8-team playoff in college football on "60 Minutes" on Sunday night.

What he doesn't do, of course, is explain how you'd pick those 8 teams:

*The Top 8 teams from some sort of composite ranking? Who gets to do the ranking?

*Guaranteed spots for the "big" 6 conferences? Any conferences? How is that fair?

*How do you convince obstructionists from the Big Ten and Pac-10 to participate? (Or, like me, are you willing to dare them to opt out and simply put together a playoff without them?)

*As hard as it is to pick from 3 or 4 teams for 2 spots in a title game now, try solving how you differentiate teams 9 through, say, 15 from 5 through 8. You're pushing the mess down -- and expanding it.

But it remains quite fantastic that Obama has made this his signature sports issue. But as with all lofty campaign ideals, the success is in the details.

-- D.S.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Dan,

The difference between teams 8 and 9 is much less significant than between 2 and 3. The 2004 season in which Auburn got left out was completely ridiculous for Auburn, but who cares if, say, Georgia gets left out of an 8 team playoff. Maybe they should have tried to win more games.

Unknown said...

Dan,

As for the other points:

1) A ranking determining team 8 is much better than a ranking determining team 2.

2) A guaranteed spot for the big 6 conferences is ridiculous, it should be based on rankings.

3) The Big 10 and Pac 10 can participate, or they can suck it...I mean, they can crown their own champion and everyone else will laugh at them.

- James

Matthew said...

That is why an 8 Team playoff doesn't work. Only 2 at-large??

You need to have a 16 Team Playoff. The 11 Conference Winners are in and then you have 5 at-large. ND will only get in as an at-large (maybe it will force them to join a conference - doubt it).

There will always be controversy over the 5 at-large. But it sets up the WIN YOUR CONFERENCE and no arguement.

Eric said...

I agree, a playoff would be great, but 8-teams just pushes the problem down from 2-3 to 8-9. It needs to be 16 teams. Automatic bids for the conference champions, a handful of at-large bids to fill the rest of the spots (decided like they do for basketball).

Win your conference and you're in, otherwise wait for an at large bid and hope you get one since there will only be a handful of them.

Independent teams just need to pray for an at large bid. No special consideration if they consider themselves too good to be in a conference like 99% of the other teams.

Steve said...

It's very simple Dan, the 6 BCS conference champions get automatic bids. The next 2 highest ranked teams in the BCS standings complete the 8 unless there is an undefeated team from a non BCS conference ranked in the top 12, that team gets an automatic then. This year they'd all be automatics with Utah and Boise St. completing the 8. Ball St. should have scheduled someone.

With the 6 conference champions getting automatic slots maybe the BCS schools will go ahead and play tougher non-conference schedules because a non-conference loss doesn't eliminate you. Too many pansies on the schedule right now.

If the Big 10 and Pac 10 don't want to join fine. Just fill it out with 2 more at larges and those 2 conferences can try to win the AP poll but will be locked out of BCS championship. Their hardball wouldn't last long.

See, it's not difficult at all and if you aren't one of the 2 highest ranked at larges or didn't win your conference you just weren't good enough, I don't think it causes that much controversy.

Drunken Loo said...

This is the change we can believe in?

The country is falling apart, surely the President Elect has more important things to worry about...

Unknown said...

Dan, just curious why you keep stating this false information that the Big-10 and Pac-10 are the only two conferences that don't want a playoff.

Everything that came out of the most recent BCS Meeting was that nearly all conferences across the board where perfectly happy without a playoff system in place.

It's not just the Big-10 Pac-10....