Will There Ever Be a College Football Playoff?
Heading to the 2009 BCS Championship game? It looks like one of those teams will be the Oklahoma Sooners. And this doesn't sit well with Texas Longhorns fans.
Peter Schrager of Fox Sports:
Despite beating the Sooners 45-35 on a neutral field earlier this season, the Longhorns are now forced to sit and wait out their immediate future (likely a Fiesta Bowl berth), while the one-loss Sooners are a mere win over three-loss Missouri away from punching their BCS Championship Game tickets.
Fair? Maybe. Maybe not.
Texas fans will say "not". Some Sooners fans might even be questioning the system.
For sports bettors, Oklahoma will likely come into the 2009 BCS Championship game paying $600 for every $100 bet early on in the season at online sports betting sites the likes of BetCRIS.com. Texas would pay 10 to 1 odds. Oh, and if you were wondering, Boise State and Utah (both undefeated) would pay a whopping $150,000 for every $100 bet if either were to somehow get into the championship game and win it.
Texas, Boise State, Utah getting into the BCS Championship?
That could happen. Don't hold your breath for this year though.
Peter Schrager:
The brutal truth is that this is the system we've got, the cards we've been dealt. And as long as TV networks are willing to pay a gazillion dollars to air the BCS, it ain't changing anytime soon. An all-around crummy situation? Sure. No one's arguing with that. But is there anything Longhorns fans can do about it? Sadly, no. How about the national columnists and talking heads screaming on cable TV? Even less.
And when we all come to grips with this inconvenient truth, we'll have a lot easier time accepting and enjoying the next two months of football that await us.
Then he asks the question: "What if?"
Over 30,000 people responded to the question: "Will there ever be a college football playoff?" and 57 percent answered "Yes".
To start, it would ideally be like the NCAA's college basketball tournament, writes Schrager.
"You'd reward each of the 11 Division 1-A conference winners with automatic bids, based on however each conference determines its conference champion. Ball State goes undefeated and doesn't get a sniff of BCS love? Well, now they'd be rewarded with a ticket to the Big Dance. Same with the Sun Belt's champion, Conference USA's, and the rest of the mid-major champions currently on the outside looking in."
That's just the beginning.
"Five at-large bids determined by the top five non-conference winners with the highest BCS rankings at the end of the season after all conference championships have been decided. This would not limit the amount of teams per conference in the tournament. In 2008's case, Texas Tech would not be on the "outside looking in," whereas in the current BCS system, they are.
"The eight higher-seeded teams host first-round games, while all subsequent rounds are played at neutral sites (a rotation of the four current BCS bowl sites, and a yearly rotation of three other non-current BCS bowl sites)."
Can it happen? It should. But as Schrager acknowledges, "Sometimes it sure is hard to not just think, ‘What if?'."
Dan Shapiro, Gambling911.com
