Hey football fans...

[TopDawg]

Have y'all noticed how boring the last few weeks of college basketball have been? All these teams not caring if they lost because they were already in the tournament.

Like the other day, Duke and North Carolina played. You could tell that neither of them really cared whether or not they won that game because they knew they were already in the tournament. BOR-RING!

Well if you thought that was boring, just wait until next week when this alleged "championship tournament" starts. Talk about lame! Some team with 5 losses might win the so-called "national championship." How stupid is that?!

I'm glad we've got a better system in college football.

[stoops the eternal pimp]

gonna be some prize posting done in this thread....:pop:

[GottaHavePride]

[football fan] Huh? People still play basketball? [/football fan]


;)

[fwsooner22]

Someday........May football be so boring........God I hope so......I am getting older......

[TopDawg]

Yeah! Cinderella?! How lame is that?!

You want a MAN'S sport?! Try college football. You can go undefeated and STILL not win the national title. That's what I'm talkin' about!

[bri]

me too...I hate Cinderella

After the last two Fiesta Bowls, so do I. :D

[bstuff1979]

After the last two Fiesta Bowls, so do I. :D

No, no...those were the step-sisters. Cinderella couldn't be from West Virginia or Idaho, it ruins the story.

[yermom]

Duke played UNC and someone cared outside of NC?

huh, i'll be damned

[goingoneight]

Is this thread for real? :confused:

[GottaHavePride]

Either that or we're all having the same hallucination.

[bri]

http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/fox_searchlight/super_troopers/_group_photos/andre_vippolis2.jpg

I'm freaking out, man!

[Frozen Sooner]

Sooner Football Total Threads 33,765 Total Posts 718,471

Sooner Basketball Total Threads Total Threads 3,545 Total Posts 77,289

Just sayin'.

If it weren't for gambling, nobody would care about the NCAA basketball tournament. Not sayin' I don't care-I throw in my $10 per bracket like everyone else.

[goingoneight]

That's more than I do.

Oh, and I thought this was some kind of copycat thread mocking the playoff/no playoff, but I was too lazy to snoop around for an original.

[rainiersooner]

We should fire Brett Venables.

[TopDawg]

Sooner Football Total Threads 33,765 Total Posts 718,471

Sooner Basketball Total Threads Total Threads 3,545 Total Posts 77,289

Just sayin'.

If it weren't for gambling, nobody would care about the NCAA basketball tournament. Not sayin' I don't care-I throw in my $10 per bracket like everyone else.

Clearly America (and Oklahoma) is more of a football nation (state) than a basketball nation (state).

I'm not trying to say "Hey, everybody, look at how popular basketball is" just "Look, regular season games can still be exciting with a playoff."

Now if college basketball games don't excite you anyway, that's another thing. Maybe you'll get better one of these days.

[yermom]

Duke/UNC plays what like 3x a year? maybe four...

the regular season meetings just don't excite me all that much

i mean they might be playing for a higher seed in the tourney?

the regular season conference champ + tournament conference champ thing is a bit diluted as well

the vast majority of people don't give a crap until the dance starts, especially outside of their conference

[TopDawg]

Let me try again.

(First, if you're not a basketball fan, or don't have the ability to observe basketball fans, this probably won't resonate with you. In order for this to make sense, you have to be able to observe the excitement college basketball fans have this time of year...just like someone engaged in a discussion about the excitement of college football games would have to be able to observe the excitement college football fans have during the regular season. Simply saying "this doesn't apply to me" doesn't really matter.)

People say that a football playoff will make regular season college football games less exciting. I say, it hasn't happened in basketball. These games are still exciting to basketball fans. Even this weekend when Duke and UNC played and there was no tournament berth on the line, there was still something at stake which made the game exciting for college basketball fans...#1 seed, bragging rights, etc.

I'm not trying to make an argument that the basketball tourney format turns non-basketball fans into basketball fans or that the college basketball tournament has made college basketball as popular as football...I'm just saying (at a more appropriate time) that the excitement that may be lost by a "meaningless" December basketball game is more than made up for by the increased "meaning" of games these days.

There are plenty of other valid arguments against a college football playoff...I'm just trying to dispense of the ridiculous "regular season games won't be exciting anymore" one.

[Frozen Sooner]

What objective measure could you use to determine whether games are exciting other than people being drawn to watch them? There's a difference between suspenseful and exciting.

A 1-0 soccer game is suspenseful. I still ain't watching.

And yeah, I like basketball-but I don't feel any real need to watch regular season games like I do regular season football games.

[yermom]

Let me try again.

(First, if you're not a basketball fan, or don't have the ability to observe basketball fans, this probably won't resonate with you. In order for this to make sense, you have to be able to observe the excitement college basketball fans have this time of year...just like someone engaged in a discussion about the excitement of college football games would have to be able to observe the excitement college football fans have during the regular season. Simply saying "this doesn't apply to me" doesn't really matter.)

People say that a football playoff will make regular season college football games less exciting. I say, it hasn't happened in basketball. These games are still exciting to basketball fans. Even this weekend when Duke and UNC played and there was no tournament berth on the line, there was still something at stake which made the game exciting for college basketball fans...#1 seed, bragging rights, etc.

I'm not trying to make an argument that the basketball tourney format turns non-basketball fans into basketball fans or that the college basketball tournament has made college basketball as popular as football...I'm just saying (at a more appropriate time) that the excitement that may be lost by a "meaningless" December basketball game is more than made up for by the increased "meaning" of games these days.

There are plenty of other valid arguments against a college football playoff...I'm just trying to dispense of the ridiculous "regular season games won't be exciting anymore" one.

you might get more sympathy in the basketball forum ;)

it sucks to lose regular season basketball games, but it doesn't SUCK like it does in football. that's the difference, IMO

add a playoff and you don't have that much of a letdown with those losses

besides, it's a lot harder to fill a football stadium on short notice than it is with a basketball arena. not to mention that you can only play at one site once in like a week, instead of multiple games in consecutive days

[birddog]

me too...I hate Cinderella

why do you hate boise state? oh wait, they didn't get a chance to be cinderella.


carry on.

[TopDawg]

What objective measure could you use to determine whether games are exciting other than people being drawn to watch them? There's a difference between suspenseful and exciting.

Excitement isn't objective. I mean, you could hook people up to heart-rate and brain monitors and stuff like that, but I say just watch the fans and see if they're excited. What you're talking about is popularity and that's a different issue. I'm not trying to say that the college basketball playoff system has made the college basketball regular season more popular. I certainly don't think it's made it LESS popular (which is what I think some people are trying to suggest would happen to college football). I'm just saying it hasn't compromised the excitement of the regular season.

If you want to talk about popularity, then we can talk about how the college basketball playoff (as many of you have pointed out) brings in the most casual of basketball fans...even people who don't know the difference between a Hoya and a Tarheel.

[OUmillenium]

gonna be some prize posting done in this thread....:pop:


Kimala spek! on the avatar

[Ton Loc]

TopDawg is fighting a war that I support, but one that can't be won on the enemies territory.

[jccouger]

I understand what you are saying TopDawg

We love basketball regular season games because we love college basketball in general, whether there is a tourney or not.

And you are saying whether college football has a playoff or doesnt, then that people will still be college football fans, and will still love watching and won't take away the excitement factor.

Spek to you!

[goingoneight]

I watched every Dallas Cowboys game last year. Even the "meaningless" ones. I enjoyed every win and despised every loss, just like when the Sooners play. Difference is that if my pro team gets screwed on the road and then drops a loss to arch-rival/defending champion they're not screwed out of the big picture.

What I DON'T want is some giant football tournament where anyone who is bowl eligible is MNC-eligible. That's what most fans of CFB hate, the idea that someone could start out 0-4, win their conference, get on a hot streak and win it all. I still can't acknowledge that :les: won the MNC with that painfully mediocre effort last year. Any other year, his two-loss LSU team would be pounding on Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl where 2-loss conference champions belong.

I do believe however that if conference champions were the only teams allowed to participate in a BCS playoff, the conference titles would begin to mean something and wouldn't be scoffed at anymore just because of how someone does in some meaningless bowl. Honestly, a 7-5 team could win their conference and win it all... but do you really see that happening even on a blue moon?

[Frozen Sooner]

Excitement isn't objective. I mean, you could hook people up to heart-rate and brain monitors and stuff like that, but I say just watch the fans and see if they're excited. What you're talking about is popularity and that's a different issue. I'm not trying to say that the college basketball playoff system has made the college basketball regular season more popular. I certainly don't think it's made it LESS popular (which is what I think some people are trying to suggest would happen to college football). I'm just saying it hasn't compromised the excitement of the regular season.

If you want to talk about popularity, then we can talk about how the college basketball playoff (as many of you have pointed out) brings in the most casual of basketball fans...even people who don't know the difference between a Hoya and a Tarheel.

I guess I don't get what you're trying to say. You're telling me that there's no way to measure excitement, but that the NCAA tournament has in no way reduced it for the basketball regular season.

Huh?

[RedstickSooner]

Excitement isn't objective. I mean, you could hook people up to heart-rate and brain monitors and stuff like that, but I say just watch the fans and see if they're excited. What you're talking about is popularity and that's a different issue. I'm not trying to say that the college basketball playoff system has made the college basketball regular season more popular. I certainly don't think it's made it LESS popular (which is what I think some people are trying to suggest would happen to college football). I'm just saying it hasn't compromised the excitement of the regular season.

If you want to talk about popularity, then we can talk about how the college basketball playoff (as many of you have pointed out) brings in the most casual of basketball fans...even people who don't know the difference between a Hoya and a Tarheel.

Actually, I think we may have hit on part of the problem in your perception here -- I think you're reading too much into what you see from the fans at the games.

Know why they're so excited?

They're college students, yo.

Because nobody (read: alumni) pays to go watch basketball. They just stay at home, watch a few on TV or at the bar, and then get excited once tourney time rolls around.

If you fill a soccer stadium with college students, it'll look like they're "excited fans". (Or, if you fill that same soccer stadium with foreigners, but I digress.)

So, until we start getting 40 year old men painted in school colors filling the basketball arenas of colleges around this great nation... I say it's too early to claim that there's anything close to the excitement of a regular season college football game at your regular season basketball games.

Which mostly boils down to: I disagree with you, as to whether you've disproved the "excitement argument" against the playoff system.

Not that it matters. I think, honestly, at this point, the question of having a college football playoff has become almost religious in its fervor. I don't think anything anyone says on either side can sway anyone on the other side. Which is kinda unfortunate. It's good to sway. That's how white boys dance at prom. Aside from the gay ones, I mean. NTTAWWT.

[TopDawg]

You people are arguing points I'm not trying to make. This is at the heart of my point:


Which mostly boils down to: I disagree with you, as to whether you've disproved the "excitement argument" against the playoff system.

Well, it seems that we basketball fans were still pretty interested in the last few OU games. My wife, who knows nothing about basketball, was yelling her head off and banging on the chair in front of her at the Baylor game when Jerrels was on the free throw line. We were all pretty excited. Why? Because it was an important game for us to win.

That's the same kind of phenomenon we'll have in football. Sure, losing your first game of the year won't suck AS BAD, because you're still in the race for the playoff. But losing your second game of the year will suck MUCH WORSE than it does now, because at that point, you've been virtually eliminated from the playoff (if it's an 8-teamer).

Like I said, there are many good reasons for concern about a college football playoff, but do you really think an 8-team playoff is going to drain college football of its excitement? As you correctly noted, Redstick, people...even grown men...go effin nuts over football. They don't just stop after the first loss. They go crazy because they care about football and their team (just like basketball fans care about basketball and their team). And just like basketball fans go even crazier late in the year when the stakes are high (whether it's for a one seed, pride, or a tournament berth) so will college football fans go even crazier late in the year when, despite one early season non-conference loss, they still have a chance to get into the playoff or improve their seeding in the tournament.

[TopDawg]

I guess I don't get what you're trying to say. You're telling me that there's no way to measure excitement, but that the NCAA tournament has in no way reduced it for the basketball regular season.

Huh?

No, first I talked about excitement. About how I don't think we need an objective way to measure it, that you can just observe it. To use Redstick's example, soccer doesn't excite me, but I can look at a crowd of soccer fans and see that they are excited. Probably too excited, but that's for another thread.

Then I talked about popularity, because that's what it seemed like you were trying to measure when you said "people being drawn to watch it." Then I stated that I don't think the NCAA tourney has made college basketball LESS popular, if you want to look at it from that objective angle.

[yermom]

even if it didn't change the regular season, there are other problems with it. football isn't basketball

[RedstickSooner]

You people are arguing points I'm not trying to make. This is at the heart of my point:



Well, it seems that we basketball fans were still pretty interested in the last few OU games. My wife, who knows nothing about basketball, was yelling her head off and banging on the chair in front of her at the Baylor game when Jerrels was on the free throw line. We were all pretty excited. Why? Because it was an important game for us to win.

That's the same kind of phenomenon we'll have in football. Sure, losing your first game of the year won't suck AS BAD, because you're still in the race for the playoff. But losing your second game of the year will suck MUCH WORSE than it does now, because at that point, you've been virtually eliminated from the playoff (if it's an 8-teamer).

Like I said, there are many good reasons for concern about a college football playoff, but do you really think an 8-team playoff is going to drain college football of its excitement? As you correctly noted, Redstick, people...even grown men...go effin nuts over football. They don't just stop after the first loss. They go crazy because they care about football and their team (just like basketball fans care about basketball and their team). And just like basketball fans go even crazier late in the year when the stakes are high (whether it's for a one seed, pride, or a tournament berth) so will college football fans go even crazier late in the year when, despite one early season non-conference loss, they still have a chance to get into the playoff or improve their seeding in the tournament.

Well, yeah... Okay, with an 8 game tournament, I think you can make a very strong argument that you wouldn't diminish the excitement of the regular season. I just always get wary when people mention basketball's tournament and football in anything close to the same breath -- because the NCAA tournament is *way* too inclusive for my taste.

In the interest of full disclosure, my bias is to have a 4 team, "plus one" type tournament. Two of the BCS games would involve the top four (I guess #1 vs #4, and #2 vs #3, with the winners of those two games facing each other a week later).

Where I'm disagreeing with you is as to whether you've proven that the NCAA tournament doesn't dilute basketball excitement. I maintain that having some folks who are exceptions (fans such as you & your wife, who are plenty pumped) doesn't *prove* that there wouldn't be more excitement with a reduced, or even eliminated, tournament.

I'd say it sounds like you and your wife are already maxxed out on excitement, so I agree that reducing or changing the tourney situation wouldn't change how excited you two get -- it's the fans that currently *aren't* excited by college basketball that might be different. The problem is, short of experimentally curtailing the tourney, or scaling it back for a few seasons, we have no real way of knowing what effect it'd have.

Is basketball intrinsically less exciting than football? Does it, by virtue of its longer season (in terms of number of games) simply guarantee that it won't have as many fans at every game? Is there some other reason why football attendance (on a per game basis) is so much higher?

Really, there's no way to prove these things. That's my main disagreement. Frankly, I think you've argued your case well -- I just don't agree that we have any empirical evidence to work with here.

Hopefully you can tell what the heck I'm trying to say, and I haven't completely muddled things here :)

[RUSH LIMBAUGH is my clone!]

Someday........May football be so boring........God I hope so......I am getting older......Tired of losing those bowl games..me too.

[SouthFortySooner]

...list of things I've never done. (1) been coon huntin (2) watched a basketball game... I think it is because I don't know the rules, or ...

[StoopTroup]

I think one of them is kinda like ping pong and the other is like shooting skeet.

[Desert Sapper]

[football fan] Huh? People still play basketball? [/football fan]


;)

I thought they cancelled basketball back in 1988. You know, when there was that team, that lost in the national title game to that other team that they beat TWICE in the regular season. Damn if I can't remember who that team was.;)

[TopDawg]

even if it didn't change the regular season, there are other problems with it. football isn't basketball

No question about it.

[TopDawg]

Where I'm disagreeing with you is as to whether you've proven that the NCAA tournament doesn't dilute basketball excitement. I maintain that having some folks who are exceptions (fans such as you & your wife, who are plenty pumped) doesn't *prove* that there wouldn't be more excitement with a reduced, or even eliminated, tournament.

This is true and the current set-up has been around too long for us to be able to compare it to before the tourney.

But my point is mainly this: the argument is that the regular season in football is so exciting because "the regular season IS a playoff" because your national title hopes hang in the balance each and every week. And I agree that the impact of a loss is part of what makes CFB so exciting. But after your first loss...then what? In most years, that national title excitement is gone.

To put some numbers to it, in almost every year of college football (with last year being an odd exception), you have at most 3, maybe 4, teams vying for a spot in the championship game. Few other teams go into their final game thinking they've got a chance. There could certainly even be a year where our national title teams are locked in before the last week of the regular season (If Big 10 and Pac 10 teams held the top two spots, for example).

But if you've got an 8 team playoff, you've already got at least 8 teams vying for a spot in the tournament, with as many at 3 or 4 more thinking they've got a good chance. You've probably even got a head-to-head game that'll give a playoff berth to whoever wins. So instead of having excitement surrounding 3 or 4 teams, you've got excitement surrounding 9 - 12 teams. That number increases (for both sides) as you work your way back into previous weeks.

It's a similar phenomenon to what college basketball fans have seen over the past few weeks with the bubble watch. OU's games were more exciting because we had something important on the line. Were some of the earlier season games less exciting because we didn't have something on the line? Sure. But not many of them, and I'd say that the net gain in excitement, so to speak, is significant. Plus, as many of you have alluded to...loss of excitement is probably something that's not even an issue or concern in CFB because (a) the season is so much shorter and (b) so many of the fans are overly passionate about it.

So that's the basis of my stance. Again, there are many other reasons to oppose a playoff...in fact, there are aspects of some playoff scenarios that I oppose. And, you're right, I can't prove anything right now. I'm not trying to. I'm just trying to convince you all that the decreased excitement part of the argument doesn't hold water. In fact, I argue that it will increase excitement.