Leave it to the arrogance of suits immersed in the Bowl championship Series to throw their immense hubris around in the days leading up to yet another Congressional hearing aimed squarely at eliminating them.
At a time when one would think the under-fire organization would be keeping to itself instead of lobbing public verbal Molotov cocktails, one would be wrong.
In an interview with the Nebraska State Paper, University of Nebraska-Lincoln chancellor and chairman of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee Harvey Perlman strongly intimated that, if Congress is successful in ridding the nation of the blight the BcS has become, a playoff would not be the end result.
No, Perlman said, it would be back to the pre-BcS days of bowl games and an even more mythical national champion being crowned.
“What I think most people don’t understand is that the alternative to the current system is not a playoff,” Perlman told the paper. ”The alternative to the BCS is going back to our traditional relationship with our bowl partners.”
The chairman then went on to assail the mere thought of a playoff system, decrying its very existence as the death knell for bowl games.
“It would diminish the bowl structure and it would reduce the number of opportunities for student-athletes to play in the postseason and that’s not a good thing,” Perlman said. ”I don’t think it’s good for college football, I don’t think it’s good for student-athletes and I don’t think it’s good for fans.
“I don’t see fans travelling [sic] around the country three weeks in succession between December and January following their team. So you’re either going to have to play at home sites – which I’m sure everybody will want to play in Nebraska in December and January – or you’re gonna have to travel, which means that bowls will cease being intercollegiate events, but will become corporate events, where everybody in, you name the city, will be there except the fans of the teams.
“It’s hard to see why a playoff is a good idea.”
Of course it’s hard to see why a playoff is a good idea when you have your heads shoved so far… of course you and your ilk don’t see it. Don’t want to see it.
The only thing you “see” is the color green, and until you figure out how to attain more of that certain hue — or until Congress “gently” pushes you — you will continue to pull a Stevie Wonder when it comes to a much-needed playoff system.
Spare me the student-athlete argument, at least until your member institutions rid themselves of the offseason conditioning program, spring practice and summer strength programs.
Spare me the death knell of the bowl system as it’s eminently possible to have both the lower-tier bowls and a playoff system co-exist in a manner beneficial to all involved.
In short, just spare the vast majority of us your weak lines of reasoning. Nobody’s buying it.
Especially key members of Congress, as you all will find out come next Tuesday.
A playoff works for FCS, D-II, and D-III football, but not D-I… seesh.
“I don’t see fans travelling [sic] around the country three weeks in succession between December and January following their team.”
Have the BCS people stooped to THAT moronic a level to put forth THAT statement as an argument? This idiot obviously pays NO attention to his own sport. People will travel anywhere anytime to see their team/school play anywhere in a Playoff. Our only hope is for Congress to declare the BCS as some sort of monopoly and disband it.
They don’t have any real arguments. At least none that can’t be quickly refuted.
What’s wrong with a few home playoff games up north at the end of the season? I’ve always thought it would be entertaining to see teams like Florida and Miami play in a blizzard. Northern teams tend to build their games around weather, and then are arguably at a disadvantage when all bowl games are held in warm weather or indoors. Of course the championship game should always be at a neutral site, but the “cold weather home playoff game” fear is just retarded.
I would travel to hell, post-apocalypse, to see my Sooners play in a bowl game. The problem is, these guys aren’t fans of anything but themselves and their money. They don’t think like football fans think. They think like businessmen think. And not very good businessmen at that…
any big time college team fan will travel to see their team play, unless the bcs tries to discredit the whole thing by playing teams on opposite coasts. especially LSU fans.
im surprised nobody brings up the argument that it would be better to have controversy in finding out who the 8th or 16th best team (barring any byes) in the country is instead of controversy in finding out the BEST
and im glad nobody brings up the +1 system in this conversation. its the biggest piece of BS you could have. the only way anyone can possibly support it is having the team that just won the “championship” play a HOME game against the team that they would play in “championship part 2″ because they would have to overcome the mental obstacle of JUST WINNING THE CHAMPIONSHIP to PLAY IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE 2ND TIME IN 2 WEEKS
Well said. Just hearing an ESPN sock puppet say that they like the “+1″ system makes me livid. It’s the dumbest idea possible. What if there are exactly two undeafeated teams at the end of the regular season? I think this happened with Ohio State and Miami a while back, and I’m sure it happens every so often. You want to make them play another game? WTF? And, of course, some other team that gets left out of the “+1″ game is gonna have an awesome bowl game and end up with the same record (at least loss-wise) as the “+1″ winner, creating another cluster of crap at the end of it. It’s unbelievable to me that people think one extra game will solve everything.
[...] I think most people don’t understand is that the alternative to the current system is not a playoff,” Perlman said in July of 2009, shortly before he appeared at the Senate hearing. ”The [...]