Blacknbengal
Well-Known Member
Change is in the wind; NCAA appears headed for playoff
GAME DAY EDITOR
Montgomery Advertiser
A college football playoff system is being born. The process began when the Atlantic Coast Conference raided the Big East, making off with Miami and Virginia Tech. There will be more spasms and contractions. The labor pains will persist until 2006, when the current Bowl Championship Series contract ends.
When it's all over, there will be six Super Conferences with 12 members each -- the minimum number of members required by the NCAA to qualify for a championship game.
Projected survivors: the Southeastern, the Atlantic Coast, The Big 12, The Big Ten (with 12 members), The PAC-10 (with 12 members) and Somebody Else. The Somebody Else League may be what's left of the Big East, the Western Athletic, the Mid-America -- or more likely a few select schools from each.
Between now and 2006, as the conferences jockey for teams, as schools jockey for position, backs will be stabbed, throats will be cut, empires will rise and fall. It'll be Armageddon -- which should be loads of fun to watch.
After the wolves have feasted, 72 schools will be among the chosen. There are currently 107 NCAA Division I-A teams. The 72 Super Schools will live in mansions of glory. The others will cringe outside, the bastards of the system.
There will never be more than six conferences. Why split the pie more ways than necessary?
And yes, Notre Dame will have to join a conference. Even mighty Notre Dame won't be able to stand alone in the brave new world of college football. Nor will it want to. There's too much money to be made. Even more than Notre Dame, which has its own contract with NBC. Here's why:
The six conference championship games will amount to the first week of the playoffs. Television revenues for those games will skyrocket. Some leagues will make more than others because each conference will control its scheduling, will manage its championship and will cut its own deal with networks, which will include regular-season programming.
The contracts will be huge and flexible, allowing for regional programming, even allowing for all Notre Dame's games to be on TV. And regular-season games will not lose their luster, as they have in basketball and professional sports, a concern voiced by past opponents of a playoff.
After the league title games have been played, the new, improved BCS will kick in. The six champions will advance to the national championship playoff, along with two at-large teams. Selection of at-large teams could conceivably, one day, result in bribery, blackmail, extortion or assassination -- that much money will be at stake.
How much? Rivers, lakes and oceans of money. Continents, planets, suns and galaxies of money. Universes of money. The six Super Conferences will own the championship tournament, and will be able to name their price.
The college football playoff will, sooner than later, become the single biggest event in American sports. The television rights will sell for billions and billions. Ticket sales will gross hundreds of millions more. The frenzy will build for a month. Geysers of money will erupt in ways we can't yet imagine.
And only six conferences, 72 teams will share in the bounty. The rest will go begging.
Oh, there will still be little, piddly bowl games here and there, exclusive of the playoffs. They'll be what bowl games were in the olden days. A reward for a semi-good season that'll pay expenses and a few lousy million bucks.
How quaint.
But the playoff will be the motherlode, the jackpot, the goose that lays golden eggs like an AK-47 on full auto.
The new BCS will make the NCAA men's basketball tournament look like 65 small, shriveled potatoes. The Super Bowl will be backseated as the nation's biggest sports spectacle. The World Series -- well, it's already not much more than a pleasant diversion, a nostalgia trip.
There's a new day dawning. A college football playoff is coming. You watch it happen.
GAME DAY EDITOR
Montgomery Advertiser
A college football playoff system is being born. The process began when the Atlantic Coast Conference raided the Big East, making off with Miami and Virginia Tech. There will be more spasms and contractions. The labor pains will persist until 2006, when the current Bowl Championship Series contract ends.
When it's all over, there will be six Super Conferences with 12 members each -- the minimum number of members required by the NCAA to qualify for a championship game.
Projected survivors: the Southeastern, the Atlantic Coast, The Big 12, The Big Ten (with 12 members), The PAC-10 (with 12 members) and Somebody Else. The Somebody Else League may be what's left of the Big East, the Western Athletic, the Mid-America -- or more likely a few select schools from each.
Between now and 2006, as the conferences jockey for teams, as schools jockey for position, backs will be stabbed, throats will be cut, empires will rise and fall. It'll be Armageddon -- which should be loads of fun to watch.
After the wolves have feasted, 72 schools will be among the chosen. There are currently 107 NCAA Division I-A teams. The 72 Super Schools will live in mansions of glory. The others will cringe outside, the bastards of the system.
There will never be more than six conferences. Why split the pie more ways than necessary?
And yes, Notre Dame will have to join a conference. Even mighty Notre Dame won't be able to stand alone in the brave new world of college football. Nor will it want to. There's too much money to be made. Even more than Notre Dame, which has its own contract with NBC. Here's why:
The six conference championship games will amount to the first week of the playoffs. Television revenues for those games will skyrocket. Some leagues will make more than others because each conference will control its scheduling, will manage its championship and will cut its own deal with networks, which will include regular-season programming.
The contracts will be huge and flexible, allowing for regional programming, even allowing for all Notre Dame's games to be on TV. And regular-season games will not lose their luster, as they have in basketball and professional sports, a concern voiced by past opponents of a playoff.
After the league title games have been played, the new, improved BCS will kick in. The six champions will advance to the national championship playoff, along with two at-large teams. Selection of at-large teams could conceivably, one day, result in bribery, blackmail, extortion or assassination -- that much money will be at stake.
How much? Rivers, lakes and oceans of money. Continents, planets, suns and galaxies of money. Universes of money. The six Super Conferences will own the championship tournament, and will be able to name their price.
The college football playoff will, sooner than later, become the single biggest event in American sports. The television rights will sell for billions and billions. Ticket sales will gross hundreds of millions more. The frenzy will build for a month. Geysers of money will erupt in ways we can't yet imagine.
And only six conferences, 72 teams will share in the bounty. The rest will go begging.
Oh, there will still be little, piddly bowl games here and there, exclusive of the playoffs. They'll be what bowl games were in the olden days. A reward for a semi-good season that'll pay expenses and a few lousy million bucks.
How quaint.
But the playoff will be the motherlode, the jackpot, the goose that lays golden eggs like an AK-47 on full auto.
The new BCS will make the NCAA men's basketball tournament look like 65 small, shriveled potatoes. The Super Bowl will be backseated as the nation's biggest sports spectacle. The World Series -- well, it's already not much more than a pleasant diversion, a nostalgia trip.
There's a new day dawning. A college football playoff is coming. You watch it happen.
