So are bowls just going to die off now?
- Thread starter bigsirspur
- Start date
So kids on 80 teams get a trip, a chance to play, and some swag. And some players get more reps in the extra practices. Schools are not required to go. How can someone be against something they are not required to pay for, participate in, or watch? That's like me saying that, since you did not have a great year at work, I don't believe you should go on vacation this year.
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I hope that the playoffs will operate independently of the bowls. Higher seed hosts all playoff rounds until the championship game, which would be held at a neutral site.
If all these playoff games were held in conjunction with bowls, how many fans could made three such trips?
Good riddance to all bowls which survive.
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I barely watched any regular season college games and watched zero bowl games. Of course I watched all the playoff games. The college football product has become so bad over the past 5 years that IMO they should have an even larger playoff. Start the playoff the first week of December and play the championship game the week before the super bowl.
Had a 12 team playoff system been in affect during the Spurrier years USC would have made it 3 times. With the current system how many times have we made it? It would help recruiting and everything else. If you play in a real conference like the sec expansion is a good thing. Why the hell would any South Carolina fan be against something that could benefit us some day? If we ever put a team on the field like Spurrier did we make the playoff. The current format we didn't.
lol, so you're not arguing that we should actually have tried to be any better, just that in a system with a much, much, much lower bar, we would have appeared to be better?
I'm gonna laugh my tail off when we find out that even with the expanded CFP, the best players still want to go to Bama, OSU, etc.
I imagine they'll actually add more bowls.
College football is becoming like those professors who grade on a curve! "You got an 81? Let's just call that an A!" Student goes back to his/her dorm proud as a peacock because he/she "got an A."
Whatever, it's the world we live in. We actually had fans excited that our 2-8 team, who was probably the only 2-8 team in history to be worse than their record would indicate, got a bowl invite last season. Like, excited enough to actually pay real money to travel down to watch the game in person.
College football is becoming like those professors who grade on a curve! "You got an 81? Let's just call that an A!" Student goes back to his/her dorm proud as a peacock because he/she "got an A."
Whatever, it's the world we live in. We actually had fans excited that our 2-8 team, who was probably the only 2-8 team in history to be worse than their record would indicate, got a bowl invite last season. Like, excited enough to actually pay real money to travel down to watch the game in person.
Saying we need to get "better" is a given. We all know that. But under Spurrier, we were better -- even finished number 4 overall -- and still couldn't get into a BCS game under the old system. It also wouldn't have been good enough to make the playoffs under the current format. And that team could've played with -- and BEATEN -- anyone in the country that year on a given day.
I guess it's just a generational thing, I dunno. It seems totally absurd to me to say "let's change the rules b/c we aren't good enough to compete." In 2011 and 2013, it was there for taking, but we had inexcusable losses to Auburn and UT. It wasn't the system's fault we pulled epic choke jobs in those games.
Go back to sports writers in the 1970s and 1980s. Long before playoffs or BCS. Even then they wrote, do all these minor bowls matter? Only the New Year's Day bowls matter. That was the big deal then, playing on New Year's Day. Yet the smaller bowls still survive. The Tulsa's and Louisiana Tech's, when they have a good year like 8-4 or 9-3, want and expect to go bowling. It isn't all just about determining a NC.
No doubt in my mind that you are correct re: where the best players will want to go.
Like March Madness, the early rounds would generate interest/excitement.
Yeah, look what happened to the bowls with just a 4-team playoff. Expand that to 12 teams. Even with the 4-team playoff, you could still have some nice top-10 or top-matchups in the better bowls. That's out the window now.
Anyone who thinks it's going to help recruiting for schools like us is out of their mind. Sure, there may have been some recruiting benefit to the schools making the 4-team playoff, but there's a limit to the # of players they can sign. That still left an awful lot of good players for everyone else. Now you've tripled that with 12 teams. There will be the usual up and down flux, but you'll still have most of your usual suspects in there year-in and year-out.
Definitely not. We absolutely choked those games away. On the flipside, other losses can be taken into account when there's extenuating circumstances. Look at Clemson last year. They played one of the weakest schedules in the country and lost a game without Trevor Lawrence. The CFP Committee forgave them for that and put them in the playoffs anyway.
Then there's Ohio St. Didn't even play a full schedule and still got into the playoffs. Viewership has dropped by almost 40% over the last several years because fans are tired of seeing the same teams in it. And I can imagine they REALLY didn't like it when the Committee bent over backwards to keep putting in the same teams -- especially when there were some newer, fresher faces that would've sparked some more viewer interest.
The expanded playoff games will be glorified exhibitions, as well.
Yup.
The top programs will still get theirs. It may impact some depth, but Bama is gonna Bama as long as Saban is there, and Taters will tate with Dablow.
However, it will help the messaging and appeal for teams who do make it in. Just like making the Big Dance helps with recruiting (unless your UofSC). No one cares if you were last in. Recruits (at least the tier we could land) wont care if we didn’t advance unless it was an embarrassing upset.
Kids in high school want to make the playoffs. Would they like to win their division and be a #1 seed? Sure. But, they sure as h*ll don’t complain if they aren’t the the best” during the season. They just want a shot at State.
It’s amazing how people can get excited over a stupid slogan like “Welcome Home” because that supposedly helps with the messaging, but can’t see, or are simply too obstinate to admit, how being in a playoff (expanded or not) would help the non-elite USCs of the world.
Assuming, we ever stop sucking out loud of course, which for now, makes all this much ado about nothing for the only University that I give a shyatt about.
Exactly. Just two years ago, LSU scored 49 points on Oklahoma at half. Don't waste my time with Bama vs the Sun Belt champion. We don't need more stupid playoff games...we need less.
The Sun Belt champion, the MAAC Champion, etc. will be excited to win their league and have the "honour" to get slaughtered in a first-round game in Tuscaloosa or Clemron.
All I said jackass is 3 Spurrier teams would have made the playoff of 12 teams. Even 8 teams they would have made it. 4 teams they wouldn't have made it. Expansion is a positive thing for South Carolina and college football. Even if the same teams keep winning it. However, wait and see. You will have some major upsets with a 12 team playoff.
Exactly. Sad we have fans that can't admit this. Obviously they are trolls and not fans on here. This is one of the few sites that allow so many trolls.
Of course, Notre Dame will be offered a permanent automatic bid because the NCAA just can't seem to do enough for it.
ND should not have a seat at the table until they fully join a conference. Hopefully the B10 but they are playing the FSU card and want to join a weaker conference.
If they were to join the B10, it would spark interest and recruiting in the B10 would skyrocket.
ND and Texas are two teams it's fun to hate.
This ^^ Covid or no Covid...If that
didn't show you bowls were totally meaningless nothing else will. I for one will never attend another bowl game in person unless Carolina makes the playoffs regardless of it's perceived prestige. Everyone including the players now realize bowls outside the playoffs are nothing more than a glorified scrimmage sponsored by corporate America.
I agree, but that's not how it has worked. When they started the BCS, Notre Dame had a seat at the table along with reps from each of the P5. They get a pass every year. Even when they have a good team, they are still not at conference championship level. But they'll get a pass next year too and still won't have to run the gauntlet that conference champions have to run to get into the playoffs.
I disagree. The BCS was badly broken. 2004 proved it was not a viable option. After 2004 it was dead and only a matter of time until it was buried forever. Good riddance.
Neither one piques my interest. The way things stack up now, there is a pretty steep drop off after the top four or five teams, or so. So any of those such games become meaningless and uninteresting.
Throughout my life in most sports only a handful of teams at the most were capable of winning a title. You could name a likely champion out of 4 or 5 teams in the nfl, nba, and college football for the mostpart every year. That didn't take away from memorable playoff games against teams that didn't have much of a shot at a superbowl. Same will be with 12. You'll see some great games between the 5 through 12 seeds. Sure the top 4 will likely win a title but doesn't mean those other games will not be good.
I don't know if they will "die out" but they will take a big hit in popularity. I mean what fan is going to brag my team is going to the "fill in the blank" bowl.
It also gave hope to the fans that the bowl could be used as a "spring board" to improve their program via better recruiting. Now, with the opt outs I have no or little interest.
I know exactly the way you feel. This year marks the 50th year I watched Carolina play in person and the 61st year of being a Gamecock fan. And many many of those years I was naïve enough to believe if we had won just one or two more games in a particular season we would surely turn the proverbial corner. It's never happened and it's never going to happen in my life time, sadly.
It's the opt outs that kill it for me. Other than the opt outs I agree with you.
Remember the Belk Bowl. Our best offensive player chose to sit out and was allowed to stand on the sidelines. Most of our fans were OK with that because they wanted to see him be a first round draft pick and get paid. Even with many of our fans, the team doesn't come first.
It's not that way in the upstate.
I think a lot of it boils down to the gradual loss of the spirit of amateur competition. College men playing a game of football against another college's men. Now, its "college football needs to have a national champion", and be seen on TV, and rake in conference/big television money, and pay the players a salary, and allow them to get paid for their NIL, and allow them opt out in order to protect their professional chances, and allow them to transfer in and out, and make coaches multimillionaires. I will always love to see the Gamecocks play, but some of the spirit is becoming lost. Its even hard to form an emotional attachment and bond to players these days due to those things. They are just becoming guys wearing the Gamecock football uniform. Sorry for the rant.
Shouldn't bowl bound teams be above 50%? 7-5 Should be the limit so a loss you still finish above 500? Never liked 500 team going to bowling. It's a reward for average, lose you're below average. Maybe moving forward 7-5 be the limit.
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