Mandel on the BCS situation

[BoulderSooner79]

Finally, a writer that acknowledges the futility of the situation.

"If someone wants to tap the Longhorns to play Missouri in the Big 12 championship game based on their on-field victory over the Sooners, they'll get no argument from me. If they choose to anoint Oklahoma based on its decisive rout of the same Red Raiders team that beat the Longhorns three weeks earlier, I'm fine with that, too."

He goes to talk about the bind the coaches and Harris poll voters face.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...ble/index.html

[Czar Soonerov]

[Iam4OUru]

Finally, a writer that acknowledges the futility of the situation.

"If someone wants to tap the Longhorns to play Missouri in the Big 12 championship game based on their on-field victory over the Sooners, they'll get no argument from me. If they choose to anoint Oklahoma based on its decisive rout of the same Red Raiders team that beat the Longhorns three weeks earlier, I'm fine with that, too."

He goes to talk about the bind the coaches and Harris poll voters face.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...ble/index.html

Nice article. Thanks for sharin'.

[GreaterState]

I'm not the world's biggest Mandel fan but I have always been for plus-one (four-team playoff) and I don't understand why the choices always bog down to "no playoff" or eight teams. You could add a plus-one game into the 30-day break BCS schools get and still not even affect players' final exams. And eight teams is just asking for trouble, invalidating the season and eventually wrecking the bowls.

[bluedogok]

Yeah, the argument about players "losing class time" is invalid for almost all of the schools, since most are in between semesters when most of it would take place. One thing that I agree with something The Sports Animal's Jim Traber said many years ago about the playoff situation, that basketball and baseball/softball players lose way more class time to their sport than football players do. Since he played both football and baseball, he had first hand knowledge.

Most football games are on the weekend (or a week night but that is relatively new), basketball usually has one game during the week and baseball more than that. When it comes playoff time, in basketball you have conference playoffs AND the NCAA tournament, which starts mid-week. The baseball/softball tournaments can occur during spring finals. If it is alright for ALL other sports and divisions to have playoffs it seems ridiculous that D-IA cannot.

I have always contended that it isn't all the college presidents who are against a playoff, it is the more "traditionalist" presidents and the ones who know they have very little chance of ever making a playoff, with the number of bowls they have a shot to go to one of those. I like the bowls and watch most of them since they are better than most of what is on TV and it is football. There should be some way of combining the two so those "bowl destined" schools can have their year end game and practice but a limited (8 or 16 teams) playoff season which could start the week after the conference championship games and end about the time the final is now, which is before most schools are back in session or move it a week later to avoid finals week for most schools.