@Amir Khalid: They are games played between college football teams after the regular season concludes. 35, all you need is a 6-6 record or, in the case of UCLA this year, 6-7 because USC was not eligible. There really are not that many more games than there ever have been and people have been whining about it for years.
18.
Raven
@joeyess: What “truth”? You don’t like it. I repeat, who gives a fuck? Go play in the book thread, sounds like a good place for your sissy ass.
@Raven:
And what is the symbolic significance of this specific item of crockery, i.e. the bowl, to university American football?
22.
Corner Stone
@joeyess: I’ll agree with you that the NCAA is crooked as the day is long.
But in this political environment, the pragmatic response is to work for incremental change and enjoy the product as available.
Nike has had a month to work on the Quackers’ Rose Bowl unis. Be afraid, be very afraid.
24.
Raven
@Amir Khalid: In North America, a bowl game commonly refers to one of a number of post-season college football games. The term “bowl” originated from the Rose Bowl Stadium, site of the first post-season college football games. The Rose Bowl Stadium, in turn, takes its name and bowl-shaped design from the Yale Bowl, the prototype of many football stadiums in the United States.
25.
Raven
@Corner Stone: Nearly all television sets are equipped with both channel changers and off switches, if the douche doesn’t like it then, as they say in REAL football, piss off.
Not very much, except that it makes alumni happy when alma mater wins a bowl game and there is a strong positive correlation between success in football and alumni donations.
There is no meaningful playoff system in the highest of the four divisions in American university football. The bowl games are a poor substitute, but they are too firmly rooted to be done away with anytime soon.
27.
Raven
@burnspbesq: Hence the meaninglessness of the annual whining.
“The Bowl” is a reference to the shape of the football stadium itself. Like a bowl.
29.
burnspbesq
Speaking of dunking, Harvard is up to number 21 in the ESPN/USA Today coaches’ poll. Fight fiercely, indeed.
30.
joeyess
@Raven: “sissy ass”? I don’t like cheating, lying, stealing from university coffers so the rubes can be entertained, only requiring one foot inbound on a catch to count as a “catch”, being “down” when you fall, and Lee-Fucking-Corso, I’m a “sissy ass”? Here’s my go-to article on “Collegiate Football”. Here’s a taste:
1. Oklahoma. When you go to the official website of the state of Oklahoma, the first option given under the “How Do I?…” menu is “Lookup offenders.” Now, let’s forgive the typo there for a moment. Oklahomans are well known for avoiding spaces between words because spaces could let the Devil sneak out. That’s why the text of your average Oklahoman’s email reads, “JimBob! Git yourass to theCrestFoods and gitme somemore chickenheads to puthere in thishere pillow!” I just like that the state prioritized finding sex offenders, death row prisoners, and parole dockets over the less common needs of its population, such as “find a job,” or “start a new business.” This is Oklahoma, son! You don’t go here to find work! You go here to track down the man who slaughtered six of your cousins and set the barn on fire! DON’T YOU KNOW ANYTHING?! Oh, and this team will get crushed by an SEC team in the national title game.
[]
4. LSU. I have it on good authority that, as fans of visiting teams go, LSU fans are the absolute worst in the country. They’re loud. They’re stupid. They’re breathtakingly RAYCESS. They don’t bathe. They lack anything beyond a second grade education. Their accent is so lazy that they can’t even bother to pronounce the second and third syllables of any word. That’s the secret to the Cajun accent: you have to be so fat and stupid that pronouncing words correctly requires too much exertion. They shout out random facts to no one in particular (“REAL BCS CHAMZZZZZ OF TWO THOUUUU FO!”). In a way, the effects of Hurricane Katrina have served as a convenient coverall to help America forget just how obnoxious people from Louisiana can be. They’re so large and loud and stupid, not unlike the brachiosaurus, or Ralphie May. I picture every LSU fan as a 350-pound man with limited cognitive brain function who drags a lawn chair and Igloo cooler around with him everywhere he goes, and blindly cheers for Les Miles as he attempts to substitute players half a second before the play clock runs down. Such a bold coach.
Now, if you can get thru the foul language, coupled with a large amount of truth without reaching for the smelling salts, you can call me a “sissy”. Whatever the fuck that means.
eta Here’s a question for you. What do you think this sanctimonious bullshit is going to accomplish here where a group of people who obviously are interested in the game are gathered? Go fuck yourself.
Respectfully disagree. The BCS is the Tea Party of college sports. It must be fought perpetually, with eternal vigilance, and with all the weapons at our disposal.
33.
freelancer
Jesus, cough up the ball and the momentum in a span of 30 seconds. Insane.
There is no meaningful playoff system in the highest of the four divisions in American university football. The bowl games are a poor substitute, but they are too firmly rooted to be done away with anytime soon.
Whiny and utterly fact-free. Which is your alma mater, Carolina or UConn?
36.
dmbeaster
@Amir Khalid: Bowl games: college football is organized into traditional regional leagues that infrequently play games with each other, and mostly play their games within the league. Bowl games were a kind of end of the season party and a chance for elite schools from various regions to play one another. They are clearly more important than homecoming games as a device for hooking the alumni in. Those rare matchups also tended to make them inherently interesting for the fan. They were also a marketing opportunity for local sponsors (Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, etc. – the Rose Bowl was a big exception, and was truly a party, and what midwesterner was going to pass up a vacation to SoCal midwinter, even though when that series started, eastern and midwestern teams were definitely slumming with the weaker west coast league).
Bowl games proliferated because of money, as more sponsors were willing to underwrite them, and schools were happy for the additional monetary boost of the end of the year party. Until the BCS got started, the bowls sort of competed with each other for teams (though some, like the Rose Bowl, had a tradition as to who they would invite – others sort of did).
Since college football is run as a cartel by the NCAA, the decision was made to regularize the money flow and stop big bowls from competing with each other for the premier team matchups. Ostensibly, it is supposed to rationalize a matchup for the national championship, but that concern was clearly secondary since a playoff would obviously do that far better.
So now the whole system has become more organized and more profitable as a consequence. The number of bowls is simply a function of what the market and sponsors will support. As a consequence, there is a proliferation of crappy bowl games, now nicknamed “toilet bowls.”
If nothing else, the petty arguments between fans of different teams are completely familiar to me.
41.
MikeJ
@Raven: Rose, Orange Sugar, Cotton. I refuse to remember any more than that.
42.
joeyess
Not to mention the fact that most bowl teams pay-to-play.
The racket works like this: Through required purchases of anywhere from 10,000 to 17,500 tickets, schools essentially pay for the right to appear in a bowl. The bowls keep the ticket and sponsorship money. Bowl execs also negotiate their own TV contracts.
After taking 50 to 60 percent off the top, the bowls then write checks to the teams’ conferences. The conferences, in turn, split that money among their schools. (Profits from the five Bowl Championship Series games are spread to varying degrees among all conferences.)
But only about half of the 35 bowls offer payouts large enough to cover team expenses. So the conferences use money from more lucrative bowl games to cover losses from the barkers.
“You don’t lose money going to bowl games, at least not in the Big 10,” says Minnesota football spokesman Andy Seeley.
But that’s true only in a technical sense. In the Gophers’ case, the Big 10 covered the university’s $1.3 million blemish from the 2009 Insight Bowl. What insiders don’t mention is the humungous pyramid of cash schools are leaving on the table.
“They should go take economics 101,” says Dan Wetzel, a Yahoo sports columnist and co-author of Death to the BCS. “Lost profit is lost money to any other business in the world.”
And these losses are staggering.
Last year, the nation’s bowls paid schools roughly $270 million. Just for playing middlemen and providing 70-degree temperatures, bowl execs grabbed a larger cut, north of $300 million.
Even bowl apologists admit that by implementing a playoff system, like every other NCAA sport does, schools could generate three to four times what they’re bringing home now. That’s because TV networks will pay far more for a playoff game than they will for straight-to-DVD thrillers like the Beef O’Brady’s St. Petersburg Bowl.
Under a playoff system, the schools’ collective take might even approach $1 billion annually. It’s the kind of money that could fill budget gaps in nearly every Division 1 athletic department.
Yet there’s one small barrier that stands in the way: A playoff system would ensure that schools would be taking home the money, not the insiders who make these decisions.
So college football is left with lopsided accords like Minnesota’s. When the Gophers were requiring a Big 10 bailout for those large red numbers in Tempe, Insight CEO John Junker was paying himself nearly $600,000 a year, with added perks like country club memberships as far away as Oregon and Oklahoma. Coaches and athletic directors make a similar killing.
Three years ago, the University of Florida beat Oklahoma for the national title. The Gators may have generated untold riches, but the school itself managed just a $50,000 profit—enough to pay for a team banquet and perhaps another part-timer for the groundskeeping crew.
Florida’s coaches and athletic officials were bound by no similar restraints. They took home $960,000 in bonuses.
That’s the beauty of the system: No matter how money is torched, the insiders always get paid.
Oh, btw, Alabama will get their asses handed to them by a team from the SEC. “utterly fact-free” indeed.
While that’s true, one of the functions of the BCS is to create discussion. It was created to, after many years of consternation, designate an “official” National Collegiate Football Champion.
For years, it was the AP Poll vs the UPI Poll…a bunch of sportswriters and college coaches got to vote, and they’d decide who was “Number One” at the end of the bowl season. Unlike every other collegiate and professional sports league in the country, only the top tier of college football does not have a playoff system to determine a season champion.
The BCS was supposed to take the capriciousness of the poll voters out of the equation. By putting in a “formula” (which, by the way, is opaque!) to determine who has played the most difficult schedule, defeated the most worthy opponents, and then the two teams that are ranked the highest battle it out for the championship. No longer would impressing drunken sports writers by running up the score against Fresno State secure you the coveted “number ONE!” slot at the end of the season after you crushed Northwestern in the Rose Bowl. Or Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl. Or Alabama in the Cotton Bowl. Or Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl.
Those were the four “big” bowls back when I was in HS. The Cotton Bowl has since been downgraded, and the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl has somehow become a major bowl. Go figure. Couldn’t possibly have anything to do with spigots of corporate advertising ducats? Nah…that can’t be it…
Anyways, one of the objections is that teams that had zero visibility in the eyes of East Coast sports writers (hello, Brigham Young and Boise State!) would theoretically get some attention and their perfect records would be compared, side by side, with folks like Alabama, Nebraska, Ohio State, and USC.
People whine about the BCS, but it is doing exactly what it was intended to do, and has been wildly successful. It was not intended primarily as a device for picking a national champion – that concern was clearly secondary. It was designed as a device to stop competition and confusion amongst the premier bowls for the top teams, and maximize and share revenues from a more organized system of matchups.
As a byproduct (and probably unintended and not forseen), the regular season was converted into a sort of sudden death playoff for the right to be in the premier games. For teams vying for the national championship, the playoffs are now the entire regular season, since any misstep is likely to be death to a chance to play in the championship game. This has resulted in greater interest in the regular season, and probably greater revenues (though I dont know). Don’t expect the BCS to change much anytime soon – it is working wonderfully for its creators.
56.
Raven
Here bitches, argue about this. Why do the officials say “by rule” every now and then when explaining a call? Every call is “by rule”.
Yup, the Rose Bowl was locked up as Big 10 vs. Pac 8 (then Pac 10 when the Arizona schools joined).
One of the sticking points with creating the BCS was which bowl gets to be the “big game”. Naturally, the top four bowls all said they should be The One. The compromise was to rotate it amongst the current big four, and in other years, the Rose would host Big 10/Pac 10 champions when neither was participating in the BCS championship game. So last season, when Pac 10 champion Oregon was #2 in the country, and therefore off to the BCS championship game, the Pac 10 runner up played in the Rose Bowl.
58.
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Yea and instead of going to the Rose Bowl Illinois got to play LSU in the fucking superdome in 2001!
And what is the symbolic significance of this specific item of crockery, i.e. the bowl, to university American football?
The older stadiums were single deck, rather than multi-deck like many modern stadiums. The vertical spacing between rows of seating gradually increase as you go back so fans will be able to see over the people in the row in front of them. That results in a shape that looks a lot like an oval bowl, so stadiums built in that style are known as bowls. The original post-season college games were named for the stadiums that hosted them, so you wound up with the Rose Bowl (The Granddaddy of Them All!), Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, etc. After a while the name became entrenched, so even games played in more modern, multi-deck stadiums are called bowls.
60.
dmbeaster
@joeyess: The article you quote is full of flaws on how the system and payoffs work – the system is far more lucrative for the schools than suggested in the article. But the key thing is that the entire system is based on revenue flow for the interested parties, so the point of view of the article is correct.
The key flaw in the article is supposing that the only source of revenue for the school appearing in the bowl game is the payout from the bowl itself. The TV rights are where the big money is, and that is controlled by the schools – not the bowl operators.
The idea that the schools and the NCAA are just rubes in relation to the bowl owners and sponsors is just stupid. College athletics is big business for universities, and run like one. Good athletic directors are savvy businessmen selling a product, and the university is acutely aware of the financial bottom line flowing from sports programs (which involves a lot more than just revenue from games for example, as a device for alumni outreach). The key source of revenue flow, TV broadcast rights, is held individually by each university, and they join together with other schools in a conference to jointly negotiate those rights, and share revenues within the conference.
Yeah, but having a “perfect season” or as close to it as possible was always the criteria for the mythical national championship prior to the BCS regularizing it and basically dividing the spoils amongst the bowl organizers. It gave every one of the major bowls a chance to host “the National Championship Game” once every few years.
Where the problem arose was when someone like BYU, playing in one of the not-major conferences, went through a season undefeated and claimed because they were the only team with an unblemished record, claimed the national championship. The schools in the major conferences could say, quite correctly, that they played much tougher schedules and even if they had one loss, they were better.
With no playoff system to sort this out, fan pressure grew to do something about such anomalies.
Thus, the BCS with the “strength of schedule” algorithms that are carefully proprietary and thus provide endless fodder for flame wars on the intertubes and thus the fan attention that drives the entire process. Eyeballs on teevee sets for the big bowl games.
One of the most enjoyable Rose Bowls for the locals was the year that some Caltech guys hacked the scoreboard so that the final score read Caltech 45, MIT 9.
In the interest of comity, I will refrain from naming the school that was actually on the short end of that score, except to note that their colors are orange and blue.
64.
Raven
@burnspbesq: 84, Illinois vs UCLA. Craig Swoope picked off a Nuheisel pass in the endzone and all he needed to do was take a knee but he ran it out and dropped it on the 10. That was it for us.We were on the last plane out of St Louis as a huge blizzard blew in before xmas.
eta, that was a great sports year for me. Rose Bowl, regional finals at Rupp and back to LA for the Olympics.
65.
burnspbesq
The NFL coaching carousel didn’t even wait 18 hours after the last game of the regular season to start spinning. Tampa and St. Louis are the first to fire their head coachs, while Indianapolis has fired its vice chairman and general manager.
66.
Raven
@burnspbesq: Guess it won’t take a genius to use the 1st pick for Nap Town.
I wouldn’t be too sure about that. QB isn’t Indy’s only problem. If they could get something else out of the deal, I could see them swapping picks with Minnesota and taking Griffin at number three.
Also too, given the severity of AP’s injury Minnesota could look to trade down and take a running back.
The real no-brainer pick is St. Louis at number two. If they don’t take Khalil, a grand jury should be empaneled.
I could see them swapping picks with Minnesota and taking Griffin at number three.
RGIII fits absolutely nothing the Colts have in their stable at present. They’d have to recruit the Texans offensive line to make RGIII have any kind of chance.
70.
Raven
@Corner Stone: Fucking stupid as they’ve ever been. Jesus.
Where the problem arose was when someone like BYU, playing in one of the not-major conferences, went through a season undefeated and claimed because they were the only team with an unblemished record, claimed the national championship. The schools in the major conferences could say, quite correctly, that they played much tougher schedules and even if they had one loss, they were better.
The bigger problem is that the strength of schedule argument was always more dubious than the big conference schools let on. Non-conference schedules are organized by the schools rather than by NCAA, so teams that saw themselves in the title hunt had little reason to try scheduling anything but patsies for their non-conference games. Also, too, the conferences are very uneven, so even the top conferences usually have only about three or four schools that are serious contenders for the conference championship in any season.
The result is that the “challenging” schedule for the big conference school consisted of something like three real games against decent schools in conference, four games against weak in-conference schools, and five games against lame out-of-conference schools. Meanwhile, the better the schools from second tier conferences were the harder a time they’d have lining up meaningful opponents from the big conferences. The system, such as it was, made it very difficult for a minor conference school to get serious consideration.
@Raven: You know the Alamo Bowl? UW and Baylor? Well, just remember that Oregon beat UW by outgunning them…..
100.
dmbeaster
@Villago Delenda Est: Not to be rude, but fan pressure had little to do with the BCS coming into existence (if fan pressure mattered, then a playoff rather than the BCS would result). It was all about the growing competition between top bowls for the ideal matchups as traditional methods for bowl selection broke down. It also has to do with much more money pouring into the sport in TV revenue. It got really weird as to when offers would be extended and teams accepting. The BCS ended up sharing the national championship game amongst the top bowls, and regularizing how to pick those eight teams.
The BCS was preceded by earlier efforts by the big bowls to cooperate in setting up the best scheme of matchups rather than compete (which was also the interest of college teams). The early problem was getting the Rose Bowl into the deal, due to their traditional commitment to the Big10/Pac10. The BCS came into existence when the Rose Bowl was finally brought onboard.
101.
Corner Stone
That dude for the Ducks is like Ted Ginn Jr. fucking fast.
Good sweet FSM. Don’t let that guy touch the G-D ball.
102.
Corner Stone
Ouch. Helmet to the Captain and his deck mates.
103.
JR in WVa
@freelancer: I was afraid after the first few minutes that MSU-GA wold be boring, but then it got helluva good! Great comeback by MSU, tied up into OT, missed Field Goal, great finish.
I’m, of course, going to have to go to a sports bar to watch the WVU – Clemson Orange Bowl game, as ESPN seems to have an illegal monopoly on Bowl broadcasts. I saw the other WVU – Clemson game in the Gator Bowl some years back.
I’m hoping that WVU does more like their wim over OK that got Coach Stew his shot at the (almost) Big Time… my late Dad was a huge WVU fan, so I’m hooked as of 6 or 7 years old.
I have it on good authority that someone in the TV tube manufacturing biz pays big bucks to Nike to foist those hideous helmets on the TV viewing audience in the hopes that thousands of older TVs will explode in horror when attempting to render them.
108.
The prophet Nostradumbass
So Oregon and Wisconsin have just tied the most points ever scored in a Rose Bowl (80), and they’ve only just started the 4th quarter.
109.
Villago Delenda Est
OK, probably whoever scores last wins the Rose Bowl, as this thing has developed.
Would it be too much to ask the Fighting Fashion Nightmares to play a bit of D? Just a bit?
110.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, it’s over, and we’re all exhausted. My cousin from Miami just called with congratulations.
Oregon!
Defenses actually played semi-decent in the second half – only 27 total points scored. lol.
Key was Wisconsin turnovers in second half, which were caused by smart opportunistic defense.
113.
dmbeaster
p.s., the all-green away uniforms and the reflecting helmets sucked.
114.
lol chikinburd
Sconnies like me, who have been ambivalent at best about the prospect of UW attaining “elite” status in college football, have Bret Bielema to thank for assuaging our fears. Pro tip: timeouts are valuable things to conserve, especially in the second halves of games.
No argument from me there. I don’t call them the Fighting Fashion Nightmares for nothing, you know. The UofO is the test bed for every hairbrained gawdawful “fashion” notion that the warped minds at Nike can come up with.
116.
Thatgaljill
I don’t want to sound like a hater, because I do love the Pac-12 and my team will be back in it next year… and I do live by on any given Saturday (or bowl game) any team can win…
But when the folks on the Farm bemoan how their QBs have been overlooked for the Heisman in the last 3 years, tonight will be my example of why. There was no reason Stanford should have lost that game, but they did… Their Luck took a steady slide at the end of the season.
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freelancer (iPhone)
Go BIG RED! Make Spurrier scowl again!
Yutsano
Mostly because of A) Pac-10 luv and B) I know the band director and his wife:
QUACK!!
dmbeaster
Go Ducks!!! my law school alma mater. Plus one of my best friends from school is here to see the game, and we get to feast afterwards. Good times.
Corner Stone
Cocks!
joeyess
I despise college sports and college football specifically.
It’s more crooked than Wall Street and K-Street combined.
Won’t watch a single game.
The so-called National Championship game is no more a championship game than Tim Tebow is an elite NFL quarterback.
Raven
Thanks JC! Woof!
Raven
@joeyess: So go the fuck away,who gives a shit what you like?
Phylllis
Gamecocks keeping it interesting.
Raven
MSU tryin to get cute. Chrunch!
Corner Stone
@joeyess: So you decided on the band name:
“joeyess and the party poopsters” ?
freelancer (iPhone)
Well that was a freebie. Huskers better punch it in!
Yeah! This is gonna be a weird game.
Raven
3d and 15 on the 7, Murray la bamba for 50!
Raven
shit
Villago Delenda Est
Go Fighting Fashion Nightmares! End the Curse of THE BIG GAME!
Amir Khalid
What are these Bowl games, and how many are on now? All I’ve figured out is that they’re played between selected university teams.
joeyess
@Raven: @Corner Stone: Truth hurts, huh?
Raven
@Amir Khalid: They are games played between college football teams after the regular season concludes. 35, all you need is a 6-6 record or, in the case of UCLA this year, 6-7 because USC was not eligible. There really are not that many more games than there ever have been and people have been whining about it for years.
Raven
@joeyess: What “truth”? You don’t like it. I repeat, who gives a fuck? Go play in the book thread, sounds like a good place for your sissy ass.
burnspbesq
@joeyess:
You wouldn’t know the truth if it dunked on your sorry head.
Yutsano
@Raven: Ahh c’mon. Let’s just talk smashmouth!
Amir Khalid
@Raven:
And what is the symbolic significance of this specific item of crockery, i.e. the bowl, to university American football?
Corner Stone
@joeyess: I’ll agree with you that the NCAA is crooked as the day is long.
But in this political environment, the pragmatic response is to work for incremental change and enjoy the product as available.
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
Nike has had a month to work on the Quackers’ Rose Bowl unis. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Raven
@Amir Khalid: In North America, a bowl game commonly refers to one of a number of post-season college football games. The term “bowl” originated from the Rose Bowl Stadium, site of the first post-season college football games. The Rose Bowl Stadium, in turn, takes its name and bowl-shaped design from the Yale Bowl, the prototype of many football stadiums in the United States.
Raven
@Corner Stone: Nearly all television sets are equipped with both channel changers and off switches, if the douche doesn’t like it then, as they say in REAL football, piss off.
burnspbesq
@Amir Khalid:
Not very much, except that it makes alumni happy when alma mater wins a bowl game and there is a strong positive correlation between success in football and alumni donations.
There is no meaningful playoff system in the highest of the four divisions in American university football. The bowl games are a poor substitute, but they are too firmly rooted to be done away with anytime soon.
Raven
@burnspbesq: Hence the meaninglessness of the annual whining.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
“The Bowl” is a reference to the shape of the football stadium itself. Like a bowl.
burnspbesq
Speaking of dunking, Harvard is up to number 21 in the ESPN/USA Today coaches’ poll. Fight fiercely, indeed.
joeyess
@Raven: “sissy ass”? I don’t like cheating, lying, stealing from university coffers so the rubes can be entertained, only requiring one foot inbound on a catch to count as a “catch”, being “down” when you fall, and Lee-Fucking-Corso, I’m a “sissy ass”? Here’s my go-to article on “Collegiate Football”. Here’s a taste:
[]
Now, if you can get thru the foul language, coupled with a large amount of truth without reaching for the smelling salts, you can call me a “sissy”. Whatever the fuck that means.
I think I’ll name my band Raven Can Fuck Itself.
Raven
@joeyess: sorry I meant punk
eta Here’s a question for you. What do you think this sanctimonious bullshit is going to accomplish here where a group of people who obviously are interested in the game are gathered? Go fuck yourself.
burnspbesq
@Raven:
Respectfully disagree. The BCS is the Tea Party of college sports. It must be fought perpetually, with eternal vigilance, and with all the weapons at our disposal.
freelancer
Jesus, cough up the ball and the momentum in a span of 30 seconds. Insane.
arguingwithsignposts
@burnspbesq:
only because they don’t want one.
burnspbesq
@joeyess:
Whiny and utterly fact-free. Which is your alma mater, Carolina or UConn?
dmbeaster
@Amir Khalid: Bowl games: college football is organized into traditional regional leagues that infrequently play games with each other, and mostly play their games within the league. Bowl games were a kind of end of the season party and a chance for elite schools from various regions to play one another. They are clearly more important than homecoming games as a device for hooking the alumni in. Those rare matchups also tended to make them inherently interesting for the fan. They were also a marketing opportunity for local sponsors (Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, etc. – the Rose Bowl was a big exception, and was truly a party, and what midwesterner was going to pass up a vacation to SoCal midwinter, even though when that series started, eastern and midwestern teams were definitely slumming with the weaker west coast league).
Bowl games proliferated because of money, as more sponsors were willing to underwrite them, and schools were happy for the additional monetary boost of the end of the year party. Until the BCS got started, the bowls sort of competed with each other for teams (though some, like the Rose Bowl, had a tradition as to who they would invite – others sort of did).
Since college football is run as a cartel by the NCAA, the decision was made to regularize the money flow and stop big bowls from competing with each other for the premier team matchups. Ostensibly, it is supposed to rationalize a matchup for the national championship, but that concern was clearly secondary since a playoff would obviously do that far better.
So now the whole system has become more organized and more profitable as a consequence. The number of bowls is simply a function of what the market and sponsors will support. As a consequence, there is a proliferation of crappy bowl games, now nicknamed “toilet bowls.”
freelancer
Last seen footage of joeyess in public.
Raven
@burnspbesq: The bitching about too many bowls came well before the BCS.
Raven
@freelancer: I think it’s joyless
Amir Khalid
If nothing else, the petty arguments between fans of different teams are completely familiar to me.
MikeJ
@Raven: Rose, Orange Sugar, Cotton. I refuse to remember any more than that.
joeyess
Not to mention the fact that most bowl teams pay-to-play.
Oh, btw, Alabama will get their asses handed to them by a team from the SEC. “utterly fact-free” indeed.
Raven
@Amir Khalid: Fuck the Cocks!
Raven
80 bombaruski! Dawgs up 9-0!
freelancer
I <3 you, Rex Burkhead!
Raven
@MikeJ:And that’s great. No one is forced to watch or like it.
Raven
@joeyess: go away
Villago Delenda Est
@Raven:
While that’s true, one of the functions of the BCS is to create discussion. It was created to, after many years of consternation, designate an “official” National Collegiate Football Champion.
For years, it was the AP Poll vs the UPI Poll…a bunch of sportswriters and college coaches got to vote, and they’d decide who was “Number One” at the end of the bowl season. Unlike every other collegiate and professional sports league in the country, only the top tier of college football does not have a playoff system to determine a season champion.
The BCS was supposed to take the capriciousness of the poll voters out of the equation. By putting in a “formula” (which, by the way, is opaque!) to determine who has played the most difficult schedule, defeated the most worthy opponents, and then the two teams that are ranked the highest battle it out for the championship. No longer would impressing drunken sports writers by running up the score against Fresno State secure you the coveted “number ONE!” slot at the end of the season after you crushed Northwestern in the Rose Bowl. Or Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl. Or Alabama in the Cotton Bowl. Or Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl.
Those were the four “big” bowls back when I was in HS. The Cotton Bowl has since been downgraded, and the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl has somehow become a major bowl. Go figure. Couldn’t possibly have anything to do with spigots of corporate advertising ducats? Nah…that can’t be it…
Anyways, one of the objections is that teams that had zero visibility in the eyes of East Coast sports writers (hello, Brigham Young and Boise State!) would theoretically get some attention and their perfect records would be compared, side by side, with folks like Alabama, Nebraska, Ohio State, and USC.
In theory.
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: The Astro Blue Bonnet Bowl!
The prophet Nostradumbass
Goddamn, that was a hell of a punt return by Georgia.
Raven
All the bitching and moaning in the world doesn’t away from Brandon Boykin’s 92 yard punt return! Go Dawgs!
joeyess
@Raven: no
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Remember that until 83 the Big 10 only went to the Rose Bowl, no other bowls.
Raven
@The prophet Nostradumbass: How bout them Dawgs!
dmbeaster
People whine about the BCS, but it is doing exactly what it was intended to do, and has been wildly successful. It was not intended primarily as a device for picking a national champion – that concern was clearly secondary. It was designed as a device to stop competition and confusion amongst the premier bowls for the top teams, and maximize and share revenues from a more organized system of matchups.
As a byproduct (and probably unintended and not forseen), the regular season was converted into a sort of sudden death playoff for the right to be in the premier games. For teams vying for the national championship, the playoffs are now the entire regular season, since any misstep is likely to be death to a chance to play in the championship game. This has resulted in greater interest in the regular season, and probably greater revenues (though I dont know). Don’t expect the BCS to change much anytime soon – it is working wonderfully for its creators.
Raven
Here bitches, argue about this. Why do the officials say “by rule” every now and then when explaining a call? Every call is “by rule”.
Villago Delenda Est
@Raven:
Yup, the Rose Bowl was locked up as Big 10 vs. Pac 8 (then Pac 10 when the Arizona schools joined).
One of the sticking points with creating the BCS was which bowl gets to be the “big game”. Naturally, the top four bowls all said they should be The One. The compromise was to rotate it amongst the current big four, and in other years, the Rose would host Big 10/Pac 10 champions when neither was participating in the BCS championship game. So last season, when Pac 10 champion Oregon was #2 in the country, and therefore off to the BCS championship game, the Pac 10 runner up played in the Rose Bowl.
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Yea and instead of going to the Rose Bowl Illinois got to play LSU in the fucking superdome in 2001!
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
The older stadiums were single deck, rather than multi-deck like many modern stadiums. The vertical spacing between rows of seating gradually increase as you go back so fans will be able to see over the people in the row in front of them. That results in a shape that looks a lot like an oval bowl, so stadiums built in that style are known as bowls. The original post-season college games were named for the stadiums that hosted them, so you wound up with the Rose Bowl (The Granddaddy of Them All!), Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, etc. After a while the name became entrenched, so even games played in more modern, multi-deck stadiums are called bowls.
dmbeaster
@joeyess: The article you quote is full of flaws on how the system and payoffs work – the system is far more lucrative for the schools than suggested in the article. But the key thing is that the entire system is based on revenue flow for the interested parties, so the point of view of the article is correct.
The key flaw in the article is supposing that the only source of revenue for the school appearing in the bowl game is the payout from the bowl itself. The TV rights are where the big money is, and that is controlled by the schools – not the bowl operators.
The idea that the schools and the NCAA are just rubes in relation to the bowl owners and sponsors is just stupid. College athletics is big business for universities, and run like one. Good athletic directors are savvy businessmen selling a product, and the university is acutely aware of the financial bottom line flowing from sports programs (which involves a lot more than just revenue from games for example, as a device for alumni outreach). The key source of revenue flow, TV broadcast rights, is held individually by each university, and they join together with other schools in a conference to jointly negotiate those rights, and share revenues within the conference.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmbeaster:
Yeah, but having a “perfect season” or as close to it as possible was always the criteria for the mythical national championship prior to the BCS regularizing it and basically dividing the spoils amongst the bowl organizers. It gave every one of the major bowls a chance to host “the National Championship Game” once every few years.
Where the problem arose was when someone like BYU, playing in one of the not-major conferences, went through a season undefeated and claimed because they were the only team with an unblemished record, claimed the national championship. The schools in the major conferences could say, quite correctly, that they played much tougher schedules and even if they had one loss, they were better.
With no playoff system to sort this out, fan pressure grew to do something about such anomalies.
Thus, the BCS with the “strength of schedule” algorithms that are carefully proprietary and thus provide endless fodder for flame wars on the intertubes and thus the fan attention that drives the entire process. Eyeballs on teevee sets for the big bowl games.
Raven
@Roger Moore: The Orange Bowl was always decked.
burnspbesq
One of the most enjoyable Rose Bowls for the locals was the year that some Caltech guys hacked the scoreboard so that the final score read Caltech 45, MIT 9.
In the interest of comity, I will refrain from naming the school that was actually on the short end of that score, except to note that their colors are orange and blue.
Raven
@burnspbesq: 84, Illinois vs UCLA. Craig Swoope picked off a Nuheisel pass in the endzone and all he needed to do was take a knee but he ran it out and dropped it on the 10. That was it for us.We were on the last plane out of St Louis as a huge blizzard blew in before xmas.
eta, that was a great sports year for me. Rose Bowl, regional finals at Rupp and back to LA for the Olympics.
burnspbesq
The NFL coaching carousel didn’t even wait 18 hours after the last game of the regular season to start spinning. Tampa and St. Louis are the first to fire their head coachs, while Indianapolis has fired its vice chairman and general manager.
Raven
@burnspbesq: Guess it won’t take a genius to use the 1st pick for Nap Town.
Corner Stone
Cocks! Bitchez!
burnspbesq
@Raven:
I wouldn’t be too sure about that. QB isn’t Indy’s only problem. If they could get something else out of the deal, I could see them swapping picks with Minnesota and taking Griffin at number three.
Also too, given the severity of AP’s injury Minnesota could look to trade down and take a running back.
The real no-brainer pick is St. Louis at number two. If they don’t take Khalil, a grand jury should be empaneled.
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq:
RGIII fits absolutely nothing the Colts have in their stable at present. They’d have to recruit the Texans offensive line to make RGIII have any kind of chance.
Raven
@Corner Stone: Fucking stupid as they’ve ever been. Jesus.
burnspbesq
@Corner Stone:
This year’s draft is exceptionally deep in OLs. There will be guys drafted in the 20s who will start as rookies.
Corner Stone
@Raven: Big sack by Cocks!
Corner Stone
How you get ejected for fighting in a bowl game is beyond me. Talk about lighting dollar bills on fire.
handy
@Corner Stone:
You’re just having too much fun with that.
Corner Stone
You have to come down with that ball amigo.
Corner Stone
And the Cocks punch it in!
Raven
El chokearama dawgs
JPL
How can Michigan State prove they are a top ten team if they beat an eighteenth rank team? hmmm
Raven
@JPL: How can we give the ball to the same guy for 3 losses in a row?
Corner Stone
And my U of H Cougs finish off a sad sack Penn St. team.
JPL
@Raven: My friend’s husband (MSU grad) went to the game with his son. (UGA grad)
JPL
nice!
Raven
@JPL: ugh, Murray and King have been awful. If he can’t run the frickin route throw it to someone else.
Corner Stone
Oh, that was big for the Cocks!
Corner Stone
Milk it! Milk that clock Cocks!
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
The bigger problem is that the strength of schedule argument was always more dubious than the big conference schools let on. Non-conference schedules are organized by the schools rather than by NCAA, so teams that saw themselves in the title hunt had little reason to try scheduling anything but patsies for their non-conference games. Also, too, the conferences are very uneven, so even the top conferences usually have only about three or four schools that are serious contenders for the conference championship in any season.
The result is that the “challenging” schedule for the big conference school consisted of something like three real games against decent schools in conference, four games against weak in-conference schools, and five games against lame out-of-conference schools. Meanwhile, the better the schools from second tier conferences were the harder a time they’d have lining up meaningful opponents from the big conferences. The system, such as it was, made it very difficult for a minor conference school to get serious consideration.
Raven
Jesus I’m havin a heart attack!
JPL
@Raven: pacing helps
Corner Stone
TD Sparty!!
ETA, review will probably put them inside the 1.
Morbo
Overtime, shit, I was hoping to shovel snow in the daylight.
Raven
RAMBO!!!!
msskwesq
Go Badgers!!!! The Big 10 Champs will win the Rose Bowl!!!
Maxwel
What an inept OT!
JPL
well that sucks…ugh
freelancer
PHEW! That Michigan State game was a barn-burner!
Corner Stone
That dude for the Ducks just blew the doors off errrrbody.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Those Oregon helmets are fucking hideous.
Raven
They went to the Rose Bowl and the Mt Sac relays broke out!
gwangung
@Raven: You know the Alamo Bowl? UW and Baylor? Well, just remember that Oregon beat UW by outgunning them…..
dmbeaster
@Villago Delenda Est: Not to be rude, but fan pressure had little to do with the BCS coming into existence (if fan pressure mattered, then a playoff rather than the BCS would result). It was all about the growing competition between top bowls for the ideal matchups as traditional methods for bowl selection broke down. It also has to do with much more money pouring into the sport in TV revenue. It got really weird as to when offers would be extended and teams accepting. The BCS ended up sharing the national championship game amongst the top bowls, and regularizing how to pick those eight teams.
The BCS was preceded by earlier efforts by the big bowls to cooperate in setting up the best scheme of matchups rather than compete (which was also the interest of college teams). The early problem was getting the Rose Bowl into the deal, due to their traditional commitment to the Big10/Pac10. The BCS came into existence when the Rose Bowl was finally brought onboard.
Corner Stone
That dude for the Ducks is like Ted Ginn Jr. fucking fast.
Good sweet FSM. Don’t let that guy touch the G-D ball.
Corner Stone
Ouch. Helmet to the Captain and his deck mates.
JR in WVa
@freelancer: I was afraid after the first few minutes that MSU-GA wold be boring, but then it got helluva good! Great comeback by MSU, tied up into OT, missed Field Goal, great finish.
I’m, of course, going to have to go to a sports bar to watch the WVU – Clemson Orange Bowl game, as ESPN seems to have an illegal monopoly on Bowl broadcasts. I saw the other WVU – Clemson game in the Gator Bowl some years back.
I’m hoping that WVU does more like their wim over OK that got Coach Stew his shot at the (almost) Big Time… my late Dad was a huge WVU fan, so I’m hooked as of 6 or 7 years old.
Let’s GO Mountaineers!
Whoo!
JR in W VA
Villago Delenda Est
@dmbeaster:
Point taken. It’s always, always, ALWAYS about the fucking money.
Every.single.time
Corner Stone
I wonder if fullbacks/receivers come back into the huddle and say, “Don’t float that fucking thing my way again if you want to walk tomorrow.”
Corner Stone
Nick Toon. Shouldn’t Jessica Rabbit show up somewhere soon?
Villago Delenda Est
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
I have it on good authority that someone in the TV tube manufacturing biz pays big bucks to Nike to foist those hideous helmets on the TV viewing audience in the hopes that thousands of older TVs will explode in horror when attempting to render them.
The prophet Nostradumbass
So Oregon and Wisconsin have just tied the most points ever scored in a Rose Bowl (80), and they’ve only just started the 4th quarter.
Villago Delenda Est
OK, probably whoever scores last wins the Rose Bowl, as this thing has developed.
Would it be too much to ask the Fighting Fashion Nightmares to play a bit of D? Just a bit?
Villago Delenda Est
Well, it’s over, and we’re all exhausted. My cousin from Miami just called with congratulations.
Ducks finally win a Rose Bowl. Whee!
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m still exhausted from the Dawg fubar.
dmbeaster
Oregon!
Defenses actually played semi-decent in the second half – only 27 total points scored. lol.
Key was Wisconsin turnovers in second half, which were caused by smart opportunistic defense.
dmbeaster
p.s., the all-green away uniforms and the reflecting helmets sucked.
lol chikinburd
Sconnies like me, who have been ambivalent at best about the prospect of UW attaining “elite” status in college football, have Bret Bielema to thank for assuaging our fears. Pro tip: timeouts are valuable things to conserve, especially in the second halves of games.
Whatever. Dave Zirin’s right, anyway.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmbeaster:
No argument from me there. I don’t call them the Fighting Fashion Nightmares for nothing, you know. The UofO is the test bed for every hairbrained gawdawful “fashion” notion that the warped minds at Nike can come up with.
Thatgaljill
I don’t want to sound like a hater, because I do love the Pac-12 and my team will be back in it next year… and I do live by on any given Saturday (or bowl game) any team can win…
But when the folks on the Farm bemoan how their QBs have been overlooked for the Heisman in the last 3 years, tonight will be my example of why. There was no reason Stanford should have lost that game, but they did… Their Luck took a steady slide at the end of the season.